Author Archives: alankent
Alternative online shopping experiences
Shopping as entertainment comes up frequently as a trend. For example, 10 Consumer Trends Shaping the Future of Retail mentions it including 51% miss “going shopping” as a way to socialize; and 25% regularly tune into video shopping channels like QVC or HSN. But how to create an enjoyable online social shopping experience? In this […]
Will live-stream commerce drive dropshipping variants?
TJ Gamble recently posted a great video on privacy changes on the web and the potential impact to dropshipping. I found it an interesting video to start the year with. Personally I have been watching live streaming for commerce, massive in China but not so big at least in the US yet. COVID has driven […]
Composable Commerce
Recently I have been hearing the term “Composable Commerce” more frequently, and I like it. It expands beyond “Headless Commerce”, separation of the frontend stack from the backend, into selecting best of breed technologies to build your commerce stack. The first reference I have come across is from Gartner (Composable Commerce Must Be Adopted for […]
My predictions for 2021 ecommerce
So what will be important in ecommerce in 2021? Is it faster web sites with better Core Web Vitals metrics? Do I need to do a better job of WebPack for my JavaScript assets? PWA, TWA, SSR, CSR? REST? GraphQL? React? Next.js? Vue? Angular? Tailwind CSS? Ecommerce platforms? Content management platforms? Bespoke applications? How about […]
Divante’s Ecommerce Trends Report for 2021
If you have not seen it yet, Divante has published their “ecommerce trends report” for 2021, which I always find a good read. I am not going to go through the whole report here, but thought I would share my point of view on a few points that caught my eye. The full report can […]
Are QR codes dead or making a comeback in the US?
QR codes are everywhere in many asian countries. But they are almost nowhere to be found in the US. Why? The following is my Friday afternoon thoughts. Why did QR codes fail to take off initially in the US? I suspect in part because they were hard to use. You had to get another app […]
Do you think easier and secure web payments accelerate ecommerce web innovation?
I find the China ecommerce market very interesting. I don’t live there, have not experienced it in any depth first hand, so much of what I know is from reading articles. That means I may have a slightly warped view of reality, but what I read resonates with me. For example, by having a simpler […]
How can Ecommerce Web Development be made easier?
The following is soul searching, reflecting debates I have been having with myself over recent months. What is the right way to build an ecommerce web frontend? The challenge is there are continual new techniques coming out that deliver improved web performance. Great! The user experience is better! But at what cost? Do we have […]
Headless, PWA, SPA or MPA for Ecommerce?
(Yes, I was going for buzz word density in that title!) There has been increasing talk about concepts like “headless”, “PWA”, “SPA”, “MPA” in the context of ecommerce. In the following I provide a high level introduction to these concepts. (Disclaimer: If you want a deep technical evaluation of the alternatives, this post is not […]
Personal Thoughts on the Australian News Media Bargaining Code
I’ve been watching the developments with the News Media Bargaining Code back home with interest and thought I’d share my personal take here. (And to be up front, I currently work at Google, an Aussie currently living in the USA.) A real challenge seems to be the profitability of news for revenue generation. I say […]
