• CSS/XHTML Web Designers
• Quality-Assurance Engineers
• PHP Developers

If you’re any of the above, contact us today!

Over the past 20 years, online commerce has evolved from clunky text-based pages asking you to email your credit card to Bob, to the current rich digital media experience well implemented eCommerce presences offer. The fundamental driver of the evolution of eCommerce has been the technical landscape in which it resides, and over the years this has bought us m-commerce, video reviews, tablet specific interfaces, asynchronous loading (“AJAX”), social recommendations, and much, much more. What this suggests is that current and future technology trends and directions will continue to shape online commerce.

Mobile: The past few years have seen the explosive growth of mobile commerce, with more and more consumers browsing and buying from their phones, tablets, and other mobile devices. In the short term, this has meant that mobile experiences are relatively compromised, due to the bandwidth constraints of current technology, however with the rollout of 4G networks (this is happening, now, albeit slowly) far greater possibilities will be presented in terms of mobile interaction with customers, such as mobile video, large image zooms, and even the potential of AR (Augmented Reality) shopping (image recognition technology is coming along with almost alarming rapidity). We are continuing innovate with our mobile solution, and will be presenting a tablet specific solution for use both by consumers and as an in-store kiosk later this year.

Payment systems: Contactless payment in the physical world will make the jump to mobile devices (Near Field Contact is already appearing in phones), which will present the possibility of customers being able to pay online in a highly frictionless fashion, boosting both online and in-store conversions. In addition, we anticipate Payment Service Providers evolving and competing to provide improved capabilities, such as direct marketplace payments. We’re currently working with a major PSP to see if we can help them bring this to market this year, as we’ve found that this is a direction a large number of retailers, fashion in particular, seek to move.

Social networking: The social marketplace will continue to evolve, moving beyond interaction with specific social networks such as facebook, to networks formed through the sharing of device and contact information, spearheaded by the likes of Apple, who already allow the stealthy sharing of contact lists via their iOS SDK. This will likely present a new range of opt-in social marketing opportunities, such as the ability for friend referrals to be utterly frictionless for the consumer, or the ability to determine customer recommendations based on their friends’ purchases. We currently integrate with facebook for these purposes and others, and we’re building “social awareness” into bluCommerce, using friend recommendation data and so-forth in order to figure out customers’ social graphs, demographics, and likely preferences.

Television: Conventional television broadcasting continues to be a valuable marketing channel, both in the form of brief ad spots and infomercials, however this will be gradually replaced over the following decade as television technology continues to develop at an astounding rate. More and more consumers are now using their televisions for far more than just television, and web browsing via television-integrated or media server browsers is on the rise. We anticipate that this growth will really start to kick off later this year, when Apple release their much touted and rumoured new Apple TV, in much the same fashion as mobile commerce has seen a substantial boost with the launch of each subsequent iPhone, as the inclusion of a web browser is likely. In order to cater for this, we have been putting thought into interfaces designed to be usable and legible from a distance on a large display.

3d: Like it or not, 3d is here to stay, and it’s going go go glassesless, cheap and mainstream in the next few years. As this happens, web developers will rapidly hop onto the latest cool tech, and 3d interface and graphic design will become the marque of a well built site, and will become broadly supported and will further drive 3d adoption. This will result in a large 3d-enabled audience, who can be presented products in full glorious 3d, allowing them to make a more informed, and therefore better converting, purchase.

Analytics: As processing power becomes cheaper and faster, and methodologies for the extraction and interpretation of datum from large data-sets improve, retailers’ abilities to market to consumers on an individual level will increase by orders of magnitude, ultimately leading to a completely personalised cross-channel retail experience being the standard. Retailers will additionally be able to more deeply comprehend and analyse the impact of marketing directions and the cumulative effect of marketing campaigns on individual consumer segments through improved analytical methodologies empowered by the same rise in cheap compute.

Multi-channel: As a result of the improved analytical and integration abilities near future and even upcoming present technologies offer, such as customer data-set integration, pattern analysis, high-speed reliable wireless data networks, and contactless payment systems, multi-channel retail strategies will increasingly converge in overall direction, as a result of a combined strategic overview of the channels due to improved data management and integration opportunities. This will result in unprecedented abilities to understand and predict consumer behaviour on a demographic and even individual level, further leading to the tailor-made, effortless, incredibly powerful shopping experience of the very near future.

We at blubolt have put thought when building bluCommerce into the many possibilities future development can present, and have built our platform to be heavily extensible, down to the very core of its build, in order to be able to adopt and trail-blaze future technologies as they become technically feasible and economically viable.

The new site will coincide with Joseph Turner’s new branding and the launch of their new womenswear clothing range, and will feature a variety of cutting-edge features to make shopping for classic clothing even easier!

We very much look forward to working with them.

TP Toys – The UK’s largest Toy manufacturer

rigby & mac – the online culmination of 3 award-winning London stores

FieldCandy – an exciting design-led brand of tents that can be purchased around the world

Growmysalonsbusiness.com – the new site for well-known educator, motivator and hairdressing businessman, Antony Whitaker

TP Toys (who recently acquired Muddy Puddles who have since launched their own new site) have been designing and manufacturing outdoor toys including trampolines, climbing frames, and wooden playhouses for over 50 years and are very well known within the industry.

The new site is due to launch later this year.

With their previous site beginning to crumble and show it’s age, the new site features a whole host of new front-facing functionality and time-saving tools behind-the-scenes.

The site underwent a complete overhaul in both design and functionality and we’re all very pleased with the outcome. Visit the site here or read the review.

Now in it’s 30th year, Seasalt has become synonymous with innovative, beautiful, and lovingly-crafted clothing and is looking to achieve the same level of prestige with its new eCommerce platform.

The new site is due to launch later in the year.

This also marks the first major launch of our new bluCommerce mobile-version making it even easier for customers on-the-move to browse our client sites!

Our new location on Queen’s Square is only a stone’s throw from our previous office, so we’re still very central and even easier to find!