Everyone’s trying to gain an advantage over the competition, and with an estimated 12 – 24 million eCommerce sites across the globe, it’s not easy to stand out in the competitive world of online retail.
One way eCommerce sites have been capturing their customers’ attention is by offering well-designed and highly personalized online shopping experiences.
In this article, we’ll look at what tools can help your website stand out to potential customers, and the technologies that will help support the scalability and long-term growth of your company.
Whether you’re investigating options for a new project or evaluating an existing project, this article is meant to shorten your search and help make the evaluation process a little easier.
(Story originally published on Blue Coding's blog: https://www.bluecoding.com/post/choosing-the-right-tech-stack-for-your-ecommerce-store)
Choosing a tech stack
Your technology stack is the collection of programming languages, frameworks, and other technologies that power your online store. Your technology stack can be broken down into two main categories: front end and back end.
Front end technology stack
The client-side or front end is the part of your website that is visible to the public. It's the interface customers see when they visit your online store. The main components you’ll use to shape and design the look of your website are HTML, CSS, and JS.
- Hypertext markup language (HTML) is what gives a web page its structure, and tells the browser how to read the different elements on the page including headings, lists, links, images, and so on.
- Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is what you use to style and position the individual elements on your page including shape, size, color, and fonts. This also is how you build the layout of your website.
- CSS frameworks provide predefined web elements that allow you to build elegant and responsive websites faster and more efficiently. Some popular CSS frameworks include Bootstrap, Foundation, and Materialize.
- JavaScript (JS) is what makes your website interactive. Beyond interactivity, JavaScript also provides real-time data updates and animation options. Javascript comes with frameworks and libraries that allow you to perform tasks in a less verbose way.
- Popular libraries include: jQuery and React.js
- Popular frameworks include: Angular, Vue.js, Node.js,
Back end technology stack
While the back end isn’t visible to end-users the same way the front end is, it’s equally as important – after all, these are the technologies powering your front end. The back end allows developers to store and access data, as well as create complex business logic making your website dynamic. Three major components of your back end are server-side programming language, server, and database.
When it comes to choosing a server-side programming language for your project, there are many factors to take into consideration, including developer availability, average cost of talent, scalability, and performance.
Popular programming languages and frameworks include:
PHP: Laravel, Symfony, Phalcon, Slim
Ruby: Ruby on Rails, Sinatra, Padrino
Python: Django, Flask, Pylons
You’ll need a way to store data – that’s where your database comes into play. Common databases include MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, DynamoDB, and Firebase Database.
Lastly, you’ll need a server to handle requests from clients. Some popular options include Apache and Nginx.
Tried-and-true tech stacks for eCommerce:
Fast facts about eCommerce:
- Around 50% of participants said that the number one reason for abandonment during check out is the high costs. (Baymard Institute)
- It’s expected that more than 95% of all purchases to be conducted via eCommerce by 2040. (Nasdaq)
- Around 9% of respondents said they used voice technology to shop once a week or more frequently. (PricewaterhouseCoopers)
- Of 1,888 interviewed U.S online consumers, around 40% said that the reason why they didn’t make a purchase was that it wouldn’t arrive on time. Around 20% of them reported that they didn’t order a product because the delivery date was not precise. (eCommerce Consumer Insights Report)
Third-party Services & Software
What could be considered the third component of your eCommerce technology stack are third party services and software that provide additional functionality to your online store – for example, working with a payment gateway to process payments online or improving customer experience through marketing automation software.
These tools not only save you development time, but they can also significantly improve your bottom line by saving you money and helping generate more sales.
Pricing software
Prisync is a competitor price tracking and monitoring software for eCommerce. Offering stock availability tracking, dynamic repricing automation, worldwide currency coverage, powerful reporting, email alerts, and a robust API for extensive automation. Prisync offers Shopify and Magento integrations.
Dropshipping software
Spark Shipping is dropshipping software that integrates with your existing E-commerce store to automate order fulfillment, provide dropshipping automation, and Amazon repricing. It allows you to automatically route orders to vendors, distributors, suppliers, or fulfillment centers. As orders come in, Spark Shipping will intelligently send orders to the correct place. One of the great things about Spark Shipping is it works with all vendors, including eBay, Amazon, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, Magento, and Shopify.
Voice UI software
Speechly is a tool that enables developers to create real-time voice user interfaces that update as the user speaks. You can use Speechly to quickly create a voice-powered form or even to create a voice-powered shopping cart. Speechly integrates seamlessly with your current user interface to provide amazing voice-based user experiences.
Customer Advocacy Software
Referral Candy helps eCommerce stores increase sales by getting shoppers to refer their friends. It’s an app that helps you accelerate word-of-mouth referrals through automation.
