Today my wife had our 3-year-old son on her lap picking out some online winter gloves and a hat. He was very selective but finally made a buying decision. My wife then told him she would buy the items (that is, complete the checkout process). After he was told she had made the purchase he looked around our home office for his new gloves and hat! He couldn’t understand why his gloves and hat weren’t already delivered.

The experience made me think. At a recent shop.org event, predictions were made that ecommerce may in the near future level off and stop experiencing exponential growth. The idea of ecommerce growth slowing would have been a real shocker for those salivating in the dot com boom years of the late 90′s where it was believed ecommerce would supplant all “brick and mortar” transactions in one fell swoop.

So we can safely say ecommerce is here to stay and at White Lion, we really enjoy the unique challenges of building out rich and efficient ecommerce experiences—if we could only make the items magically appear at check-out! For my 3-year-old son’s generation, it will be very interesting to see how he chooses to buy—to see how much brick and mortar vs. ecommerce spending he partakes in. As he grows up, will he have the patience to wait or day or two for his items or will he need to instant gratification of walking into a store and walking out with his wares? How will ecommerce growth trend 10 or 15 years out? As the ecommerce experience becomes more engaging and interactive, call me an optimist—I can only see growth for many, many years to come.

Steve C. Kahle – Managing Principal – White Lion Internet Agency