The third day of the Magento Imagine Ecommerce Conference begin with sheer excitement this morning as all gathered to hear from the keynotes on how Magento will help the ever-changing and increasingly competitive world of commerce, businesses to think fast, innovate and to win.
It was a great show with way too much going on. Here are the highlights of Day 3:
- In the morning Fireside Chat with Mark Lavelle and David Marcus, PayPal President, eBay Enterprise SVP of Product and Strategy, began the chat with the focus on how innovation going on with PayPal will transform the payment revolution and bring huge transformation in the intersection of money and commerce.
- The conversation shifted to PayPal’s commitment to open source and its Developer Community assessing the ways in which open source software is currently used. Also, PayPal has redesigned their developer’s site and sandbox making it easy for developers to find tools, documentation and resources they need quickly. New PayPal mobile SDK for iOS and Android is available for developers in more than 30 markets worldwide.
- David also addressed the crowd about the power of PayPal’s payment network supporting 140 million customers. Further, with the innovation of Braintree, PayPal will drive significant change to meet the ever-demanding user needs of one-touch checkout including repeat purchases. Also, David had a discussion with PayPal’s “Beacon” on two-way communication back and forth from a consumer’s mobile device making it easier to pay in-stores rather than credit card, all without the need to connect to a Wi-Fi.
- Following David Marcus, the audience was treated to a very special keynote featuring Carey Lohrenz, who brought her own experiences to the forefront aligning them with the challenges that many of us face in our own businesses including a segment dedicated to overcoming fear.
- After the commencement of thought-provoking general sessions from the keynotes the day also held several breakout sessions including “Tackling Multi-Channel Complexity on Magento,” led by Darryl Aide, Managing Director at Ampersand Commerce and Gavin Williams, eCommerce and Digital Marketing Consultant for Harvey Nichols. The session covered the growing demands of consumers and how retailers need to invest in cross-channel technology or they will ultimately lose customers and sales.
- Also well attended was the session “B2B Commerce in B2B World,” led by spokespeople from BookPal, Internet Retailer, Implant Direct, Zoetis and Zeon. The session emphasized on how B2B businesses must change the way they drive sales.
- eBay Enterprise’s Wilson Hughes and Bob Meixner presented a session entitled “Magento + Retail Order Management addressing how Magento and eBay Enterprise have combined the highly flexible, open source front end customization of Magento’s Enterprise Edition along with the eBay Enterprise modular omni-channel solution suite including a retail optimized order management platform designed specifically to meet the needs of retailers.
- Magento’s Head of Merchant Marketing, Danny Essner, co-led a session with Steve Susina, Marketing Director for Lyons Group entitled “Automation Nation” – covering both the positives and negatives of automation.
- Magento COO and Co-Founder, Roy Rubin closed out the afternoon session by thanking Magento’s many event sponsors for their support helping make Magento Imagine Ecommerce Conference 2014 another spectacular event!
