Adobe Commerce
While digital commerce was already growing year-on-year, the pandemic pushed the industry into hyperdrive. For many brands, digital is now their predominant sales channel, as consumer confidence in online continues to soar.
However, with so much uncertainty in the world, you may have missed the news that Adobe has officially consolidated the branding of Magento Commerce and Adobe Commerce Cloud to the single brand, aptly named Adobe Commerce.
Magento has been a key part of the Adobe family for some time, providing the ecommerce element that was missing from its fantastic digital ecosystem.
Yet this renaming comes at a crucial time in the company’s growth and signifies the direction it is heading now and into the future.
What does this all mean for customers and merchants?
Some background
Adobe is synonymous with creativity and innovation, historically specialising in software for creating and publishing a huge array of content including photos, illustration, print and graphics. As it grew and digital came to the fore, Adobe evolved and soon became a leader in designing and delivering digital experiences through content and data.
In May 2018, it acquired the market-leading commerce platform Magento Commerce, with the plan to enable Magento Commerce Cloud to seamlessly integrate into the Adobe Experience Cloud and deliver a single platform to serve B2B and B2C customers around the world. Adding commerce to its offering was seen as another important piece of the digital jigsaw.
As Brad Rencher, executive vice president and general manager of Adobe’s Digital Experience, said at the time: “Embedding commerce into the Adobe Experience Cloud with Magento enables Adobe to make every moment personal and every experience shoppable.”
What does the rebranding mean?
Since the acquisition, Adobe has focused on improving the platform’s capabilities in a number of ways, including aligning its partner and developer experience and integrating its sales, marketing and product teams within the Adobe Experience Cloud business.
The next step was bringing the Magento Commerce and Adobe Commerce Cloud products under a single solution, Adobe Commerce.
For clarity, it makes total sense. Up until recently, to get the best overall user experience many merchants have found combining Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) and Magento Commerce to be the answer. In effect, bringing together the creative hub with the technology and digital commerce.
AEM is a CMS that allows teams to work together on projects from different locations, helps merchants create and store assets easily and ensures a brand’s content remains consistent and personalised for each customer across all channels. AEM is also part of Adobe Experience Cloud, which has a suite of other AI-driven solutions for marketing, advertising, analytics and commerce, giving you even more options to improve your working practices.
Now, with branding aligned and Magento Commerce known as Adobe Commerce, there is a continuity that perhaps was missing before.
While Adobe didn’t release news of any major changes to the platform when this was announced in April, it signified its ambitions in digital commerce.
Adobe said Magento Open Source branding and support will remain unchanged, while its priorities are to ‘help customers across the entirety of their commerce journey.’
What next?
The most interesting news for merchants and customers followed a week after the renaming announcement, at the Adobe Summit.
Exciting new additions that Adobe Commerce merchants can access were introduced, including Live Search, Adobe Sign and Product Recommendations. Not only will these improve the overall digital commerce experience for customers, but they continue to take the platform and technology forward.
Live Search gives customers what they want
Helping customers find what they want quickly and easily is the name of the game for merchants today.
With so many competitors, if a customer feels bogged down with too much choice or struggle to find what they are looking for, they will quickly move to another site.
Adobe has the answer, with an AI-powered search function for its digital storefronts. Live Search, powered by Adobe Sensei, allows merchants to provide their customers with ‘fast, personalised search-as-you-type results’ that become more intelligent over time thanks to AI and machine learning technology.
Using the same product catalogue metadata as the Product Recommendations features, Live Search can easily be enabled by brands that already have Product Recommendations.
Impressively, the function can also help with merchandising by providing reports on search queries to help businesses understand more about what products they should be selling or putting more emphasis on.
Product Recommendations boost
With personalisation so important for today’s brands, many Adobe Commerce merchants are already using Product Recommendations. This allows them to utilise consumer data and insights to drive personalised experiences and deliver relevant recommendations that respond to consumer preferences.
Product Recommendations
Now, new enhancements to this will allow Adobe Commerce merchants to improve its functionality and set up recommendations with different rules such as pricing changes depending on the customer and variance in the catalogue of products offered up, that also take into account a B2B buyer’s purchasing behaviour. Merchants will also now be able to see a preview of their product recommendations.
Adobe Sign integration
While digital has accelerated, certain processes can slow things down.
How many times have you needed a signature and been forced to print off something, sign and scan?
E-signatures are slowly helping this process fade away, with Adobe Sign seeing more than 200 per cent growth year-on-year from February 2020.
Adobe Commerce and Adobe Sign have now integrated, meaning customers and merchants can look forward to a more streamlined experience, with contracts, waivers, warranties and more becoming a natural part of the checkout process.
Adobe Sign on mobile
Conclusion
How we shop is changing all the time, with technology and AI being integrated into our digital shopping habits more and more.
On the surface, the renaming of Magento Commerce and Adobe Commerce Cloud to the single brand of Adobe Commerce doesn’t change a lot.
Underneath, it stops any confusion around the two united brands and brings them under one umbrella – while giving assurances to merchants that Adobe is taking commerce seriously.
The power of Adobe combined with a growing commerce product, is an exciting prospect.
By bringing in new functions such as Live Search and Adobe Sign to Adobe Commerce, Adobe is continuing to improve the platform and provide solutions for customers every step of their user journey.
Some of these features and capabilities are already available to Adobe Commerce merchants, while others will be available from July onwards.
If you would like to find out more about any of them, pick up the phone.
As part of our Adobe Experience Cloud series, we’ll be looking at other products in the digital ecosystem including Adobe Analytics and Adobe Target. Keep your eye out for more blogs on the topic.