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How we built the Black Friday Cyber Monday 2023 globe

shopify.engineering

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Re: How we built the Black Friday Cyber Monday 2023 globe

#11

Post by FredPret »

itsoktocry wrote: post #9
Theodores wrote: post #3

Fair play, that is impressive. I am generally underwhelmed by Shopify, seeing them as another vulture capitalist way of leeching money out of small businesses the globe over, but props to this animation. Even the work gone into making the blog post is extremely impressive.

> seeing them as another vulture capitalist way of leeching money out of small businesses the globe over How so? Nobody forces small businesses to use Shopify, they use it because it's a good product.

It makes building and deploying a shop and integrating a payment processor a snap, rather than a massive project.

It’s a great choice for a vast number of small companies with other things to do.

Re: How we built the Black Friday Cyber Monday 2023 globe

#12

Post by jesse__ »

> Building the 2023 BFCM Globe was a journey in pushing the boundaries of what is possible with instancing and WebGL.

lol .. seems pretty dramatic. I didn't see anything in the article that looked remotely like it was pushing boundaries.

Still, nice read, and a pretty visualization to be sure!

Re: How we built the Black Friday Cyber Monday 2023 globe

#14

Post by Dyac »

Theodores wrote: post #3

Fair play, that is impressive. I am generally underwhelmed by Shopify, seeing them as another vulture capitalist way of leeching money out of small businesses the globe over, but props to this animation. Even the work gone into making the blog post is extremely impressive.

As someone who has worked in ecommerce for decades, Shopify is fantastic.

It's not the cheapest, nor is it the most expensive. It's not as powerful as some systems, but it's not weak. It's not the easiest system to work with, but it's also not the hardest.

What it is is right in the goldilocks zone, and it allows businesses to DO BUSINESS, not end up having to worry about or even think about many decisions.

Day-to-day I work across 4 ecommerce platforms and Shopify is the one that doesn't keep anyone awake at night and "just works". Sure there's a ton more stuff some of the other platforms we use can do, but we also have a LOT more meetings, dev tickets and headaches with those platforms.

For like 80%+ of 0 to $50m+ online businesses it is by far the best choice because it means the team can focus on connecting with potential customers and selling stuff and not have to allocate nearly as much time or headspace to the Storefront system.

Re: How we built the Black Friday Cyber Monday 2023 globe

#15

Post by arnklint »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #7

[flagged]

imagine if all those packages would need to be transported as well. Like with boat or by air. What if we used this quality engineering towards solving real problems instead? Like how to decrease pollution or something along those lines…

Re: How we built the Black Friday Cyber Monday 2023 globe

#16

Post by weinzierl »

"A key element of risograph prints is the noise that you see all over them. They are covered with little dots of varying sizes."

A bit of noise can often go a long way to make a design wholesome (e. g. [1]), but in this case I honestly find it over the top. It's too much and too much in your face.

[1] https://fabianburghardt.de/swisscolors/

Re: How we built the Black Friday Cyber Monday 2023 globe

#17

Post by siffin »

arnklint wrote: post #15
2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #7

[flagged]

imagine if all those packages would need to be transported as well. Like with boat or by air. What if we used this quality engineering towards solving real problems instead? Like how to decrease pollution or something along those lines…

If only.....the banks believe it's a better investment to destroy the planet. Let's not even mention the hubris of tech companies.

Re: How we built the Black Friday Cyber Monday 2023 globe

#18

Post by bdndndndbve »

Theodores wrote: post #3

Fair play, that is impressive. I am generally underwhelmed by Shopify, seeing them as another vulture capitalist way of leeching money out of small businesses the globe over, but props to this animation. Even the work gone into making the blog post is extremely impressive.

If you don't like them leeching money from small businesses, you'll hate the army of overworked support staff (formerly "gurus") who are constantly on the precipice of being downsized and asked to turn over calls faster to keep costs down.

Re: How we built the Black Friday Cyber Monday 2023 globe

#19

Post by pcdoodle »

Theodores wrote: post #3

Fair play, that is impressive. I am generally underwhelmed by Shopify, seeing them as another vulture capitalist way of leeching money out of small businesses the globe over, but props to this animation. Even the work gone into making the blog post is extremely impressive.

Long time Shopify customer here. Their fees are not bad at all. Have you tried selling on Amazon, Ebay or even Apples App Store?

They even have a warehouse partner that packs and ships for about the same cost as DIY.

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