How the AB Commerce development team approaches development

Welcome to AB Commerce - Analytics Based Commerce.  When we started developing AB Commerce in April 2016, our goal was to build a new eCommerce platform that is a turn-key solution with minimal customisation required.  Our view is that Retailers and Wholesalers don't want to contract in a development team to build a new website for them.  They would prefer to have a ready-to-go online store implemented quickly that contains all the functionality that is already available on other high-end websites.

First version of the AB Commerce Platform - Streamlined User Experience

We released the first version of AB Commerce on 27th July 2018.  In this release, we removed a lot of optional functionality so the websites were streamlined to be as mobile friendly as possible - with a user just having to fill in 10 fields to get through the checkout.  The following were removed:

• Screen for entering "Your Billing Details" - the user only needs to give the card holder name when entering their credit card details, so lets see what happens without this screen.
• Option for entering a promotion code at the start of checkout - this often distracts users as once they see the option for entering a promotion code, they might Google for promotion codes and not complete the order.
• No login option - most users of websites don't remember their passwords - so we've assumed that all users are happy just to enter their shipping address each time they place an order.
• No gift message - we also left out the option for entering a gift message.

All Websites starting as GDPR Compliant

With the first roll-out, we had moved all orders data into new tables so that no-one could access it - and we had turned off accounts and email lists.  So the platform should was starting as being fully GDPR compliant.  For any release we made after this, we ensured all changes kept the platform fully GDPR compliant.

First Step was to roll out Analytics Reporting across the website

The first step that we took was to roll out analytics across all the new websites - so that all development going forward was analytics driven.  Every time we made a release, we monitored the analytics after that release.