How to beat Amazon with your E-Commerce Company — How to beat Amazon with your E-Commerce Company⁠↗

The shopping mall is an experience. Maybe I’m romanticizing this a little bit because my family owned a store in a shopping mall but there was something special about the mall. It is an inherently social space. Thousands of human interactions take place during a visit to the mall that don’t take place by clicking into the Instagram Shop tab.

Malls encourage impulse purchases, treasure hunting and exploration. Shoppers wander into stores they didn’t set out to visit. Some of the best purchases are the most surprising or random ones.

“People who like this, also like this” recommendation engines are a robot substitute for this organic feeling of discovery.

Ecommerce took the social, experiential act of shopping and reduced it to transactions. Look something up on Google or Amazon and purchase the first thing that pops up. Maybe look around for one with good reviews. The process is linear and isolating.  But this is changing. e-commerce is becoming more engaging, more human and more entertaining.

E-commerce platforms will be spatial and live and fun. They will also sell as many digital goods as they will physical ones. While these experiences won’t replace Amazon, they will play a huge role in shaping how we buy online.