Image credit/Roy Edwards)Adobe gave a sneak peek into cutting edge commerce tech coming out of its Innovation Lab at its recent MagentoLive event.

The Magento Innovations Lab supports the creative development work from the global Magento community. The Lab promotes early-stage implementations of emerging technologies on the Magento eCommerce platform. From merchandising to customer service to payments (and more), these innovations enable retailers to deliver online experiences to their customers.

Michele Miller, Senior Manager, Solutions Innovation Adobe
Michele Miller, Senior Manager, Solutions Innovation Adobe

According to Michele Miller, Senior Manager, Solutions Innovation Adobe, “We are at an inflection point in the evolution of commerce. Over the last decade, great strides have been made in narrowing the “experience gap” between online and in-store shopping. But now, the industry is beginning to tap into maturing technologies like AI/machine learning and augmented reality (AR), among others.”

Miller added, “This next wave of change will bring to light new innovations that will enhance the shopping experience. It will also redefine how retailers run their businesses in the near future.

MagentoLive attendees got an exclusive look at innovative technology with the potential to significantly transform the industry. These innovations come directly from the Magento community – grassroots developers pushing the boundaries of possibility. From developers to technology partners, each inventor tapped their specific area of expertise to build a new innovation. The intention was to make the technology broadly available, for retailers to adopt and better compete in the market.

Four new innovations were showcased at the MagentoLive event in Amsterdam including:

In-store purchases on the fly

Shopping in-store often takes longer than needed thanks to long waiting lines and inefficient technology at checkout. Nitish Kumar of Webkul Software demonstrated PWA Scan & Go. The application is an innovation leveraging Magento PWA Studio to build a Progressive Web App on top of a Magento Store. It can be utilised to help shoppers make the most of their time spent at the store. Customers simply scan the item’s barcode and bag items as they shop. Payment happens directly using the customer’s mobile device. Once the transaction is completed the customer receives an order confirmation with a QR code. The code is later validated at the time of the customer’s exit.

Hands-free shopping

People with motor skills disabilities experience major problems trying to shop online. Abhishek Jaiswal of CedCommerce suggests that everybody should be able to shop online. Furthermore, everyone should have a seamless experience, including people dealing with motor disabilities.

As a result, Jaiswal developed his vision which led to Head-On Shopping. An innovation that allows shoppers to have a seamless shopping experience without the need to use their hands. Head movement tracking via Apple’s ARKit allows shoppers to navigate various shopping actions like product selection, quantity selection, and checkout. All of these online activities are undertaken completely hands-free.

Pepper the robot

The experience of retail shopping will never be the same with Pepper the humanoid robot by your side. The robot was designed to help make purchasing decisions from start to finish. It helps customers sort products, show items in stock and advises them on ideal purchasing choice based on their reactions. Interaction with Pepper is innovative and makes shopping more immersive.

Wiktoria Serek of SNOW.DOG demonstrated how Pepper is capable of registering, understanding and reacting to human emotions. Equipped with a 3D camera, omnidirectional wheels and directional microphones, Pepper is interactive, autonomous and ready for intuitive communication.

Seamless checkout and payment

Removing friction and distraction from the checkout process has the power to dramatically improve revenue for today’s merchants. The innovation was based on learnings from the Mobile Optimization Initiative community with nearly one billion in transactions tested. Ali Ahmed of Imagination Media created a solution using web standards for Magento to optimise the checkout process. Built using the Payment Request API for Magento 2 with Braintree and PayPal’s Express Checkout, this innovation enables merchants to access seamless and secure checkout while improving the overall commerce experience for customers.

This innovation was Built using the Payment Request API for Magento 2 with Braintree and PayPal’s Express Checkout. The application enables merchants to access seamless and secure checkout while improving the overall commerce experience for customers.

At MagentoLive, the audience voted Webkul Software demonstrated PWA Scan & Go as the most popular innovation demonstrated.

Enterprise Times: What does this mean for business?

This was a really interesting event which demonstrated the potential and flexibility of the Magento platform. Furthermore, the Magento Innovations Lab, is expanding its relationship with AWS beyond just cloud solution. The new collaborations will look into the broader partner and developer community.

Adobe is inviting developers and partners to develop new possibilities on Magento, embedding AWS innovations into their Innovations Lab submissions. Only time will tell what this new relationship produces in the near future.

The next submission window for Magento Innovations Lab opens on November 11 – so watch this space.

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