There are massive shifts underway in the way people. This year, consumers have adopted digital commerce at a rate never before seen. The pandemic has brought this on and the hopeful end will not cause the changes to evaporate. More likely, many of the shifts in digital commerce will endure, and a slower pace of adoption returns.

Consumers have not only shifted habits, they are now accustomed to certain conveniences. The pandemic has brought on a wave of bankruptcies for old brands resistant to the digital transformation. Digitally native brands have surged and will continue to do so, if they can provide the right ways to engage with customers. It's not enough to have a website. There's an entire API economy where data passes between presentation layers.

There's a trend toward headless commerce, which relies heavily on the use of APIs to deliver data to customers in the right way. Over the past few weeks, I've spent a good amount of time working with new APIs and exploring what's available. Based on that, here's a quick brainstorm on APIs for ecommerce:

1. More small business focused APIs. Almost all APIs focus on big data and there are benefits to be had for all businesses
2. Search engine for APIs. One place to index and search all with standardized information.
3. Develop an ad-free product search API (i.e. without affiliate links)
4. Talend API tester makes it much faster to test APIs via a browser extension.
5. All APIs should include a free sample. Saves a lot of time and frustration on both ends
6. RapidAPI is good and could be much better. Too many APIs haven't been updated recently.
7. Pricing is largely uncompetitive in APIs. There are huge discrepancies due to quality and features.
8. Consumers will interact will APIs more directly in the future. Customer API browsers to interact directly with data.
9. APIs will communicate more with machines including "AI/ML"
10. APIs should tap into general machine language to better interact
11. Every API has a dialect that must be interpreted