I see the web wallet is up on STEPS site.  How are you planning on getting the payment gateway to work?  Will STEPS be added to a site like coinpayments or will it be a custom setup?  The online store will it be like ebay where people can put their items up for bid or like ETSY where you have a fixed price, or will the store be run by the devs only?
I didn't make any mention of my worries with the exchange before because TBH i didn't think STEPS would last this far.  But since I have already ROI'd and development seems to be humming along fairly well I feel I can express my worries now.
Don't you think 5 minute blocktimes are too slow to run an exchange on?  Look at NXT for example.  They have slower block times and their decen exchange is terrible!  
Bitshares 2.0 on the other hand is very responsive.  But they have 3 second block times. Over 100x faster than STEPS block times.  
Or will the exchange be centrally hosted with STEPS being the head currency like they do with DOT over at cryptopia?
IF the STEPS team could beat 3 second block times without implementing DPoS that would make the currency far more useful than BTS 2.0 is as everybody would be contributing to processing blocks versus BTS 2.0 where only 101 people are making all the money and processing all of the blocks.
Thank you for your well thought out post, will will provide some more information in due course. You did give us some food for thought and we will consider it.
We take this project very seriously and as stressed out before Steps is here for the long term.
Glad I could be of assistance.
I will tweet to shapeshift see if we can get them to add STEPS.
I send a tweet to shapeshift, here is their response:
ShapeShift.io@ShapeShift_io
@AltcoinSteps Hi, there. I have added your coin to our discovery list. If we decide to add we will announce on social channels 

PS: We now have 569 twitter followers, very good growth for Steps!!!