3 ms·

There's not a lot of ecom discussion on hackernews which is weird to me since that's the line of business I am in. The trend I see continuing is the commidific

There's not a lot of ecom discussion on hackernews which is weird to me since that's the line of business I am in. The trend I see continuing is the commidification and standardization of ecommerce platforms, with Shopify and BigCommerce continuing to chomp away at former giants like Magento (now Adobe Commerce). For most companies, the TCO of an ecommerce platform is an important driver in the decision making process. Companies often balk at the demands of shopify (around what you can and can't do) but then come to terms with it and select shopify as their platform. For anyone with real budgets (like Nike.com) - totally custom, or building on a practically custom (Adobe) site, there may be moves towards the headless trends, but for the most part, the people (SMB) I deal with do not care about the technology, they just want a short time to launch and a low cost. So for me, I've seen a shift towards to low/no-code platforms and low cost. In the headless space I think fabric is particularly interesting, though I do think Adobe has a chance to do it correctly, but overall, I've sat in on several pitches for going headless and the total cost in just doesn't seem to be worth it.

fein 4y ago
I deal with ecom a lot at work, in which we build out ecomm systems for large(er) companies. Just about everything is going to AEM with elastic path/ some other ecomm apis and headless frontends (mostly React, namely NextJS, some unfortunately on Gatsby). I'm not sure what is happening with all the old Magento platforms since Adobe took it over, but I don't think we do much work in Magento any more.
- calvinmorrison 4y ago
  I don't think Adobe knows either. Lots of people are still on Magento 2, and lots of big customers with a LOT of invested money into the platform, however the amount of people jumping into Magento is shrinking as the use case is getting attacked on both ends, on the cost for SMB and the benefits for large companies. Having talked to adobe reps a bunch it's also they have no idea how things work and how all their tech fits together as Adobe continues to gobble up disparate technologies.
  - sarora27 4y ago
    I worked at Magento when we were acquired by Adobe. No one at Adobe knows how all the tech fits together. The guy who championed the acquisition (Brad Rencher) left the company 6 months after that. Then w/ the acquisition of Marketo, it was the same thing all over again. My takeaway is that you coerce an organization to acquire a company you recommend so that you can gain some sort of social capital and then convert it into your next (higher level) gig
moneywoes 4y ago
From your knowledge is it still worth trying to enter the Shopify App Store as a business pov or is too saturated? Wondering where to focus
- calvinmorrison 4y ago
  I don't know. I am building custom integrations between eComm system and some niche ERPs - I haven't had a single person ask me about Magento, but many that asked me about shopify.
- xenospn 4y ago
  I’ve revisited that idea recently. with the emergence of AI, A lot of possibilities have opened up and it seems like a green field again.
coastermug 4y ago
Shopify is excellent from a micro business point of view. Even coming from the perspective of a Python dev with limited FE experience, it’s so much easier for the client/business owner to administrate. I have a friend who was a Wordpress developer for 10+ years who couldn’t see from a client perspective that the technical limitations of shopify were irrelevant when compared with the hassle of Wordpress ( and it’s e-commerce plugins).
leviathant 4y ago
One of the interesting struggles I see in the space comes from companies that managed to grow on Shopify or BigCommerce, but then reach the limits of those platforms, and looking out into the enterprise space, they get hit with sticker shock, because there's a notable chasm between a Shopify Plus and something like Adobe Commerce or Salesforce Commerce Cloud. It's a little different when you're using those at an enterprise scale, where the cost and performance hits that come with 30+ Shopify Apps, or having to gaze into a crystal ball and give Adobe your best guess at how much infrastructure you'll need next quarter, but if you're a digitally native brand that's grown up on SaaS ecommerce, getting out of the kiddie pool usually means a big change in tech investment. Of course, everyone in the space is scrambling to say they're headless, because commercetools has absolutely changed the conversation in the ecommerce space, but it's not some magic bullet. It's an architectural decision that should be informed by business needs, e.g. supporting multiple regions, multiple brands, or sharing one backend between your website, app, and in-store experiences. Handily, it does serve as a salve to front-end issues inherent to the all-in-one approach that was so dominant a decade ago. By decoupling the frontend from platforms like Shopify Plus or Salesforce, you get a taste of the speed and freedom that comes with a modern front-end, but also quickly run into no-go zones where even in 2022, there's no API access to important backend features - because there never will be, because that messes with the business model of these platforms. On the bright side, even taking legacy monolithic platforms like that headless will make it easier to migrate to a more robust API-first backend solution when the time comes. It certainly makes the most sense with the Nikes and the AT&Ts of the world. Substituting something like commercetools in for their in-house ecommerce systems offsets a huge amount of technical debt, and lets internal teams focus on being more effective at doing whatever makes Nike different from Puma. And while a digital transformation to a MACH approach sometimes has a higher up front cost, companies are clamoring to get away from the millions they spend in maintenance on versioned legacy stacks like Hybris and Salesforce.
- calvinmorrison 4y ago
  And i think that's where Magento should be succeeding. Frankly, Adobe Commerce minus all the AEM and other junk slapped on in the last year or two is just Magento 2 under the hood. It's flexible and extensible. The benefit of moving to headless to me can be summed up like this: Frontend development strategies, platforms, and libraries are about as ephemeral as a fart. As online OMS systems get as complex as ERPs, it makes little sense to tie OMS capabilities to a specific frontend. That's how Magento 2's frontend got left behind 10 years. They picked something semi-popular and went all in on it (Knockout.JS) and merchants have been paying the price since (literally in terms of $). Your OMS is going to trend closer to the ERP lifetime, but possible frontend platforms are changing at a rate that is getting shorter, so decoupling allows them to move mostly independently.

