Adobe Commerce – Cloud platform with Magento

Adobe Commerce is a global leader in digital commerce, providing scalability and flexibility to small, medium-sized and large businesses. Statistics show that this platform receives 5,000 downloads a day, with over 239,000 websites using it for eCommerce. Its use has increased by 300% since its launch in 2018, which shows its impact on digital commerce. Adobe Commerce is a popular choice in categories including fashion, furniture and groceries. If you’re interested in starting an online business with Adobe Commerce, keep reading. This article defines Adobe Commerce, outlines its history, expounds on its features and highlights its benefits.

What is Adobe Commerce?

Adobe Commerce is a leading digital commerce platform that allows brands and merchants to reach customers and other businesses. This digital platform allows sellers to customise their businesses for customers, such that one merchant can sell several brands, each with its own unique experience. Adobe Commerce facilitates both business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) eCommerce. This means merchants can use this platform to sell items to other businesses and to end consumers.

Small, medium and large businesses use Adobe Commerce to market their brands, give personalised promotions and provide customer support while handling daily operational tasks, such as inventory and order management, at affordable rates.

Adobe takes over Magento

Adobe is a global leader in the provision of digital services, including design, marketing, data analysis and content creation. In 2018, Adobe entered an agreement with Magento, acquiring it for $1.68 billion. This acquisition enabled Adobe to provide merchants with a platform to market, sell and manage products and services, handle orders and inventory and provide integrated checkout, shipping and payment services.

In 2007, Roy Rubin and Yoav Kutner launched the beta version of Magento, which began as an eCommerce platform that allowed users to create online stores. Magento gained popularity because of its extensive features, such as scalability, flexibility, and customisation. In 2008, Magento became one of the fastest-growing eCommerce platforms, having attained over 500,000 downloads. The company then released Magento Community Edition, which became Magento Open Source in 2017, one year before its official acquisition by Adobe.

Adobe Commerce vs Magento Open Source

Magento Open Source is a free eCommerce platform where merchants can set up online stores and sell products. It is easily customisable, so users can add extensions, which are also free, to add features and create a more user-friendly interface. Because it is open source, it relies on a community of developers to improve features and fix bugs. Magento Open Source is ideal for small and medium-sized entrepreneurs who may not require advanced features or might not have a sufficient budget for Adobe Commerce.

Adobe Commerce is an enterprise eCommerce platform that incorporates Magento’s eCommerce features and integrates easily with other third-party apps. Adobe has a subscription fee, so users require a budget to finance the licence and usage fees. Adobe Commerce has a team dedicated to providing technical maintenance and support, unlike Magento Open Source, which relies on a community.

Adobe Commerce Cloud

Adobe Commerce Cloud is a service bundle that offers businesses of all sizes secure, scalable and flexible eCommerce solutions. These features allow businesses to optimise, customise and manage daily business operations, such as making sales, handling orders, shipping products, managing inventory and providing customer support. This commerce cloud allows for seamless integration with other Adobe cloud services, which strengthens the user’s ability to analyse data, market products and communicate with customers.

Adobe Commerce Cloud also enables omnichannel experiences. Users can install extensions that allow customers to reach Adobe Commerce on several channels, including social media and websites.

Adobe Commerce features

Review some of the Adobe Commerce features:

• Multi-brand solution: Adobe Commerce allows merchants to manage several brands and sell products in several countries and currencies. Users can set different pricing structures for various products and customise checkout and payment options without switching platforms.

• Integrated B2B functionality: This platform enables consumers to manage their accounts independently because of the easy-to-use customer portal. The integrated B2B functionality feature also improves the customer’s experience by personalising their catalogues, customising content and offering targeted promotions.

• Payment services: Adobe Commerce accepts several payment options, including all debit and credit cards, PayPal, Venmo and Apple Pay, while allowing shoppers to save their payment information for future purchases. It also allows merchants to sell in several countries and pay in local currencies.

• Catalogue service: This SaaS makes it easier and faster for shoppers to retrieve product and category information so they find what they’re looking for quickly. Because this feature is cloud-based, it is always up to date, so shoppers can find the latest items.

