Thread by @philwinkle

🧵 In August I began an article for @Magezine_ on PWA and couldn't bring myself to finish it. I didn't have the heart to put into words the sense that we're nearing a post-developer era of the WWW.

We're entering what I call the 3rd Ecommerce Modernity.

Thread:

@2PMinc No. 342 covers @hello_iamelliot and the rise of No Code. Timely.

The #nocode movement and the universe of tools available are core to our forthcoming @futurecommerce 2020 Predictions market research report.

It represents what I'm calling the "3rd Ecommerce Modernity"

In his book "Towards the Third Modernity: How Ordinary People Are Transforming the World" author De Geus posits that normal everyday people change the world when armed with the tools to instantly do so.

For 20 years brands have labored from concept to launch in ecom.

In The 1st Ecom Modernity, sites were vast static catalogs without a shopping cart. They were digital versions of the Sears Catalog - a single page form where you typed in your quantity into a grid.

The shopping experience lacked personalized elements, like # of items in cart.

Portals of old (Yahoo, Excite, etc) changed the customer expectation of what to expect from a personal web. Eventually dynamic cart pages emerged. A gap appeared in the market to provide what was perceived as "personalization", which we now describe as search and browse.

What we know as layered navigation was a UI convention popularized by 3rd party technology platforms like Endeca. This spurred the creation of platforms that incorporated, by default, these new UX design norms.

Big Retail players adopted the platforms and were first-movers, and so layered nav / slice-and-dice catalogs became the norm. Platforms emerged which provided this functionality by default. They were among the first to market and were adopted by SMB, Enterprise alike.

Alas, platforms also required teams of skilled, specialized workers, usually engineers.

Magento, for instance, was developed based on the need for a "better" OSCommerce, which was riddled with security issues and poorly maintained -- just 6 years after the dotcom bust of 2001.

This normalization of the ecommerce UX led to required integration with multiple unrelated partners to achieve superior site experiences (like search, browse). Eventually, platforms gobbled up competitors - as was the case with Endeca x Oracle. Monoliths were born.

Thus, the 2nd Modernity. The platforms solve for the hard problems: catalog, logistics, payments, inventory, ERP integrations, etc. But their size and scale make them hard to adapt to trends in the broader ecosystem.

But the bigger the platform the slower the innovation.

Current monoliths, both on-premise (like @magento) and cloud-centric (like @salesforce), have extensibility at their core - i.e. the ability to incorporate 3rd party code into your basic store. But these solutions are hardly zero-config and usually require devs.

Meanwhile small brands have tiny catalogs. 20 years ago they'd have gone to Walmart to try to get distribution. Today they go direct to the consumer.

With a small catalog they focus on design, story. They don't need "features". They need flexibility. Bigger platforms=headaches.

With their big platform investments big retail sleep on emerging consumer channels like social media. They buy into a narrative that "social doesn't covert" and smaller brands enjoy low CAC while gaining consumer trust.

We then have so many of these smaller DTC brands that they begin to grab attention. Some of them have beautiful brands. Those brands have reset consumer expectations. The small brand aesthetic begins to catch on. Eventually, customers want small-site feel from big retail.

Data starts to prove that they're not using all these "Features" that platforms solve for. They want pretty sites. Big platforms make building pretty sites hard. Big platforms solve hard problems like allowing for tons of 3rd party code that customers no longer want or need.

Big monoliths decide to update and begin to look at newer developer trends. In walks PWA. PWA (progressive web apps) are a developer term for a collection of technologies like single page app-like experiences. But the shorthand is PWA should mean FAST SITES. Customers want fast.

Monoliths don't do fast. More features, more 3rd party code, less fast.

So the monoliths evangelize PWA. PWA means a massive rewrite. And then legacy code is intermingled in monoliths with newer PWA approach, but it's a marketing play to compete with the buyer need for FAST.

They completely miss the point. PWA isn't the saviour. If PWA is our saviour the monoliths are doomed. In 2019 fast sites are static. They're purpose-built, non-monoliths. They are apps that run in the browser. They don't really need or want 3rd party code.

Monoliths use words like "experience" to try to encourage buy-in, but in reality experience begins with thoughtful design. Beautifully-designed brands need full-bleed, edge-to-edge design capability. Most monoliths won't allow for that.

In walk #nocode solutions. They allow designers to bypass developers. Designers don't want or need to learn the (very very tall) tech stack that monoliths require. They give design tools in the browser to designers and shorten the path between creative and consumer.

And this is the 3rd Modernity. "No code" shortens the path -- it allows brands to be nimble. Monoliths are attempting to make developer-centric solutions and create an additional layer over top of legacy codebase to continue to provide a paradigm that consumers no longer desire.

De Gauss writes that - just as in the real world political obstruction is bypassed with civil unrest and activism - No Code is the evolution of a solution to route around the developer-centric, large-team requirement of monolith platforms.

The cosmic irony of all this is that ecom platform monolith success is what has led to decline.

The design language of the DTC era is a result of small brands, with small catalogs, who left monoliths because they were overkill.

If Magento, Hybris, Demandware -- even Shopify -- want to compete, they'll have to take a very hard look at giving designers tools to design new experiences whole cloth. Eliminate the *need* for developers. Diminish need for 3rd party code and marketplaces. This is a new world.

In short - if PWA is the monolith savior - we're all already doomed. The 3rd Modernity is upon us. The world is moving toward no code.

Old code isn't going away. It's still hanging around. PWA just means more developer tooling and different team structure.

No turning back.

👉Thoughts and opinions are my own, not that of my employer, and I'm still very much interested in building your eCommerce store on a monolith. Call me.

Thanks for reading. ❤️