One of the big themes that came out of the first leg of the event was scalability, using the Magento ecosystem of experts and additional tech needed to grow.
For retailers looking for best-of-breed ecommerce tech solutions to help them stay ahead of the curve, Magento is clearly the natural choice. The platform is both flexible and scalable, thanks to the out-of-the-box functionality and ability to add vetted extensions from Connect.
We’re enjoying checking out some of the cool extensions available in the Sponsors Marketplace. Conferences like Imagine are an excellent way to get up to speed on new extensions that have come to market and that are indispensable to merchants.
For those merchants on Magento 1 and considering a move to Magento 2, the work is in finding new and approved extensions that are available on the latest version. There are many extension providers that have failed to keep up.
We were reminded of the work that went into developing Magento 2 during one of Monday’s deep dive sessions, with benefits like an optimized checkout process that’s essential in today’s mobile-centric world. So, if you’re looking to take the next step, the questions are: how do you go about reevaluating the extensions you need Magento 2 and how do you prioritize them?
Marketing
Email marketing automation
Another huge theme to dominate this year’s Imagine conference is the rising expectations of consumers. It emerged that email marketing automation is one of the key tools empowering marketers to drive customer experience: the channel lets you communicate with customers throughout their journey with your brand, in a cost-effective and scalable way. And thanks to easy-to-set-up email programs, you automate labor-intensive tasks and deliver highly targeted, relevant messaging that improves customer advocacy.
Finding a platform, like dotmailer, that syncs seamlessly with the data in Magento will enable you to develop one-to-one relationships with your contacts – however much your list grows. You can also use your email Marketing Automation Platform to send on-brand transactional emails, giving you another opportunity to use customer data to pull in product recommendations.
Storefront
Intelligent site search
To deliver the seamless experience customers expect on your website, an intelligent site search extension that syncs with your product inventory is essential. You want them to be able to find what they’re looking for in an instant, otherwise you could lose them in an instant.
What’s more, an extension that enables auto complete offers a great UX for mobile shoppers, cross-sell features that dynamically pull in related recommendations increase AOV, and semantic site search understands returning customers’ shopping intent and serves up truly personalized results.
Check out Celebros’ Site Search for Magento extension.
Live chat
Today, customers expect you to be on hand to answer their questions and provide support across multiple channels – from social media to your website. The website is the first place they’ll come when they’re looking for information on your brand or products, so adding a live chat extension to your site means they can reach someone in your team instantly if they need to. After all, not everyone has the time or wants to call your contact center.
Live chat is also a good way for customers to provide their feedback on your website – allowing you to identify and act on any issues fast.
Zopim has a number of live chat extensions available for Magento 2 in the marketplace.
Payments
Part of ‘growing up with Magento’ includes cross-border commerce. If you’re taking your store international, you want to be able to accept payments in multiple currencies, reduce the risk of fraud and make it easier for returning customers to buy again.
The Braintree Payments extension is set up to take 130+ currencies in 46 countries, it lets the customer save cards for future checkouts and includes Risk Threshold settings and fraud detection tools at no extra cost.
Product
Fulfilment and shipping
You might be providing a seamless customer experience from the initial sign-up right through to the checkout process. But what if your fulfilment and shipping goes awry? Your customers will judge the full experience they had on when the package does (or doesn’t) get placed in their hands.
Therefore, a web-based shipping solution that supports multiple channels and multiple carriers for your store is a vital stage to get right in your customers’ purchase journey.
Take a look at the likes of ShipStation and Temando.
Why not see all the extensions available in the dotmailer app directory to see how you can customize your email marketing automation platform. Or check out the brand new Magento Marketplace, launched at the Imagine conference!
