A Development Lesson 15 Years In The Making
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March 18, 2025 ? | ? Read Online
I used to fight proper development processes. Now, even though they are falling away, I want to embrace them again.
?The first major ecommerce site I managed was a custom site with a production site, QA instance, staging environment and development sandbox. For six separate sites. In two countries each. Not to mention on-premise hosting for each. Just like me at the time, it was a confused, unpredictable mess that kept plenty of developers busy.
I took every chance I could to shortcut the process. All new site changes went through these stages - from new banners to site rebuilds. No excuses. It frustrated the hell out of me.
Fast-forward 15 years, and thankfully, that kind of complexity has disintegrated. Shopify doesn’t come with a built-in staging environment. Instead, it offers cloud hosting, live site previews, rollback apps, and the ability to duplicate themes. And just like having to rewind VHS rentals, most kids today will never know the responsibility of managing multiple environments.
However, I called upon this knowledge when I recently implemented a new loyalty program. The app - I won’t name them, but they are popular in the mid-market - could be downloaded and installed directly from the app store (after we printed, signed and scanned back the PDF contract). The onboarding? A Google form asking for the name of our program, our offer, our logo, colours and some images. Then, we were good to go.
It triggered alarm bells. Will it trigger the right emails? Will it manage opted-in marketing consent? Will discounts and points liabilities be recorded? Will the proper transaction rules be applied? After all, this wasn’t just a front-end change - it impacted customer records, transactions and financial records across multiple systems.
Luckily, the retailer I was working with had a functioning development instance. The loyalty app, however, was perplexed when I asked for a development version of the app. Like we were undercover Magento agents. Unfortunately, it was justified. Newly dropped Shopify features, unsupported email integrations and some custom rules required lots of testing and problem-solving in a safe end-to-end environment. Logos and colours were the last things we thought about.
My self from fifteen years ago was proud… and a little disgusted at the same time.
Cheers, Bushy
PS. We have an all-time webinar on Mastering Last-Mile Logistics next week with leaders from THE ICONIC, DECJUBA and Shippit. Register to get the link.
ECOMMERCE NEWS (from the past week)
?? Shopify Snaps Up Vantage Discovery—AI-Powered Merchandising Incoming
Expect Shopify’s search and merch game to go to the next level - this week, they bought Vantage Discovery to immediately integrate the capabilities into the platform. (HT David Dennings) It’s a long-overdue enhancement. No word yet on which Shopify plans it will be available for or when. Also this week, Australian-founded AMP software raised $20M and acquired the popular Back In Store app. They will onboard 25,000 Shopify customers to sit alongside their Upsell and Lifetimely apps.
?? Australia Post Backs (ugh) AI-Powered Returns Platform Shiperoo
While we’re splashing the cash, Australia Post has invested 25% in the Leibovich-advised warehouse and returns platform, Shiperoo. Shiperoo combines AI and robotics to help retailers automate returns, accelerating inventory replenishment or moving them towards the circular economy. And Aus Post almost convinced us that the decline in letters would send them out of business. Those rascals.
?? Google BrandConnect Lets Brands Tap Into Organic Creator Content
This week,?Google expanded its BrandConnect offering?by allowing brands to see all content creators who have created content about their brand and opted into partnerships. You can then pick up this content and use it in campaigns. Mecca has been using this to select and boost creator content on YouTube Shorts to achieve a “2.5x better view-through rate and 66% lower cost per view compared to their campaign with branded creatives only”.
?? Agency Ad Wars: OMG Called Out for Misleading Search Ads
Can someone please stop the shit bots? Sparrow agency founder Cameron Bryant?called out rival agency OMG for questionable advertising. As the comments point out (HT Iain Calvert), this is likely be a dynamic keyword mistake rather than a purposely deceptive move. Still, not a great look for a digital agency. Also, this week, Instagram started to test AI-generated comments. Turn it all off. I’ve had enough.??
?? Petbarn x Uber Eats: A Loyalty Play, Not a Midnight Snack Option
In a contender for the most misleading headline of 2025, “Petbarn and Uber Eats announce partnership” wasn’t the announcement of a weird fetish takeaway option; it allows Petbarn’s loyalty customers to access member-only prices on Uber Eats. It’s the first Uber Eats loyalty integration, which is cool, but is it as cool as a succulent pouch of digestible lamb and gravy at 2 am on a Sunday? DISCUSS ON CAMPUS
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