Imagine 2016: What we learned

Imagine 2016: What we learned

In early April, Craig and Tony attended Magento Imagine 2016, one of the largest ecommerce events in the world.

Held in Las Vegas, this event brought together some of the industry’s most innovative minds. We heard from heavyweights such as Earvin ‘Magic’ Johnson, Chair of Magic Johnson Enterprises; Mark Lavelle, CEO of Magento Commerce; Jamie Clarke, Co-Founder of LiveOutThere.com, and many, many more talented individuals.

It was an action-packed three days, full of networking opportunities, intellectually stimulating conversations and exciting announcements. This is what we learned.

Product Reveals

Three major new products were announced, all of which significantly add to the Magento user experience.

Magento Marketplace Magento unveiled major upgrades to Magento Connect, in the form of the ‘Magento Marketplace’. This is the official Magento extension store where merchants can discover new products and services – all of which have been thoroughly reviewed and tested by Magento to ensure they are of the highest quality. What’s more, the upgrade means you can now purchase extensions directly in the marketplace instead of being redirected to the vendor’s website. The Magento Marketplace is currently available for Magento 2.0 only, with Magento 1.0 support to be added at a later stage.

Magento Enterprise Cloud Edition
Another exciting announcement was the unveiling of Magento Enterprise Cloud Edition, a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offering for the Magento 2.0 platform. This cloud-based platform runs on Amazon Web Services and is designed to enable the “rapid deployment of fully customizable, secure and scalable web storefronts”. It’s compatible with versions 2.0.5 onwards. Find out everything you need to know about this new product by watching this .

Magento Commerce Order Management
The third announcement was Magento Commerce Order Management, a function that allows for the seamless management of “multiple orders, inventory distribution centres, stores dropship partners and more.” For large ecommerce businesses with complex order management processes, this new feature will save you time, paperwork and money.

Services Worth Noting

Imagine 2016 showcased hundreds of innovative ecommerce solutions. We selected four that are of particular interest to ecommerce businesses in New Zealand and Australia.

Braintree
Watch this space: the Braintreepayment gateway will be extending multiple currency support to New Zealand in the near future, which will make it much easier for NZ vendors to sell their products globally. This has been a huge challenge in the past, with only BNZ supporting multiple currencies. Braintree brings a much-needed alternative to the market.

Dotmailer An email marketing tool offering world-class automation, data insight and more, Dotmailer is an excellent ecommerce solution. Featuring out-of-the-box support for Magento, it’s definitely worth checking out if you have a Magento website and want to take your email marketing to the next level.

EasyAsk This ecommerce search function is revolutionising the way consumers find your products. EasyAsk’s ‘Natural Language Search‘ feature will interpret unique customer searches and match them with the right products, keeping your customers happy and ensuring you don’t miss out on sales. EasyAsk also comes with a Magento extension.

CraftyClicks
Don’t get an address wrong ever again. With CraftyClicks, you can quickly and easily search for address data. This address autocomplete and verification service plugs into Magento, and has far more accurate results than Google Place API for New Zealand and Australian businesses.

This post barely touches the surface of what was on offer at Imagine 2016. For more information, check out Magento’s extensive video library from the event – with 5 pages of videos to watch, you’ll feel like you were there too.

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