How HTML5 Will Impact Your eCommerce Site
February 26th, 2010 by Doug BrightLookout! HTML5 is coming! If you keep an eye on Twitter and tech blogs it may seem as if the whole world is talking about HTML5. Recently the chatter has gotten louder with the introduction of Google Wave (which relies heavily upon HTML5) and YouTube’s new beta support for it. But what does it mean for eCommerce?
Background
We’ve always pushed the Web to do more than it was designed to do. What began as a way to simply link text documents together has become a platform for shopping, chatting, watching videos, and kitten cuteness battles. In large part, this is thanks to additional functionality provided by 3rd party plug-ins such as Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight.
HTML5 is a new standard that aims (among other things) to add native browser support for video, audio, location reporting, and new forms of user interaction that are currently the domain of 3rd party plug-ins.
How Far Away Are We From HTML5?
The group responsible for the creation of the HTML5 specification is called, for real, WHATWG. WHATWG began work on HTML5 in 2004 and expects HTML5 to be adopted as a W3C Recommendation in 2022. I originally had joke dates written to drive home how long this process takes but then I realized it’s funny enough without me having to punch it up.
In practice, though, HTML5 is starting to become a reality. Internet Explorer 8, Firefox 3, Safari 3.1, as well as niche browsers like Opera and Chrome, have already implemented partial support. It will be years, however, before HTML5 is supported as universally as current technologies like Flash.
Booooring. Get to the Point.
Let’s take a quick ride through some new features of HTML5 and how they will impact eCommerce:
Medium Impact Features
Video. This is the money feature of HTML5. This feature is WHATWG’s way of saying, “Beat it, Adobe, we don’t need Flash for video anymore.” But with 99.7% of browsers supporting Flash you’re safe to continue using Flash video for quite some time. There is one exception to this rule: you may want to consider using HTML5 video if mobile is a big part of your eCommerce strategy since the iPhone and iPad do not support Flash.
Geolocation. Browsers can now report a user’s location by passing along latitude and longitude information to your site. We can kind of already do this for computer users by using IP location lookups but now we can get the location of mobile device users, too. If technical innovation is a core strength of your company and mobile is part of the strategy you can probably find some interesting things to do with this functionality. If not, sit back and let your ad network, analytics software, and recommendation engine take the lead on using this new capability.
Low Impact Features
Canvas Drawing. Have you ever wanted to add interactive or dynamic graphic elements to your site? If so, you probably used Flash. You can safely keep doing that unless you’re desperate to provide the same functionality to iPhone users.
Semantics. Lots of the div tags used for page layout now have special names. But they don’t have to have special names. Eventually using the special names may have some SEO impact but not for a long, long time.
Drag and Drop Anything. Imagine if shoppers could drag any element of your site or their browser onto any browser surface! Yeah, we couldn’t come up with anything either. Someone will find something cool to do with this but it doesn’t have to be you.
Offline Storage. Websites can now store data offline within the browser itself to speed up functionality or improve usability when internet access is not available. If you think this sounds similar to cookies you’re right. The difference is that this capability is more robust and “databasey” than cookies are. While great for email and other web apps, there’s not much going on here that affects eCommerce.
Where Are the High Impact Items?
Exactly. It will take years for HTML5 compatible browsers to gain the same market penetration that technologies like Flash and Silverlight have. If you don’t need to show video or provide interactive functionality to iPhone or iPad users then don’t spend another second worrying about HTML5. What you’ve got now is perfect.
Do you think we’re totally off base on this one? Let us have it in the comments.
Tags: flash, geolocation, html5, silverlight, standards, video
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February 26th, 2010 at 2:21 pm
Nice overview and starting point.
Generally, yes I agree that it isn’t imperative to redesign with HTML 5 today. However, if you’re looking to redesign in the next year or two I would monitor it, look at example sites, and consider how to work some key features.
Something like the semantic piece could get some serious Google juice overnight if Google decides to make changes (similar to the video and social media in Caffeine). If you’re already there, then you could get some major benefits. Google has already shown a commitment to HTML5 and CSS3 with their Google Voice and Buzz websites. And it doesn’t hurt now to do it.
The downside is that web developers aren’t super familiar with it right now so it could be challenging to implement. That and the spec could still change.
I think its a great thing to try on a micro-site type of page or some part of your site that might benefit from it (blog?).
February 26th, 2010 at 3:07 pm
I agree that the new semantics is the wildcard feature since it’s the most likely to affect SEO. It’s tough to imagine, though, that Google would deign sites using HTML5 semantics to be more relevant or authoritative than other sites. Of course, Google can be unpredictable so I wouldn’t bet the house against it.
I think you’re spot on with keeping an eye on other sites and maybe trying a few experiments with HTML5. And certainly if a merchant is developing new functionality from scratch it might pay to skate to where the puck is going to be instead of where it is now. But on the list of things to worry about, I would say for the average retailer HTML5 is pretty low on the list.
April 6th, 2010 at 8:58 am
Until the Ipad gets here. Now the HTML5 Push is on. I give it a year maybe less.