Commerce Is a Commodity: Great People and Process Are Not
What Were the Early Challenges in eCommerce Development?
In the early days of eCommerce, we did not have many great options for building digital experiences.
We were forced to choose huge vendors who could charge us a lot of money. Or tiny vendors for whom eCommerce was largely an experiment. We have largely surpassed that time.
The emergent solutions were built using open-source principles, which, while helpful, may not be the best for every type of company. Demandware was really the first company to show the world that eCommerce and SaaS worked at scale.
One (admittedly narrow) way to look at Shopify is that they took up the spiritual torch of Demandware. A simple thought experiment: "What if Demandware hadn't been purchased, but instead would have continued developing?" is interesting and might have produced a different landscape. Similarly, what if Magento had not been acquired by eBay?
How Did eCommerce Evolve Over Time?
Today, Shopify is more or less the only company focused on "all segments." (although admittedly, some a lot more than others) Historically, that kind of positioning is problematic, yet the momentum continues.
BigCommerce is focused on small to mid-sized B2B manufacturers and distributors.
Commercetools planted a flag in the Enterprise.
The MACH Alliance, founded on specific architectural principles to help CTOs innovate without boxing themselves into a corner, has gained traction in the market.
Are New eCommerce Platforms Emerging in the North American Market?
Meanwhile, over a dozen other players are vying for attention. It might not be apparent that new eCommerce platforms are entering the North American market monthly, primarily in the middle-market or Enterprise segment.
We have small, medium, and large vendors. They all have solid eCommerce solutions that can get the job done -- especially well enough to capture the available opportunity. We almost have too much choice.
I'm not saying it's undifferentiated it is. Each vendor has quite a different approach to the market. Ubiquity does not mean sameness.
What Is the Core of Great eCommerce?
Still... People and processes have not kept up.
On one side, many organizations are still unprepared to deal with the change happening in the economic environment and its ensuring consumer whipsaw. I even heard a few weeks back, a CEO wondering ”if they needed a Chief Digital Officer at all and could we put our digital experiences back under our marketing organization again.”
Not likely is the answer. The core of great eCommerce is operations.
If organization cost-cutting drives your decisions, it is more likely than not to start a downward spiral of innovation. If the opportunities of the next few years are thrown out the window in service of next quarter's basis points of margin, the type of company that survives may not be worth saving in the first place.
By far the biggest challenge when I speak with CEOs is the simple question:
"How should I balance between future-looking experiments and hitting my current numbers?"
Expert Consulting: How Will You Grow Your eCommerce Company?
When growth is elusive, I am an expert at asking incisive questions to surface the real issues and then present straightforward ideas that your team can actually implement.
Mistakes are expensive. They cost money, of course. What’s worse is the opportunity cost. I work with investors and management teams worldwide to help them get a handle on their digital business plans to execute a clear path forward.
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