Our chat with Aran Reeks to find out what he thinks the future of eCommerce holds.

As sponsors of the eCommerce South West event on 20th October in Bristol, we took advantage of an opportunity to catch up with Aran Reeks ahead of his session. Aran is Head of Client Strategy at Evosite. With over 8 years’ experience developing bespoke eCommerce solutions we asked him about what he thinks is yet to come within eCommerce.

ADLIB: From a technical perspective, what do you predict for eCommerce?

Aran Reeks: Over the last few years as mobile traffic has continued to soar, we’re starting to see a subsequent uplift in multi-device purchases. These are ones where a visitor starts their purchase journey from one device, but then returns to complete it on another. Most commonly this starts with a visit from a mobile device whilst the visitor is still in the intent/consideration phase, and then we’ll observe the transaction being completed later from a desktop or laptop device.

It’s certainly a challenge to offer a great experience across devices, imaging the customer added all the items they liked to their cart on mobile, started checking out and then decided that with all the forms to fill out, they’d complete the purchase later from a desktop. As they’re starting again from another device this means a fresh session and basket so most likely their purchase journey begins again.

Although it’s still early days and support is currently limited, features such as the Payments Request and Credentials Management APIs are two massive steps forward to help reduce this barrier and to reduce friction in the conventional eCommerce checkout flow. I expect to see adoption of these new features explode in the coming year as support increases across the main browser vendors.

Current availability stats for these two new APIs (source: caniuse.com, 21/09/2016):

Payment Request API:

• Global: 21.63%
• UK: 16.16%
• Browsers supported (in stable versions): Chrome for Android ONLY

Payment Request API:

• Global: 45.71%
• UK: 41.22%
• Browsers supported (in stable versions): Chrome, Chrome for Android & Android Browser

ADLIB: What are your top tips for businesses to be prepared for what’s ahead?

AR: Keeping your ear to the ground around what’s bubbling in the eCommerce space even from a technical perspective can help to keep you ahead of your competitors. There’s often fear around being an early adopter of new features, but at the same time, doing so can give you an edge in the market. That doesn’t mean however that you should go and add every ‘cool’ or ‘hip’ new feature to your website!

Each change to your website should be carefully weighed up on its own merits to see if there’s a clear business advantage to support implementing it. Does it improve your customers’ experience? Does it strengthen your offering? …

Thank You Aran for sharing. Aran will be covering these two topics in depth and much more on the 20th October at The Paintworks Event Space in Bristol. Make sure to register your interest in tickets on the event website. We are looking forward to seeing you there!

Here some more true insights into the thinking of some talented creatives in our area…

In part 1 we found out about their picks of tools and places that inspire. Next, we asked about their favorite pieces of commercial creative, their biggest challenges and some advice they would give their younger selves. We caught up with some of our friends that work within creative…

Emma Amato, Lead Global Designer at Affordable Art Fair; Georgia Byron, Graphic Designer at Graham & Green and Shari Robertshaw, Creative Designer at Omobono.

ADLIB: What’s your favourite piece of commercial creative and why?

Georgia Byron: I like what Dove did with their ‘real women’ stuff, I think that was a brave piece of marketing at the time and they were ahead of the curve. I’ve always liked all of Honda’s creative. People brand themselves these days, so the personal, cuddly, matey approach doesn’t work as well as it used to for big brands. I like commercial creative that is brave and funny instead; the advertising equivalent of that one person in the room who is confident and comfortable enough with themselves not to be loud; they just do their particular thing really well and it makes you want to talk to them. Charities do a LOT of good stuff, but of course you’re talking commercial….

Emma Amato: I love a witty turn of phrase, so for me Moor Beer Company’s ‘Drink Moor beer’ line, or dating site for lonely hearts eating al desko, Lovestruck.com’s ‘Where busy people click’ are faves. I also really loved that time when a camping/outdoor retailer bastardised ol’ Billy Shakespeare with ‘Now is the Winter of our discount tents’. That was wonderful, a bit like being in an episode of Frasier.

Shari Robertshaw: Favourite of all time? It’s a bit cliche but I think the VW “Think Small” and “Lemon” ads are still great and they changed the way we approach advertising.

ADLIB: What’s your biggest challenge?

Emma Amato: The biggest challenge for any creative person is convincing other people that your idea is as brilliant as you think it is. If it truly is a brilliant idea, it will be undeniably brilliant and it’ll naturally come to life without too much intervention. If it’s not so brilliant, then listen to your client, to other people in your team, to your mum.. their reasons for thinking it’s not brilliant will help you make it stronger and more brilliant than it was before. Brilliant!

Shari Robertshaw: Clients want high quality work in the shortest time possible. So the challenge is balancing how to meet their needs within their budget, while still offering quality solutions that solve the larger problem.

Georgia Byron: In my line of work – with fashion brands and charities, often in house – it’s always time. Lack of it. Creative control can always be made a case for; budgets are useful to creativity (narrows down the infinite), Creative Directors are amusing if they’re tyrants (and the ones that nick your ideas don’t last), but you can’t argue with a deadline that only gives you half a day to come up with something.

There’s no room for the ideas stage there, the bit where I get to dig in deep enough to find the niche that generates something new; so lack of time and appropriate planning is basically death to originality. Lack of originality means people ignore it and the product doesn’t sell.

ADLIB: What one piece of advice would you give your younger self?

Georgia Byron: Don’t rush. There are no shortcuts to becoming ‘ A good designer’ any more than there are shortcuts for becoming a ‘proper’ grown up. It just takes time, and a bit of obsessiveness here and there to get a bit better than other people. Read as well as look. Be patient and remember that no one is a particularly ‘good’ (or a reliably good) designer until you’re thirty. You just haven’t seen enough of the world or how life works until then. Really, trust me. Also, you can’t sell stuff to people who are wiser than you on the subject you’re trying to sell in. So get to know it inside out. Don’t burn out too often – quality not quantity. No one likes a dull workaholic (I’d know): Lastly, be nice to people consistently. Not creepy nice, just a regular decent helpful will do. It’s ALL so much easier if you aren’t tired all the time.

Shari Robertshaw: Fully understand something before you start working on it, and come up with as many ideas as possible each time.

Emma Amato: Get pet Guinea pigs sooner. They are the best.

On that note…Thank you very much Emma, Shari and Georgia!