Experience-Driven Commerce

People don’t buy products, they buy experiences. Experience-driven commerce was Magento’s motto for its first MagentoLive Europe conference in Barcelona which I was excited to be part of. It was the 2nd largest Magento conference in the world, attended by over 1800 Magento users and developers which is roughly half of what Magento Imagine in the US hosted earlier this year.

Yesterday morning, Barcelona experienced heavy rains, but not only my Airbnb apartment got a little wet. The Palau de Congressos de Catalunya didn’t seem to have been built to keep rain outside, either. The auditorium’s main stage was flooded and so the keynotes had to be postponed to 2 pm. In the end it all worked out fine and the wait was worthwhile. Yesterday’s highlight for me personally was the keynote of Iron Maiden lead singer, airplane pilot and serial entrepreneur Bruce Dickinson.

https://twitter.com/nickweisser/status/1049658067858677760

One of his key messages was to think out of the box. If you can dream it, it might happen. If you don’t dream it, it won’t probably happen at all. I think it’s a great idea to have keynotes at tech conferences, that are slightly off-topic in order to spice things up.

This is a guy with a soul. So refreshing, as way too often technology is just about numbers, vc’s, stats and climbing the next mountain. A very good reminder to us to appreciate each other #mleu #diversity @brucedickinson_ #magento

— Jo B (@saas_boss) October 9, 2018

Will Magento Remain Open Source?

Since Magento has been acquired by Adobe earlier this year, the developer community and probably also merchants using Magento Open Source, the free version of Magento, were becoming worried whether Adobe would appreciate the open ecosystem that Magento is. Adobe’s decision to end the Magento rewards-based bug bounty program that’s been active for the past three years, was not instilling confidence that Magento would be in good hands.

In his keynote, Magento CEO Mark Lavelle confirmed that Magento wants to remain open to innovation and the developer community. Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen also addressed this and seems to acknowledge the importance of the open ecosystem. It remains to be seen if the community engineering team will receive the same support from Adobe that it received when Magento was still independent. It has just started to gain great momentum, so it would be pretty sad to see this reversed.

Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen confirms the commitment to #Magento #OpenSource acknowleding the importance of the Magento community, comparing the acquisition of Magento with the acquisition of Swiss ECM pioneer Day Software in 2010 #understanding #ecosystem #community #MLEU pic.twitter.com/a8KuWJxnz8

— Nick Weisser (@nickweisser) October 9, 2018

Magento 2.3

In one of yesterday’s breakout sessions, the next major release of Magento 2.3 was discussed in detail. It is supposed to be shipped as early as next month. Its new capabilities can be summarized as follows:

• Reach new audiences
• Rapidly create engaging site content
• Create high-conversion mobile experiences
• Streamline payment & risk management
• Unify commerce data, integrate commerce tools

Some of these capabilities will be exclusive to Magento Commerce and not available in Magento Open Source. Magento Commerce, formerly known as Magento Enterprise, is the non-free version of Magento with yearly license fees in the lower 5 figures. Magento Commerce Cloud is another product for «small» merchants which comes as a SaaS (Software as a Service) offering with monthly fees in the lower 4 figures. For the «really» small merchants, Magento Open Source is still the only viable solution if they think Magento is a better fit for them like e.g. WooCommerce.

As a Magento 1 merchant you still have to decide if you will be «intimidated» by the end of life deadline in 2020 or rely on the Magento community and your Magento developer to provide security patches after that. At Openstream we won’t «force anyone onto Magento 2, but if you want to be using a technology stack that is actively supported, we recommend either migrating to Magento 2 or evaluating if WooCommerce might be a viable option for your online business.

Smart Shopping Campaigns

Google made its debut at MagentoLive Europe 2018 as an active part of the Magento ecosystem. They have been closely working on a native Google Shopping integration with the Magento development team for quite some time now, according to discussions I had with some of the Googlers at their marketplace booth.

What that means is that in Q1 or Q2 2019, you will be able to list your products on google.ch/shopping which is part of Google Ads (formerly known as Google AdWords) directly from the Magento 2.3 backend without installing any additional extensions. In combination with their newly released smart shopping campaigns, this will be a very powerful feature for small merchants who otherwise are not always able to compete with bigger merchants and their multiple person online marketing teams. Google Smart Shopping campaigns combine standard Shopping and display remarketing campaigns using automated bidding and ad placement to promote your products and business across networks.

Magento Contributor Day

Magento wants to remain an open platform and vibrant ecosystem. In 2018 so far 700 issues were fixed by the community and partners. The total number of contributors was 793! On Monday, the day before the actual conference, another Magento Contributor Day took place, which I also took part in, working on the de_CH language pack and exchanging ideas with other active members of the community who deal with localization, i.e. translation of Magento into other languages.

I didn’t attend the final session of the 2nd day, DevExchange, where key developer topics were discussed, but will add a link to their website later, in case you’re a developer or engaged user who might be interested to join the conversation about:

• PWA standards for extensions
• Functional programming concepts
• B2B trends
• Remote working
• Mental health
• Magento Association
• Organizing events

That’s it for my little write up of MagentoLive Europe 2018. I had a great time in Barcelona and look forward to continuing my journey as part of the Open Source ecommerce community. It’s an exciting place to be in 2018, there’s no doubt about it.

Here’s what’s not going to change: our commitment to our customers, our commitment to our partners, and our commitment to our developer community. — @mklave1 at #MLEU. Learn more: https://t.co/6NA9GW06iY pic.twitter.com/yfLjukWKWp

— Adobe Commerce (@AdobeCommerce) October 9, 2018

Other MagentoLive Recaps

• Sonja Riesterer, integer_net: Magento Live Europe Recap
• t3n digital pioneers: Magento-Version 2.3 und andere Adobe-Neuerungen im Überblick
• Divante: Magento Live Europe 2018 Recap
• Matthias Zeis, LimeSoda: MagentoLive Europe 2018 in Barcelona

If you want your recap added to the list, please comment or send us a direct message.