Next-gen ecomm

From our flu-infested president (and reluctant blogger) Alex Schmelkin came this email last week:

I'm lying in bed with two horrendously uncomfortable pillows. Down feather nonsense. Popped onto amazon. Found the cheapest synthetic pillow. $9.99. Cart. x2. One step checkout.

The amazon ecommerce mobile site is phenom. It's fast. Super easy. Recognizes you're coming in on a mobile and serves the correct pages. Login in. Has all your addresses and credit card. Search. Checkout.

Alex sent this email to the team as both a cajoling boss and an impressed consumer. Lying in bed, playing with his BlackBerry, he went dit-dit-dit through the world's largest online store and completed a transaction as easily as he'd send an email.

This is the future of ecommerce. It's already happening in Asia, and it's a matter of time before it gets here, spurred on in part by the iPhone. Simple, clear mobile interfaces. Fast-loading pages. No-nonsense engines and processes. Nothing but goal-oriented transactional functionality.

Look for much more of this in 2008 and '09. And try it, too. Usage drives evolution.