When Did 3-Year Commerce Builds Become “Fast”?
I’m just back from Retail Tech Show 2026, and one thing stuck with me. At some point, we seem to have collectively decided that multi-year delivery timelines are normal. Not just acceptable, but expected. I heard “fast” implementations being described as two years. Some stretching to three. Even four.
For eCommerce.
And that doesn’t quite sit right with me.
A Quick Reality Check
If we’re being honest, no eCommerce implementation should take more than a year to go live. And even that should be the upper bound, not the target. An MVP, something real that customers can actually use, should be in market in a matter of months. That doesn’t mean cutting corners, it’s about recognising how far the ecosystem has come and what is actually achievable.
The technology is more mature, the patterns are well understood and most of the challenges we face today have already been solved somewhere else. We’re not starting from zero anymore.
So What’s Actually Slowing Things Down?
It’s easy to point to complexity and every business has its nuances, with no two implementations being identical.
But when you step back, the core components are remarkably consistent:
A product catalogue
Search and merchandising
Checkout and payments
Content and campaigns
These aren’t new problems, which is why it’s worth asking whether the timelines we’re seeing are really driven by technical reality, or by something else.
The Commercial Angle
Long timelines don’t just happen, they’re the result of how projects are structured and sold. From an agency perspective, a three-year programme offers predictability. The revenue is spread out, risk is managed over time, and the numbers look solid on paper. From a client perspective, it often looks very different.
Extended delivery means waiting longer to see a return, it makes it harder to respond to changes in the market. It increases the chances that what you launch is already out of date by the time it goes live. And it ties up budget that could be used more effectively elsewhere.
None of that is usually the intention, but it’s often the outcome.
The World Has Moved On
The way commerce teams operate has changed. There’s more pressure on cash flow and scrutiny on investment. The CFO as less appetite for big, upfront bets that only pay off years down the line. Speed matters and being able to test, learn, and adapt matters even more.
In that context, stretching delivery over multiple years doesn’t just feel slow. It starts to work against the business.
A More Practical Approach
A better model is to get something live quickly, then build from there. Start with a focused MVP. Prioritise the parts of the experience that actually drive revenue. Get real customers interacting with it as soon as possible. From there you can iterate, add features based on what you learn, not what was guessed at the start of a long discovery phase. Invest in the areas that prove their value and change direction when needed.
It’s a more grounded way of building, and it tends to produce better outcomes.
Challenging What We’ve Normalised
None of this is about blaming agencies or ignoring the realities of delivery, good people are trying to do the right thing in a tough market. But it does feel like we’ve drifted into accepting something that deserves a bit more scrutiny.
Multi-year programmes have their place, but they shouldn’t be the default starting point for eCommerce. If you’re looking at a roadmap that takes two or three years just to get live, it’s worth pausing and asking why. Not in an adversarial way, just with a bit of curiosity.
Is that timeline really driven by what the business needs or what the agency wants?
Because the answer to that question can make a significant difference to how quickly you start seeing value.