News update from Meet Magento UK 2022

Despite the train and tube strikes we were able to attend Meet Magento UK on 21st June and pick up some interesting news:

• MACH (microservices / API first / cloud native / headless) and Composable Commerce (multi vendor framework vs single platform) are the future: Composable is good but Modular is better. Key benefits are; flexibility, extentenability, faster, time to market, lower TCO

• Micro services - Adobe are moving lots of features over to microservices to slim down the Magento core and make things quicker. This will see a move away from functionality provided by the core Magento installation, towards provision of services via a subscription model e.g. AI Search and Product Recommendations, plus the actual product catalogue (meaning this will be able to cope with larger SKU volumes)
  
  Key features of microservices:
  > Rapid development, deployment and releases
  > Flexible scaling of services
  > Reduces total cost of ownership (TCO)
  > Seamless combining different services

• Big clients in the US are driving lots of innovation which will trickle down to the Adobe Commerce product. Adobe mentioned a renewed confidence in the platform to compete with the ‘big players’, now they’ve got massive clients such as Wallmart.

• 2022 / 2023 will be a big push on headless, use Adobe backend and ideally serve frontend on AEM (Adobe Experience Manager). Adobe mentioned this is the ‘Year of Mobile’ = emphasis on good UX

• Commitment to maintenance of open source

• 2.4.5 release date = November 2022

Adobe industry research:

Most popular online sectors are:
> 83% = Clothing / Shoes
> 69% = Beauty & Health Care
> 49% = Sporting / Outdoor Goods
> 48% = Furniture / Home furnishing 41% = DIY / Garden products
> Sample size 9564 / 13 countries

How much choice do shoppers want: (ability to see all options)
Customers are prioritising delivery over payment method when engaging with a new and or existing brand:

Creating empathy
> 75% say retailers could be doing more to deliver experiences that show high levels of empathy with customers needs

I am most mindful about…
> 20% = Money and whether something is the best price and good value
> 49% = Time Driven
> 18% = Values and whether a retailer is ‘good’ and aligns with things that are important to me
> 14% = Identity driven (customer identity / customer persona)

Values-driven consumerism
> 58% of consumers are more likely to switch or stop using a brand if what they do or say goes against values that are important to them
> 43% said that the most popular type of brand that would be sought out by customers is sustainable and or/ environmentally one

Is your brand good?
> 43% would actively support brands are environmentally responsible
> 38% would support those that prioritise employee welfare
> 37% would support brands that are financially trustworthy (e.g that they pay taxes)