Back to the Future Day

By Adam  |  21 Oct 2015 09:00:00

If you have been on social media at all today, or if you've read a newspaper or anything else, then you'll probably know that today is Back to the Future Day. What is that? Well, in the 1989 movie Back to the Future Part II protagonists Marty McFly and Dr. Emmet Brown briefly travel from their home time (1985) and into the future, and when they arrive in the future it is the 21st of October 2015; which is today's date! So people are quite excited about that, especially those who are big fans of the series.

I know what you're thinking "Yeah, that's nice and all, but what does this have to do with my eCommerce website?" and that's a very valid question! But don't worry, I'm getting to that. What's interesting about Back to the Future Part II is the way that the year 2015 is presented. While it wasn't taken 100% seriously, there are several predictions about the ways in which the world would change. Some of the predictions were wholly inaccurate: flying cars, televisions where people watch multiple channels at once and strange computer-based customer service in cafes. But on the other hand, they were quite accurate in some areas too: there are video calls, an equivalent of Google Glass and 3D movies. Obviously they weren’t aiming for a super serious prediction of things to come, but it's very interesting to see what they got right and what they got wrong.

That's what you can take away from this for your own eCommerce website; nobody knows what the future holds. In 1989 they had no idea that the internet would grow to such a size or that eCommerce would be the booming industry that it is today. They wouldn’t even have known what eCommerce was! Technology is unpredictable, and that's why it always pays to experiment with innovation. Using an obscure social media platform to market yourself? Maybe it will be the next Twitter! Selling some kind of technology which most places don't offer? Perhaps it will be the next iPhone! There always room for a little experimentation in business and who knows just when you might be the first person to do something which, later, everybody does? But if you don't even have an eCommerce website yet, then sign up to Sellr now and make one for no cost at all!