Adobe Systems Inc. has been busy as of late. Last month, it announced plans to buy marketing automation company Marketo for $4.75 billion and in June it closed on its purchase of e-commerce platform Magento Commerce for $1.68 billion.
And this morning at the MagentoLive Europe user conference in Barcelona, Adobe and Magento made two announcements regarding the Magento acquisition, showing the companies are wasting no time adding Magento Commerce capabilities into the Adobe platform to help brands and retailers “make every moment shoppable.”
First, Adobe said it is integrating Magento’s e-commerce platform into its marketing suite. That means Adobe customers using Adobe Experience Cloud’s marketing, advertising and analytics services now can add a shopping cart to their digital presences.
Adobe adds shopping capabilities
Retailers can buy Magento and the Adobe Experience Cloud together in one package, says Errol Denger, director of commerce program and strategy, Adobe Enterprise Commerce. “We’ve taken care of that primary integration between Experience Cloud and Magento.” With the integration, retailers and brands using Adobe to manage marketing online and offline can add shopping functionality to their blogs, rich media, social media and other marketing and advertising channels, he says.
Adobe says consumers interact with an Adobe service on their path to purchase 233 trillion times a year, accounting for $141 billion in online sales annually. Adobe also says it works with 80 of the largest 100 U.S. online retailers. Magento says it handles $155 billion worth of online transactions each year.
Magento ranks No. 1 among e-commerce platform providers to the Internet Retailer Top 1000 with 167 clients. Additionally, many Top 1000 retailers use Adobe for a range of services, including for analytics (263 Top 1000 merchants, No. 2 in the category) and rich media (117 Top 1000 merchants, No. 1 in the category). Adobe’s retail clients include 1-800-Flowers.com Inc. (No. 66 in the Top 1000) and Apple Inc. (No. 2). Magento clients include lingerie retailer Adore Me Inc. (No. 308) and apparel retailer Charlotte Russe (No. 763).
Denger says the integration also will help retailers drive omnichannel and store sales. For example, an apparel brand launching its new fall line could live stream its runway event and enable shoppers to purchase outfits models are wearing directly from the video either online or in a store, Denger says.
“Consumers expect every interaction with a brand to be contextual, intuitive and meaningful, but companies have struggled to consistently deliver personalized experiences across the myriad of touchpoints,” said Mark Lavelle, senior vice president of commerce, Adobe and former CEO of Magento, in announcing the news. “The innovations we are bringing to market enable companies of all sizes and across industries to make every experience shoppable.”
Magento Commerce 2.3
Adobe also announced at the conference the latest version of the Magento Cloud platform, Magento Commerce 2.3. Major updates include integrations with Amazon and Google. Merchants can now sync their Magento stores with Amazon and integrate their product catalog with Google Merchant Center and Google advertising channels for Google Shopping campaigns.
Other notable updates include:
- Help with site design: The updated platform features PageBuilder, a drag-and-drop editing tool for site content, which is intended to help merchants design or update their Magento e-commerce site without having to hire specialized Magento developers.
- Mobile tools: The Magento Progressive Web Applications (PWA) Studio enables merchants and developers to create PWAs. A PWA is a set of design and technology standards that offer the look and feel of an app, but in a mobile website. The technology implements several methods, such as using a service worker—a script that web browsers continually run in the background separate from a web page—to ensure a fast-loading site. Running as a background process allows the service worker to take on roles such as caching website content, such as images and the retailer’s logo, and allows the website to run quickly.
- Payments help: The launch of Magento Payments, which uses PayPal-owned payment company Braintree for payment processing, helps merchants quickly accept payments from shoppers through Magento without having to find and implement a payment processor on their own.
Retailers using Magento Commerce Cloud can upgrade to Magento 2.3 for free, says John Stockton, senior director of commerce product at Magento Commerce.
Bringing Magento into the Adobe fold
In an interview with Internet Retailer, Stockton and Denger wouldn’t comment on the recent Marketo acquisition news but said that Magento is now “fully integrated into the Adobe workforce experience.”
“We’re sitting together on the same floor,” Denger says of him and Stockton. “We’ve integrated product management teams and our services and delivery teams. But we’re maintaining the Magento brand because it’s such a powerful brand.”
Magento has long had strong market share with small- and medium-sized business while Adobe has been focused more on enterprise businesses. Denger says smaller companies want the same robust marketing, analytics and commerce offerings as larger players, but leaner staff and fewer resources means they want them to be easy to implement and manage. Offering technology services for smaller businesses is a major part of Adobe and Magento’s strategy going forward.
Denger says Adobe has more projects in the pipeline designed to further extend Adobe and Magento commerce capabilities but wouldn’t offer much more detail.
“It all goes back to making every moment personal and every moment shoppable,” he says. “We view the commerce experience as not just what happens on the web. We’re going to be making more exciting announcements as we capitalize on our new commerce capabilities.”