The commodification of e-commerce

E-commerce has been around for a long time now. Where ‘webshops’ were first a novelty, now they are almost a requirement for any commercial enterprise.

As shoppers, we’ve come to expect a certain “ergonomic” of using a webshop. Good findability on Google, simple product pages, nice checkouts.

We expect each webshop to more or less look the same. Similar to how we expect a fashion shop, supermarket, or drug store to have a certain layout.

The layout just works. Works for the business, works for the shoppers.

And with that, we’ve squeezed out pretty much all innovation out of webshops. The creativity and innovation happens in the margins.