• Inventory and order management: Adobe Commerce offers customers flexible fulfilment options, such as delivery to their home addresses and in-store pickups. This platform also integrates inventory and order management software, creating an enjoyable cross-channel commerce experience.

• Reporting and visualisations: Adobe Commerce provides the data and metrics that users need to make decisions and track progress. Users can also set up dashboards and generate reports relevant to their business needs.

• Security: Adobe Commerce is a PCI-certified level 1 solution provider, so users can feel safe about conducting business without risking unauthorised access or malware. Customers provide sensitive data when using Adobe Commerce, so knowing that their data is protected improves their experience, which leads to increased sales and customer retention.

Why use Adobe Commerce?

Buyers have accepted buying cheaper products on eCommerce platforms, possibly due to persistent inflation. Adobe has observed this trend – sales of the cheapest products in categories such as personal care, electronics, home, furniture and grocery have increased significantly between January 2019 and April 2024. This suggests that using Adobe Commerce to reach customers, especially in these categories, can yield profits. Here are a few other benefits of using Adobe Commerce:

1. Increase in ROI

Forrester Consulting conducted a Total Economic Impact study examining the potential return on investment (ROI) of using Adobe Experience Cloud. The results showed that companies made an ROI of 250% and experienced benefits of $32.5 million over three years. Using Adobe Commerce can strengthen your business by improving efficiency, increasing your reach and eliminating time-wasting, which can reduce costs, increase sales and ultimately increase your ROI.

2. Customer retention improvement

Customer retention is essential because it improves your brand reputation – loyal customers indicate a brand’s quality and reliability. It also reduces the effort entrepreneurs need to put into acquiring new customers because existing ones market on the company’s behalf. Adobe Commerce allows merchants to personalise their customers’ shopping experiences by offering targeted promotions and selecting optimal delivery options.

3. Scalability

Scalability is the ability to scale your eCommerce business up or down depending on demand. Adobe Commerce allows merchants to deliver quick and seamless experiences at all times through auto-scaling so that whether you’re having a sale or slowing down, you can continuously provide consistent performance. Cloud-native performance monitoring tools can also help you ensure that you’re giving customers enjoyable shopping experiences.

4. Expansion of commerce abilities

Adobe Commerce has a Commerce Marketplace that has thousands of apps and extensions which can help you improve how your business runs. These extensions include enterprise resource planning (ERP), which enables you to sync customer orders, customer info, delivery details and inventory within your eCommerce store, improving efficiency. They also include marketing, customer support and SEO extensions, which can help you run your business more smoothly on one platform.

5. Attraction of a wider audience

Adobe Commerce has an omnichannel personalisation feature that enables merchants to reach buyers through various platforms, like social media, email, websites and apps. This means that as an entrepreneur, you can reach new markets and attract customers, which can expand your customer base and increase your revenue. Adobe Commerce has also embraced artificial intelligence (AI) as a business tool to boost marketing and selling, which can help you reach a larger audience.

6. Provision of product recommendations

Product recommendations are a list of items on an eCommerce site that are relevant to buyers based on their purchasing behaviours. This list aims to increase a product’s average number of orders by increasing its awareness. Adobe Commerce provides product recommendations that can help your business gain more customers, increase sales and improve brand loyalty by keeping your products on this list.

Hosting with Adobe Commerce

If you’re interested in running an eCommerce business using Adobe Commerce, you need to understand what hosting means. Your eCommerce business needs a digital storefront, the same way a physical store needs a storefront. Hosting is providing a space on the internet where your eCommerce store can reside. Adobe Commerce has a feature called Adobe Commerce on cloud infrastructure, which can host your eCommerce business.

Entrepreneurs can also opt to self-host or host on-premise, which means they either host the eCommerce store on their own hardware or rent a space in a data centre or server. On-premise hosting increases security because access is directly under your control. It also offers faster performance compared to cloud-based hosting because the server is located in your office and not in a Cloud.

With these benefits in mind, Hypernode offers on-premise hosting as long as you have a Commerce licence. Hypernode has over 20 years of hosting experience, providing quick response times, increased scalability and flexibility. If you want to experience on-premise hosting with Hypernode before making a commitment, we offer a 14-day trial period, which expires automatically. You can also contact us for a free hosting consultation.