BYOC for shopping online would be nice. Exchange formats for product aggregators sort of solve one part of the equation. But ordering is still an unsolved issue

BYOC for shopping online would be nice. Exchange formats for product aggregators sort of solve one part of the equation. But ordering is still an unsolved issue. It shouldn't be that hard to do. You may need maybe 5 endpoints. Get all product data for the whole stock, get individual product images, get order requirements (can include terms and conditions, desired information for the order, payment options, human contact info, etc.), post an order, get order status. On this API you can easily create a fully featured 3rd party online shopping clients. Some shopping experiences these days are atrocious. Some hugely popular platforms have product lists hidden like 4 screens bellow the fold, separated by tons of crap, that just gets in the way. Category selection is placed such, so that categories slide away, when you get to the product list after selecting one of the categories, and if you want to switch category, you just have to scroll all the way up again. No options for selecting alternative views, like in a file manager (large icons with a ton of detail, list view, etc.) Each new eshop you have to learn how to navigate it, and collecting information about the ToC and payment/delivery methods is a hassle. Could be so much better if there was some simple web protocol for this, and it could be exposed in addition to existing website, too. In the simplest implementation, everything but the POST could just be some static json files uploaded to the http server. And POST /order could just be sending an e-mail to someone.