Okay, so let me tell you about this thing I called ‘Commerce Comet’. It wasn’t some fancy software, more like a way I figured out to get stuff done faster.
I was getting really fed up with how long it took us to just try out a new product idea online. You know, build a simple page, see if people bite. It felt like wading through mud every single time. Weeks could go by just getting one simple page up and running. Absolutely nuts.
Figuring It Out
So, I thought, there has to be a better way. What if we could launch these little test pages super fast? Like a comet, quick and dirty, see if it lights up. That’s where the name came from in my head.
First thing, I just grabbed a notebook. Scribbled down the bare minimum needed for one of these pages. Like, headline, picture, description, a ‘buy’ button. Nothing fancy. Keep it stupid simple.
Then, I started building a basic template. Just plain old HTML, CSS, and a tiny bit of JavaScript. The key thing I focused on was making it easy to swap stuff out. Made placeholders for the product name, the image file, the price, all that jazz. The idea was, don’t rebuild the wheel every time, just change the tires.
- Got the basic layout done.
- Made sure it looked okay on phones, mostly.
- Spent ages making the ‘swapping’ part actually work without breaking the look.
Hitting Snags
Naturally, it wasn’t smooth sailing. The first few attempts at templates were garbage. Too rigid. Changing one thing messed up another. Got pretty frustrated, honestly. Felt like I was wasting time trying to save time.
And the deployment… man. I wanted it to be automatic. Push the code, page goes live. Sounds easy, right? Nope. Fought with scripts, permissions, weird errors that made no sense. Lots of late nights fueled by cheap coffee just staring at logs, trying to figure out why the heck it wasn’t updating.
Also realized my initial tracking idea was too basic. Just counting clicks wasn’t enough. Had to go back and add more little tracking bits to see where people were actually dropping off on the page.
Making it Fly (Sort Of)
Eventually, I got a version working. It wasn’t pretty, but it was functional. I took our next five product ideas and decided to use this ‘Comet’ approach.
Built out five different pages using the template system. Took me maybe a day and a half for all five, which was crazy fast compared to before. Pushed them live using the automated setup I’d wrestled into submission.
And boom! Data started trickling in almost right away. Within a few days, it was obvious two of the ideas were complete duds. People just weren’t clicking, or they’d leave instantly. The other three showed some promise.
The cool part was, I could quickly tweak things. Saw a headline wasn’t working? Changed it in the template file, pushed the change, and the live page updated in minutes. Felt like magic after the old way.
What Came Out Of It
So, ‘Commerce Comet’ wasn’t really a thing you could download. It was just this process, this workflow I hammered out. Build a reusable core, automate the deployment, track the basics, and iterate fast. That was it.
It cut down our test launch time massively. We could kill bad ideas quicker and double down on the ones that showed life. Saved us a ton of wasted effort in the long run. It wasn’t perfect, still had quirks, but man, it beat the old way hands down.
