eCommerce continues to be one of the “covid-advantaged” areas that are inflecting in the current environment. Though overall consumer spending is down due to recessionary economics, eCommerce has grown 30 percent year over year, which is roughly two years worth of growth in seven months.
This has led to an influx of activity in eCommerce enablement. We’ve seen established players like Shopify accelerate product road maps, while non-eCommerce players pivot towards online selling functionality. Some retail giants are meanwhile embracing eCommerce with tangible results.
Meeting the Moment
The latest company to meet the moment is AirTank. The eCommerce and martech agency today announced the launch of its eCommerce platform ZiftrShop. The platform boasts easy onboarding and customization in building or migrating eCommerce websites that are feature-rich and stable.
These attributes have been validated in trials with select partners in the health-tech sector, including SoClean and Cefaly. Speaking to the platform’s performance, SoClean achieved a 64 percent decrease in average server response time and a 46 percent drop in average page download time.
ZiftrShop also notably takes the “headless” route, a notable trend in enterprise software that leans into software that’s more flexible and easier to deploy. It also takes an API-first approach which makes the platform more expandable and customizable for various flavors of eCommerce.
“With today’s commerce platforms, brands are locked into large monolithic products,” AirTank CEO Jason Tabling told Localogy Insider. “We built ZiftrShop with this problem in mind as a modular, API-first platform that is truly headless. That means if you want to swap out your payment provider, CMS, or order management system you can do that with ease.”
Feedback Loop
Among other things, this flexibility maximizes ZiftrShop’s addressable market by accomodating a range of vertical and horizontal segments. Along those lines, the platform addresses down-market SMBs by reducing the need for in-house IT resources. It has self-serve and supported options baked in.
Speaking of business strategy, ZiftrShop also marks an expansion from services to products. Following the SaaS playbook, there are scalability and recurring-revenue benefits for the latter. Coupling that with a big-ticket (though inherently less scalable) consulting model can achieve the best of both worlds.
This dual approach also engenders a feedback loop to refine software products. Because AirTank is well versed in implementing eCommerce software for its clients, it’s primed to launch and deploy its own platform. This also gives it the perspective to engineer and maintain a demand-driven feature set.
“Our platform was built to acknowledge those different needs, all while giving the benefits of a SaaS platform,” said Tabling. “We’ve already eclipsed $100 Million in annual transactions, and shown an average of 40 percent improvement in site performance. These are our early proof points as to why ZiftrShop has a place in the e-commerce market.”
