Adobe completes Magento integration, aims to ‘make every moment shoppable’

In May, Adobe bought open source commerce platform Magento, creating a Commerce Cloud. On Tuesday, Adobe unveiled how it is integrating Magento into its Experience Cloud.

In Adobe’s sky, there are clouds that contain other clouds. So, the Experience Cloud contains the Marketing Cloud, the Analytics Cloud, the Advertising Cloud — and, with the acquisition, the Magento Commerce Cloud.

From the acquisition announcement until now, director of commerce strategy Errol Denger says, there was an integration layer between Commerce Cloud and its fellow clouds, but “now we’re solidifying the integration” with new features.

Here’s a rundown of what’s new:

• If you want to create a cart promotion, for instance, you can now work within the Marketing Cloud’s Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) content management system to access Magento. And, if you want to personalize a buying experience, the new Magento integration can utilize Adobe Target for, say, directing certain offers to a given customer.
• Speaking of content creation, there is now a new drag-and-drop Page Builder in Commerce Cloud. Denger said a small business might want to work inside Commerce Cloud instead of AEM to build, say, a product page with a button, which is now pre-tagged via Adobe Launch integration for tag management.
• The Adobe Analytics Cloud is now available for use with every action in Commerce Cloud, such as employing predictive analytics for an individual or an audience segment.
• A new integration with Amazon Marketplace and Google Merchant Center allows marketers to sync their Magento-created stores into these channels for promotion, selling and fulfillment.
• A new Progressive Web Application (PWA) Studio is coming to Commerce Cloud for developing and managing web-based, app-like experiences, such as creating photo carousels inside a product category page. Previously, Denger said, Adobe offered PWA editors to receive and edit code from other creation tools, but not the ability to create PWAs directly.
• A new Magento Payments is available inside the Commerce Cloud for accepting payments from a variety of methods, managing payment operations and receiving protection from fraud.
• And a Magento Premier Technology Partner program now lets merchants streamline product information management via Akeneo PIM and ratings/reviews via Yotpo.

Why this matters to marketers. Adobe’s Experience Cloud handles more than 233 trillion customer transactions a year. With Magento more completely integrated into the Adobe cloudscape, the platform is now more able to provide a seamless experience for customers and marketers that requires fewer calls to outside services.

And a seamless experience can offer new kinds of customer journeys that expand how marketing and sales work together. Adobe gives the example of how its platform is being used to allow passengers landing at Heathrow Airport in Great Britain to buy merchandise while they wait to get through the gate, and have it waiting for them on the other side.

The big idea of this integration, Denger said, is to “make every moment shoppable.”

About The Author

Barry Levine

Barry Levine covers marketing technology for Third Door Media. Previously, he covered this space as a Senior Writer for VentureBeat, and he has written about these and other tech subjects for such publications as CMSWire and NewsFactor. He founded and led the web site/unit at PBS station Thirteen/WNET; worked as an online Senior Producer/writer for Viacom; created a successful interactive game, PLAY IT BY EAR: The First CD Game; founded and led an independent film showcase, CENTER SCREEN, based at Harvard and M.I.T.; and served over five years as a consultant to the M.I.T. Media Lab. You can find him at LinkedIn, and on Twitter at xBarryLevine.