As the move into the online space for a bricks and mortar store dramatically redefined a business model, the next big shift will be for a merchant to anticipate where and what their customer wants, according to Mark Lavelle, Magento Commerce CEO.
On Wednesday, Lavelle unveiled Magento’s latest ecommerce platform, Magento 2.0, which he said builds on the existing open source architecture, and enables a merchant to keep up with a consumer’s digital demands.
“We took the stuff that was added by users on along the way and integrated into the platform and it’s now table stakes, rather than additional options,” Lavelle said. “It’s a fairly extensive re-architecting of what made Magento successful in the early days.”
According to Lavelle, the need to enhance the platform was in direct response to needs of today’s consumers who are time-stricken and want immediacy.
He said when his team realised people were clicking on things on their phones, the Magento community jumped straight into responsive design, which he said made a merchant’s website look just as good, if not better on a mobile device, as it was not that long ago a desktop website was not compatible with a smartphone.
“The way you win ecommerce today, if you want to beat Amazon, you have to be able to delight the customer. Have what they want, when they want it, whether it’s on an app, on a website, and get it to them the way they want it,” Lavelle said.
“Have the product, get the product. That’s the experience. It’s very competitive.”
Highlighting why technology is so critical to a company, he said a business only has a second before it loses a customer’s attention.
