The Vision
Having worked with small business owners on their personal websites, I have come to understand a few of the pain points and shortcomings of mainstream eCommerce platforms such as Shopify, Wix, Squarespace, etc. Some examples include having to learn a new software just to manage their store, being responsible for technical tasks such as registering an SSL certificate or struggling with hosting solutions. I seek to provide a new and improved platform that takes care of as many of these pain points as possible using the latest technologies available. One advantage of Sanity as a headless CMS is that the front end can be swapped out for new and improved frontend frameworks. Currently Next.js is a solid option, but a headless CMS allows the front-end and back-end to be separate, so you can easily swap one out at any point.
Challenges to Overcome
The main goal is to commercialize this solution. The biggest challenge with this is not going to be the actual development of the software, but the entrepreneurship involved with selling the product and running a business. On a technical level, building an intuitive and enjoyable blog-reading and shopping experience will be a challenge, but it's a challenge I'm well-equipped to handle. I am leaning towards using Clerk as my user management solution, and integrating with this will be a challenge as well. Finally, building out the payment process from beginning to end will force me to grow my skills. This has been done so many times though that I believe it's a reasonable challenge to undertake.
Down the Road
The long-term goal is to market this solution to small business owners nationwide and internationally. To streamline the transition for businesses with existing eCommerce websites, I plan to develop a web-crawling tool. This tool will extract publicly available data about their inventory and business, creating a pre-populated skeleton of their store in Sanity's database. While this approach can significantly ease the migration process, I'm currently researching the legal and ethical implications to ensure full compliance with data protection regulations. During sales pitches, I would demonstrate this capability, showing potential clients how seamlessly they can transition to our platform.
