After Curagami's annual Black Friday online retail study ecommerce 2015 trends such as free returns and ship to store are clear. This Haiku Deck explores trending online retailing tactics, strategy and pressures merchantsface in 2015.

Single Item Ecommerce
One of the reasons I'm so excited about Bitcoin as infrastructure (see this Scoop: http://sco.lt/5rrn05 ) is the real possibility of adding single item ecommerce.

Why is single item ecom so important?

One of the last big castles owned by abusive middlemen is the web's payment gateways. Auth.net is a pain. Such a pain small single item ideas can't generate ROI. Problem is BIG IDEAS often start as tiny ones.

This means the block to setting up online commerce retards innovation, slows ecommerce / social synergy and makes product development and testing harder than it needs to be.

Sure you can use a scaled "print on demand" site such as Zazzle or Cafe Press, but NOT if you want to print on something other than currently supported media.

What if we want to sell our Cure Cancer cycling socks? We don't want to go all the way to a shopify store since that feels like overkill. We want to put up a Facebook image with a little story and a payment gateway or throw a link into a tweet that does the same.

WHY CAN"T WE DO THIS?

Or can we and I just don't know about it? I looked into https://www.shoplocket.com/ and problem there is they use THEIR cart. Linking to the cart I saw six months ago with limited white label capacity would be like shifting the link OF OUR OWN PRODUCTS across an affiliate link.

I took a look at https://www.simplify.com/commerce/ earlier today and will put in our routing information and EIN numbers when I get home. If anyone knows of a great single item ecommerce engine that allows enough customization that the cart looks like YOU and isn't a holy PAIN in the you know where to create please share.

Bitcoin, while intriguing, is at least a year away from any kind of easy installation and use (at least). Need a an easy to use payment gateway by Christmas or these trips to Ohio are going to break me (lol).

More on G+: https://plus.google.com/102639884404823294558/posts/CMhU6qUQB34

This holiday selling season (2014) will happen as close to real time as any thanks to the social / mobile web. Listening and curating are going to be important, but so is tapping the nostalgia and spirit of the season in creative and collaborative ways.

“Designing your eCommerce store is not only about making it look good, but also making sure that it generates sales. Your goal is to make potential customers”

Best Online Store Option For YOU?
I've used Magento Go and Shopify. I've also used other Content Management Systems when I managed an Ecom team (for 7 years) including home grown and Magento enterprise.

If you want to start an online store which platform should you use? Let's look at a feature by feature comparison:

Easy To Use - Winner Shopify

Plugin / Add On Development - Winner Magento Go 

Email Integration - Tie (both work well with MailChip et al)

SEO - Magento Go if you KNOW SEO, Shopify if you don't

Promotion - Magento Go if you KNOW ecom, Shopify if you don't

Manage SKUs - Tie
up to about 50,000 after than NEITHER (you've outgrown OPP Other People's Platform if you have more than 50,000 unique stock keeping units SKUs). 

Cart - backend Magento Go
(can do more with logic so ASSUMES you know how to create business rule promotions) frontend (what customer sees) Shopify.

Templates - Tie 

Pretzel Logic - Magento Go
(winning this is not a good thing since it means the platform has its own language YOU must learn or things go bump in the night. Magento Go is willing to be confusing and a pain to add POWER, but 95% will never use that power so if you have a small, fun store steer clear). 

Cross Sale / UpSale
Slight nod to Magento Go again assumes you know ECOM well and cross merchandising is not intuitive but is powerful. 

Overall Winner - Shopify
For most readers of this post Shopify is the best choice.

Magento Go honorable mention
for a specialized niche group that needs powerful business rule based promotion, have between 30k to 50k SKUs and don't mind learning a new language to get the backend power they need Magento Go may be for you.

. If you don't know your crosssale (what you do on a product page to move customers to more profitable or popular choices) or upsale (what you do in the car to build Average Order Value (AOV) then use SHOPIFY.