Meet Magento UK 2021 was a great day, full of insightful information, fantastic keynote speakers and inspiring eCommerce professionals.
Once again, MM2021 was hosted virtually allowing everybody to reconnect once more with 79 countries across the globe. The day was packed with over 30 guest speakers with some of the best in eCommerce who aligned to create a seamless experience from start to finish. The meet was easy to navigate with the opportunity to network with individuals around the world in a safe space helping to inspire and learn, whilst covering a range of sessions from Merchant Track, Technical Track, Platform Track and Solution Track.
Here are the AYKO highlights for Meet Magento 2021:
Keynote: Move over Millennials, there’s a new online shopper in town
Staring with Keynote speaker Peter Sheldon, Senior Director, Commerce Strategy at Adobe, we discovered a new era of shoppers: Gen Z (Generation Z). Members of Gen Z are those born between 1998 and 2016, accounting for 40% of consumers in the US and Europe. They are born with a digital mindset, learning to swipe before they can talk, being stereotyped as addicted to tech and social justice warriors. They value personal resilience, financial conservatism, and hard work.
How does this affect your eCommerce store?
44% of 12–to 17-year-olds buy from social media, pushing the need for engaging social platforms to purchase online, social media is now morphing into an eCommerce platform.
Typically, Gen Z are environmentally and socially conscious, seeking truth and authenticity of a product and brand, with most purchasing from a brand that aligns with their social and environmental values, including brands who choose not to stay silent and stand up for what is considered right.
There is a 2.56 billion global population of members of Gen Z, with 30% of the global workforce being a part of this group by 2030, showing how large scale this generation is.
How has the pandemic changed online retail?
Evidently, Covid-19 has had an impact on the online retail market which has been closely monitored over the last 12-18 months. We were lucky to get an insight into the ‘post-Covid-19’ era and how this has influenced the market, surprisingly it’s not what we expected.
Andy Mulcahy, Strategy, and Insight Director at IMRG gave an insightful, data-driven presentation packed full of information and statistics. We learnt that in the pre-pandemic era, year on year growth of around 4-5% to 8-9% was considered a normal level of growth for online retail, compared with 2020 seeing a growth rate of 36% in online sales. We saw this continue to climb into 2021.
Average basket value interestingly remained almost identical through 2019 and 2020, however, when compared with statistics in June 2021 there has been a 68% increase in average basket value with retailers being less reliant on having to provide discount codes to encourage sales.
The rate of traffic starting on pages other than a website home page was on the rise pre-pandemic, which has now only been accelerated by Covid-19, this may be down to the large influx of online advertisement and increase in curbside pickup.
We are now becoming much less tolerant when it comes to our money with late delivery becoming a more unacceptable excuse for Covid-19, alongside higher pricing, longer lead times, and longer times for processing returns and exchanges.
Using AI in Adobe Commerce to maximise your customer’s shopping experience
Jason Ford, Lead Solutions Consultant at Adobe began his talk on using AI in Adobe Commerce and how this can maximise your customer’s shopping experience.
We discovered how product recommendations through Live Search using Adobe Sensei can drive growth with 40% of consumers spending more than initially planned when used correctly. If your potential customer can reach their desired product quickly and seamlessly you are providing a fantastic customer experience, worthy of a sale. In fact, online shoppers who engaged with a product recommendation have a 70% higher conversion rate.
Machine learning strategies provided by and embedded into Adobe Commerce allows you, the merchant to provide more relevant product recommendations to the online shopper. You can Create Engagement, Increase Conversion, Grow Revenue, Lower TCO, and Save Time. Impressively, implementing this new feature into your eCommerce store is effortless with just the click of a button.
For more information on Live Search and how the Magento Commerce Suite is extending using Adobe Sensei Technology.
The next level of your customer experience
Tchaysllaney Rayenelly, Senior UX/UI Designer at Haivision gave an insight into the next level of your customer experience. Covering key points that make a vast improvement to your customer experience journey, allowing you to take your eCommerce store to the next level.
Tchaysllaney Rayenelly reiterated the importance of becoming customer-centric, treating the customer as your boss, ultimately meaning if they want or need something specific, to go out of your way to get this done to a high standard.
The talk went further than providing excellent customer service on a personal level. The importance of having a functional search bar on your website with easy to find products and a streamlined product purchasing journey was delved into. Additionally, we learned more of the benefits of becoming active on all the same channels that your target consumer is active on, allowing you to be discovered easily, whilst driving individual content and promotions.
How else can you improve your customer experience?
- Optimising your supply chain, avoiding late delivery times
- Avoid showing out of stock items, or if unavoidable, create a pre-order option
- Simplify your checkout process
- Avoid asking for information you don’t need
- Give a fantastic, seamless website experience that shows off your product in different ways, even consider a futuristic approach depending on your offering
The effort put into Meet Magento UK 2021 was once again incredibly impressive. From start to finish the day was extremely successful and wonderful to be a part of. It was interesting to gain insight into the thoughts and data of the eCommerce industry as we are further along the line of the Covid-19 pandemic. We are looking forward to meeting again once more.
