Magento Imagine in one word? Wow. It never ceases to amaze and 2017 was certainly no different. Our MD Nick and Technical Director Neil returned to the office on Monday after their week in Vegas infecting the rest of the iWeb team with their excitement, ideas, Magento swag and less happily, rotten colds!

So, what inspired us? What did we learn? In short, lots!

Making B2B eCommerce Work

As an eCommerce Agency with extensive B2B eCommerce experience, it was great to see Magento demonstrating their dedication to making Magento work even better for B2B businesses.

Just to reinforce the huge potential of B2B eCommerce, here’s a few of our favourite stats/soundbites from the various talks:

  • Companies that fail to move with digital will cease to exist
  • B2B buyers purchases online will be more the 53% by 2018
  • 92% of B2B buyers have used Amazon to research a purchase for work
  • 82% of B2B buyers have used Amazon to purchase for work
  • B2B companies don’t measure their efforts and refine offerings based on data like basket abandonment compared to B2C counterparts


We’ve been eagerly awaiting more information on the new B2B features and our patience was duly rewarded. Come Q3 and the release of Magento v2.3, Enterprise customers will be able to take advantage of the following built-in features:

  • Multiple tiered accounts
  • Customer Specific Pricing
  • Quick Order front-end functionality

Magento Business Intelligence

Already out there and available to use, Magento Business Intelligence (BI) is powered by RJ Metrics, now a Magento owned company, and we get the impression we’re going to be hearing a lot more about it in 2017.

We heard from Robert J Moore, Head of Magento Business Intelligence, about their mission to “Inspire and Empower Data Driven People” – making it much easier for merchants to turn their Magento data into valuable insights.

Much of its beauty lies in its simplicity, meaning it’s easy for non-data analysts to make sense of.

BI will consolidate the data from your Magento database, Magento extensions and other third-party tools to help business owners optimise their acquisition, retention and conversion strategies.

It comes with two price tiers, Essential and Pro, and costs are calculated on your business revenue.

We’re excited about the possibilities it’ll open up for our clients. To check it out for yourselves, book a demo.

Mobile First With Magento Enterprise

Guess what? Mobile isn’t going anywhere. We heard from Shinola about how their mobile first approach paid dividends when launching their new Magento Enterprise website.

With over half of its visitors from mobile phones or tablets, an increasingly common occurrence for many websites, they wanted to boost conversion rates on those channels.

Their aim was to build a site with a robust front-end experience that when used on a mobile device, feels like an app. This meant faster load times without page reloads – to achieve this they developed a cart with a slide out view that doesn’t interrupt the shopping experience.

The end result? A 56% increase YonY mobile growth for Jan/Feb 2017.

The mobile-first approach is not exactly new but it certainly hammered home the ever-increasing importance of nailing a slick mobile experience for our clients’ sites.

Magento Social

It’s great to see Magento recognise and plug what is currently a gaping hole in their offering.

Magento Social will create opportunities for businesses to generate new revenue streams by turning their social profiles into digital storefronts. It works by syncing your product catalogue with your social networks in just a few simple clicks.

Magento Social will also allow merchants to create compelling and optimised ads from your eCommerce site in real-time and auto populate ads with product images and descriptions.

The live demo was certainly slick enough and we haven’t got long to wait to have a play ourselves – coming to Magento v2.2 this summer. For more details check out this Magento Social page.

Magento Bluefoot CMS

Kiss goodbye to the clunky out of the box Magento WYSIWYG editor!

Magento has acquired the technology behind the BlueFoot CMS & Page Builder module and is making it a core part of the Magento platform.

Coming to Magento Enterprise v2.3 in Q3, we’re excited about the capabilities of this powerful pagebuilder which will allow users to create great looking content pages quickly and easily without the need for other platforms or systems.

Edible Highlights

It would be remiss not to mention the food. Mmmmmm, the food. So big, so good. Lobster risotto on the terrace, breakfast pastries to die for and steaks fit for Fred Flinstone. 

Steak - Magento Imagine style!