Online Shopping is About to Get Harder
Online Shopping is About to Get Harder.
I know, that sounds ridiculous. We’re all doing our shopping online, retail is dying, and there’s no way a statement like Online Shopping is About to Get Harder could possibly be true, right?
Depends on what you think the words mean.
There’s no way a statement like Online Shopping is About to Get Harder could possibly be true, right?
I’m not suggesting you’re going to shop online less. I’m also not saying that it’s going to become more difficult to navigate your way through e-commerce websites. All signs make it clear that you’re going to shop online more, not less.
But the tools that website owners use to create those pages where you click away your net worth are changing, and not everyone will know how to keep up. Which means that some sites will go away. Which means Online Shopping is About to Get Harder.
In the nearly ten years I’ve been writing here, I’ve only talked about the way online shopping works once. I wasn’t very excited at the time, either, but seeing that five years later Greentoe is — surprisingly — still at it underscores what I’m saying now; unless you’re big, building online stores is about to become too hard.
Building online stores is about to become too hard
I say this because two of the most popular tools used to build e-commerce sites are undergoing change. WooCommerce, a plug-in that WordPress parent Automattic thought enough of to buy, is showing its warts even among big players in The WordPress Community, and Shopify is discontinuing WordPress support altogether.
Online Shopping is About to Get Harder
The Shopify angle is the big story here. WordPress, even with its 25% share of the website market, is looking less important. WooCommerce, “the” free WordPress e-commerce plugin, was never very good; it was just … there.
Lots of folks are about to see a form of business change they won’t know how to handle
But both tools are easy-ish to use, and that’s where these developments in how e-commerce gets done should worry you. Take the cozy confines of WordPress plug-ins off the table and lots of folks are about to see a form of business change they won’t know how to handle.
As I said above, this isn’t a consumer issue. “Online shopping is about to get harder” isn’t about shopping, but about setting up shop. Then again, this isn’t a consumer blog; at Answer Guy Central we help you cope with business change.
Wondering how to handle changes to the world of e-commerce? Have we got a deal for you!
