The biggest Magento event in Australia and probably in the whole APAC region has just finished. Magenable took part in Magento Live Australia 2016, so we are able to share with our blog readers this great event’s highlights.
Updated: added links to official photos and presentation, scroll to the bottom or this page
Magento CEO Mark Lavelle presenting
Same with the previous two events where I took part, Magento Live Australia 2016 was in Sydney. The conference venue, Hilton Sydney hotel, is conveniently located and pretty good quality: the theatres, the food, the staff. My only complaint was the sometimes slow Wi Fi connection.
Magento Enterprise Cloud Edition
The conference started from presenting the showcase of the first (or one of the first) Magento Enterprise Cloud Edition websites. The website was built for UK luxury shows and other leather goods retailer Oliver Sweeney by Redbox Digital. According to Oliver Sweney Digital Marketing Director Alex Barbier the project went pretty smoothly and they are happy with their new website.
- Things that Alex likes in Magento 2:
- Flexible promotion engine, far beyond simple % discounts that were available in their previous platform
- Good CMS capabilities comparing with previous platform, like the possibility to through the widget to page without any coding
- Easy Google Shopping integration through extension
- Possibility to manage multiple websites (they have 4 or 5) from a single platform
- Easier vendor management (deal only with Magento for both the platform and hosting)
- Other things that are important to mention
- According to Alex, Magento is the solution that will serve his company for at least 5-6 years, which is important to understand when selecting a new platform – it will make a big difference for your a business case how long the solution will last
- With the Cloud Edition, the Magento team is more actively involved in build, ongoing support and maintenance, avoiding the situation when it isn’t clear is it a hosting or platform issue;
- Patching Magento is still a responsibility of the solution provider or merchant if it has in-house team, Magento team patches only server software, like OS
Where is Magento now
After running as an independent company for about a year now Magento folks are pretty optimistic about the platform current status and the future.
Magento statistic 2016
Some of the most interesting stats they shared:
- Magento is used by 250,000 merchants in 180+ countries
- There are 3,500 merchants on Magento Enterprise Edition
- While previously the customers were mostly retail businesses, now it is 50/50 B2B/B2C distribution
- Magento keeps is the most used eCommerce platform in Internet Retailer merchants rating in multiple categories including Top-100 IR rating with 3x as many installs as the nearest competitor
- Combined revenue of Magento merchants is $4.2B per year
Magento ecosystem
Magento ecosystem slide
Magento eCommerce is a powerful and feature packed platform, but what really amplifies it is extensive ecosystem:
- 300+ top-tier solution and technology partners
- 6,100 certified developers
- over 9,000 of extensions at Magento Connect and 800+ at Magento marketplace
- 190,000 developers (based on Stack Overflow participation)
- 145+ events in 34 countries and 6 continents
Magento Analytics
Several months earlier Magento acquired a company called RJ Metrics and re-branded their analytics solution “Magento Analytics”.
Magento Analytics presentation
Magento Analytics was presented by Robert Moore (ex-CEO of RJ Metrics, now Head of Magento Analytics). Magento Analytics collects crucial information from multiples sources including Magento database, Google Analytics, eDM system and stores all the data in one place and allows merchants to get insights about their business in pretty seamless way, that otherwise would require hours of work from a developer or crunching numbers in Excel. According to Robert for a solution of this class Magento Analytics has pretty accessible price tag (he referred to $750 per month as a starting point). Magento Analytics is available for both Enterprise and Community merchants. Moreover, part of Magento Analytics functionality is planned to be included in future versions of Magento for free.
Other interesting news, updates and observations from Magento Live Australia 2016
- Magento EE merchants are getting pretty cool content staging functionality, where the changes can be grouped to campaigns with pre-defined life cycle and preview possibilities;
- Garry Wheelhouse from Harvey Norman and Peter Ratcliffe of Retail Apparel Group got the Magento Trailblazer awards. Congratulations!
- Magento 2017 roadmap includes: B2B features, new promotion types, enhanced CMS and developer experience
- Magento makes free their on-demand Magento University courses from Dec 1st to Jan 15th 2016
Conference exhibition area
As a conclusion, a short quote about why merchants select Magento
To be not trapped by technology, but freed
References
- Official photos from Magento Live Australia 2016 at Flickr
- Presentations from Magento Live Australia 2016 – http://magentolive.com/au/schedule/
