The Future of E-commerce, or, the “Internet of Shopping”

“I could absolutely imagine a decentralized Amazon. We’ve seen the
pieces. They’re not all connected to one another. They’re not all built
out or remotely mature, but I could imagine an open platform of
many different actors with different roles.”
– Joseph Lubin, CEO ConsenSys Systems

On its surface, e-commerce seems simple enough: a few clicks and a global audience of customers has products at its fingertips. But beneath the veneer of simplicity lies a system that serves neither buyers nor sellers. The truth is that the current architecture of e-commerce allows middlemen in the supply chain to take profits from sellers — the costs of which are in turn passed on to customers.

The same big-box giants who have driven small brick-and-mortar retailers out of businesses are now beginning to dominate the world of e-commerce. Rather than foster healthy competition and drive innovation, today we see a handful of companies muscling out challengers who seek to bring their own unique products and services to the marketplace. Ultimately, this limits the consumer’s choice.

Spl.yt has a solution to disrupt the status quo and breathe new life into the digital commerce ecosystem. Spl.yt’s dynamic approach accounts for the changing pace and scale of online shopping and caters to individual members of this ecosystem, as well as the various marketplaces that they favor.

Suppliers and Shipping

To keep pace with demanding customers, many online merchants have turned to third-party shipping services, or “dropshippers,” to fill orders. These shippers form vital links in the e-commerce supply chain and are responsible for alerting each merchant that relies on their services when products become unavailable. With the power of Spl.yt’s marketplace management tools, dropshippers can achieve peak supply chain efficiency, and deliver live automated inventory updates to all their retailer clients simultaneously. That means when a product goes out of stock, every Spl.yt powered retailer that carries it will be immediately notified.

From a seller’s perspective, Spl.yt boasts an inventory system that automatically updates across multiple marketplaces to protect brands from the erroneous double-selling of merchandise, which can result in damaged credibility and costly returns. Spl.yt’s superior approach delivers a better experience for both customers and merchants.

Promotion And Advertising

When it comes to promotion and advertising in e-commerce, affiliate marketing is a burgeoning, multibillion-dollar industry. However, as the industry grows, various forms of affiliate fraud have made it difficult to accurately track how commissions should be paid out. The Spl.yt protocol addresses this issue by leveraging blockchain technology and “smart contracts,” which are coded self-executing agreements. The Spl.yt protocol’s smart contract manages data, such as payments to affiliate vendors, and records them to a blockchain ledger where the information is stored in perpetuity. If a dispute occurs, the immutable data points on the blockchain can be referenced to derive a solution that satisfies the parties in question. By providing an embedded form of rapid dispute resolution, Spl.yt can save parties on both sides a great deal of time, money, and effort.

Online Vendor Reputation

Many services exist to track reputation-based metrics. While these can be a good indicator for a consumer, the extra legwork that goes into researching a seller is often tedious. On the other hand, vendors are tasked with tending to numerous accounts, which can be equally time-consuming. Spl.yt’s approach to reputation is multi-faceted and serves both the consumers and vendors. Spl.yt’s method takes data points from multiple marketplaces that account for reputation and feeds them into a smart contract that provides a transparent, quantitative score alongside any vendor’s inventory.

The Future of E-Commerce

Spl.yt’s vision of tomorrow’s e-commerce landscape is efficient, practical, and serves both vendors and consumers by cutting out middlemen. The capacity for Spl.yt to deliver superior services through automated systems is one that can not only outpace the utility of the legacy e-commerce system, but render it obsolete. Take a step into the future. Move forward with Spl.yt.