Every so often I day dream of what a next generation ecommerce platform would look like. (Yes, this is one of those pie in the sky blogs.) First, I think SaaS platforms like Shopify, BigCommerce, Volusion, and so on do a great job for many ecommerce merchants. What I wanted to focus on in this […]

In filmmaking, storyboarding is often used to plan out a film. You hand draw pictures for various key moments in the film as a way to get an early feel for how the final film will feel. This helps with making corrections earlier, reducing overall development costs.  While web stories are typically much simpler than […]

Web stories are a tappable story format for the open web, based on HTML5. They are typically used for engaging visual content, such as full page images or video, with overlaid text and animation support. Web stories are typically vertically oriented for display on mobile devices. One of the challenges for images and video in […]

A recent project I saw was a brand trying to improve the profile of one of their products. They had created a video ad, but were interested in other ways to get increased engagement. One approach they tried, with positive results, was to create a web story. Web stories are a visually engaging format that […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]