Last year the e-commerce industry made headlines when Adobe acquired Magento, one of World’s leading e-commerce platforms. While speculations had already begun, it was until 21st of May 2018 when Adobe made an official announcement about the ongoing acquisition of Magento Commerce. The deal saw its final completion on the 19th of June 2018.
In a statement during the acquisition, Adobe’s Digital Experience executive vice president and general manager Brad Rencher said, “Across every industry, people aren’t just buying products, they’re buying experiences. “Adobe is the leader in delivering end-to-end digital experiences and with Magento Commerce, Adobe will further solidify its leadership position.”
What it Means for the E-commerce Community
For many e-commerce developers, merchants and customers, Magento joining the Adobe family means a lot to their digital experience.
For example, the inclusion of Magento Commerce Cloud with Adobe Experience Cloud will help streamline all digital tasks such as marketing, content creation, analytics, advertising and commerce for both B2C and B2B customers, delivering a single, end-to-end digital experience. With its merger, Magento users can take digital commerce, predictive intelligence, and advanced order management to a whole new level.
Although it’s been a few months less than a year since the acquisition, in this article we will analyze how it has affected the expectations of all the associated entities of Magento and Adobe. Here is what’s our take on the matter.
Higher Competition
As Magento and Adobe become one, the competitive landscape for digital platforms is expected to change soon. Vendors such as Shopify that are relatively new and serve a smaller tier of the market will remain unaffected as Adobe will keep Magento as an enterprise-focused solution. However, for head-to-head competitors such as Sitecore, the digital platform space will become more competitive and vendors will need to quickly adapt and maintain to differentiation in faster and more effective timelines. This will also allow different Magento solution providers to develop a more diverse range of features for their Magento 2 extensions, keeping in mind what adobe is already bringing to the table for merchants.
Cater to A Larger Audience
This is probably the biggest benefit for Adobe, as it takes Magento’s chunk of the audience and transforms it into one big piece of the pie in the online industry. By gaining access to a larger, active and vibrant audience, Adobe will leverage from a stronger response on about every product or service it currently has or plans to launch in the future. Magento’s built-in tools to track customer behaviors will further allow Adobe to study and analyze buying behaviors, build-long term relationships and use it to supplement their sales.
Increased Mobile Transactions
Since Magento caters to a massive percentage of online customers worldwide, many of them include mobile customers who prefer mobile transactions when shopping. According to many critiques, Magento previously had an unconvincing mobile experience to account. With its acquisition by Adobe, experts believe this area will be subjected to significant improvements for delivering a smoother experience to boost its mobile transactions.
Digital Marketing Dashboard
Magento merchants are likely to benefit from a full-featured, built-in advertising and marketing tool in Magento. This will help them improve their store rankings, get more exposure towards their products and built a stronger digital footprint in the market. This will not only deliver a richer marketing experience but will also bring many useful features to automate tasks and predict outcomes using sales forecasting.
Integrated Tools for Content and Designing
Talking of built-in tools, Magento users are also postulating Adobe’s ultimate move of approving integrated tools for content creation and designing. This is the most popular speculation among many Magento users who can’t wait to use Adobe’s premium features and create higher quality content for their stores. This will help minimize development costs, prevent compatibility issues, allow faster redesigning and editing, and generate a more appealing experience for the customer.
Final Words
Being the world’s leader in designing and digital experiences, as brand identity goes Adobe has a name to be reckoned with. Since content and data play a deciding role in the way a website is received, engaged and interacted by the customer, Adobe’s acquisition of Magento will see major improvements in content generation, order management, personalization, and marketing segments. This will help in delivering more personal, consistent and intuitive experiences to the customer, raising Adobe Commerce’s equity in the market. Furthermore, it will strengthen Adobe’s leadership across the experience business through a consistently expanding e-commerce platform that brings better features, a higher value for money a vibrant community of over 300,000 developers.
Simon Walker has more than 9 years of experience in eCommerce development & consultancy. He currently works for FME Extensions, a company known for its eCommerce website development services. He also consults with businesses to help them increase their online exposure and reach.