fein 4y ago

I deal with ecom a lot at work, in which we build out ecomm systems for large(er) companies. Just about everything is going to AEM with elastic path/ some other ecomm apis and headless frontends (mostly React, namely NextJS, some unfortunately on Gatsby). I'm not sure what is happening with all the old Magento platforms since Adobe took it over, but I don't think we do much work in Magento any more.

calvinmorrison 4y ago
I don't think Adobe knows either. Lots of people are still on Magento 2, and lots of big customers with a LOT of invested money into the platform, however the amount of people jumping into Magento is shrinking as the use case is getting attacked on both ends, on the cost for SMB and the benefits for large companies. Having talked to adobe reps a bunch it's also they have no idea how things work and how all their tech fits together as Adobe continues to gobble up disparate technologies.
- sarora27 4y ago
  I worked at Magento when we were acquired by Adobe. No one at Adobe knows how all the tech fits together. The guy who championed the acquisition (Brad Rencher) left the company 6 months after that. Then w/ the acquisition of Marketo, it was the same thing all over again. My takeaway is that you coerce an organization to acquire a company you recommend so that you can gain some sort of social capital and then convert it into your next (higher level) gig

moneywoes 4y ago

From your knowledge is it still worth trying to enter the Shopify App Store as a business pov or is too saturated? Wondering where to focus

calvinmorrison 4y ago
I don't know. I am building custom integrations between eComm system and some niche ERPs - I haven't had a single person ask me about Magento, but many that asked me about shopify.
xenospn 4y ago
I’ve revisited that idea recently. with the emergence of AI, A lot of possibilities have opened up and it seems like a green field again.

coastermug 4y ago

Shopify is excellent from a micro business point of view. Even coming from the perspective of a Python dev with limited FE experience, it’s so much easier for the client/business owner to administrate. I have a friend who was a Wordpress developer for 10+ years who couldn’t see from a client perspective that the technical limitations of shopify were irrelevant when compared with the hassle of Wordpress ( and it’s e-commerce plugins).

leviathant 4y ago

One of the interesting struggles I see in the space comes from companies that managed to grow on Shopify or BigCommerce, but then reach the limits of those platforms, and looking out into the enterprise space, they get hit with sticker shock, because there's a notable chasm between a Shopify Plus and something like Adobe Commerce or Salesforce Commerce Cloud. It's a little different when you're using those at an enterprise scale, where the cost and performance hits that come with 30+ Shopify Apps, or having to gaze into a crystal ball and give Adobe your best guess at how much infrastructure you'll need next quarter, but if you're a digitally native brand that's grown up on SaaS ecommerce, getting out of the kiddie pool usually means a big change in tech investment. Of course, everyone in the space is scrambling to say they're headless, because commercetools has absolutely changed the conversation in the ecommerce space, but it's not some magic bullet. It's an architectural decision that should be informed by business needs, e.g. supporting multiple regions, multiple brands, or sharing one backend between your website, app, and in-store experiences. Handily, it does serve as a salve to front-end issues inherent to the all-in-one approach that was so dominant a decade ago. By decoupling the frontend from platforms like Shopify Plus or Salesforce, you get a taste of the speed and freedom that comes with a modern front-end, but also quickly run into no-go zones where even in 2022, there's no API access to important backend features - because there never will be, because that messes with the business model of these platforms. On the bright side, even taking legacy monolithic platforms like that headless will make it easier to migrate to a more robust API-first backend solution when the time comes. It certainly makes the most sense with the Nikes and the AT&Ts of the world. Substituting something like commercetools in for their in-house ecommerce systems offsets a huge amount of technical debt, and lets internal teams focus on being more effective at doing whatever makes Nike different from Puma. And while a digital transformation to a MACH approach sometimes has a higher up front cost, companies are clamoring to get away from the millions they spend in maintenance on versioned legacy stacks like Hybris and Salesforce.

calvinmorrison 4y ago
And i think that's where Magento should be succeeding. Frankly, Adobe Commerce minus all the AEM and other junk slapped on in the last year or two is just Magento 2 under the hood. It's flexible and extensible. The benefit of moving to headless to me can be summed up like this: Frontend development strategies, platforms, and libraries are about as ephemeral as a fart. As online OMS systems get as complex as ERPs, it makes little sense to tie OMS capabilities to a specific frontend. That's how Magento 2's frontend got left behind 10 years. They picked something semi-popular and went all in on it (Knockout.JS) and merchants have been paying the price since (literally in terms of $). Your OMS is going to trend closer to the ERP lifetime, but possible frontend platforms are changing at a rate that is getting shorter, so decoupling allows them to move mostly independently.