Thankbot is a great service for creating memorable experiences and wowing your customers. The service allows you to send handwritten, personalized thank-you notes at scale.
Conclusion
Competition in the eCommerce space has forced companies to look beyond creating basic cookie-cutter websites with a shopping cart, payment processing software, and product catalog. In today’s highly competitive eCommerce marketplace, companies are focusing on user experience and taking the time to design unique, handcrafted online shopping experiences for their customers.
At the end of the day, your tech stack should align with your business strategy and support your short and long-term goals as a company. Finding the right technology for your business might take some experimentation but it’s a necessary step if you want your eCommerce business to succeed.
For more insights, check out our blog on software development, outsourcing, and remote teams.
The ecommerce websites developed using the Magento platform are called Magento ecommerce websites.
The Magento development platform offers complete ecommerce business solutions.
Magento developers can customize the platform as and when needed to meet the business requirement.
The Magento ecommerce development platform is based on PHP and MySQL technologies.The Magento ecommerce websites are equipped with the following features in general:Product Catalog- The website builder lets the ecommerce developers create various pages together with the product catalog.
The catalog consists of category-wise products and product pages.
Online buyers place an order using the website to the seller.
An eCommerce app is an online store that is mainly used for buying and selling the product, Magento is the best eCommerce app development cross-platform.
Consumers use more mobile applications nowadays so the demand for eCommerce app is high, depending on this, an eCommerce app for your own business is very important as it speaks for your business and it also helps to promote your business.
You can develop your own eCommerce with Nevina Infotech that is the leading brand for eCommerce app development and has the best developers to rely on.
Features of the app can be: Easy log in/registerUser-friendly product and sortingDetailed product descriptionproduct galleryShopping cartShipping optionsOrder summaryEasy and secure in-app paymentsReturn policyShipping statusNumber of items left in the listRecommendationsProduct availability reminderWishlistChatReviews and feedbacksRatings Check the link below for more details: https://www.nevinainfotech.com/mobile-app-development-service
You may have heard on Reddit about the $53,000 investment on GameStop by Keith Gill that turned into nearly $50 million on January 28, 2021.
While you can use both short term and long term call options to leverage your investments, long term call options are less volatile than short term call options.
A general warning: stock options are much more volatile than the underlying stocks.
You can lose your entire investment very quickly, so you should only allocate capital that you’re willing to risk in its whole entirety to options.
A call option gives the right to buy a stock at a certain price for a certain time frame.Using a Long Call Option to “Leverage Up” Stock investmentsHere is an example using a call option– As of October 4, 2021, Apple stock is currently trading at $138.61 a share.
A call option to buy Apple at the price of $150.00 a share expiring January 19, 2024 (about two years and 3 months from October 4, 2021) costs about $20.55 per share (one option contract is usually for 100 shares of the underlying stock – so one contract will cost you about $2,055).
Cryptocurrency Exchanges never delayed to update itself.
The very soon latest turns out to be old in this industry.
Once, people hesitated to sign up in the crypto exchanges and thought of the Crypto market as the risk but, now in 2020, the world has turned 180 degrees in their view for the Crypto market and have recognized it.
Crypto market headlines are filled with futures trading and options trading, But, many blooming traders often get confused about what is the difference between futures trading and options trading Options TradingOptions trading, we could say options contract is the kind of agreement that lets traders buy or sell assets with a fixed price on a fixed date in the futureFuture trading is the same as options trading, traders have to choose the fixed date, the predetermined price for an asset.Futures tradingHere, the buyer and seller obligated to proceed with the trading.Future trading can be used for long term as well as short term.
If the trader expects the decline in price, they bought short term trading and if the trader believes in an increase in price, they buy long term future tradingKey DifferenceThe notable key risk difference is Future Trading is the obligation and the Options trading is the right.The Risk involved in the options trading is lesser than the Future tradingOptions trading is designed profoundly for Selling and buying with call options and put options
The global economy is now, more than ever, dependent on innovation, disruption and reimagination to re-create the manufacturing, services and agricultural sectors.
The challenges are not just limited to finding new sustainable and environment-friendly approaches, but extend to the why and how of “smarter ways of doing", to remain relevant and ahead of the competition.
Among the key three ‘M’ resources – namely, Men, Money, Materials – conventionally speaking, the services sector continues to depend on human resources (whereas manufacturing is now almost totally automated).
Thanks to immersion at a very early stage, say at toddler level, to state-of-the-art hardware and software, the gen-next may be able to learn and train only with a total upgrade of syllabus and curriculum of schools and colleges, which need to equip themselves with new multi-functional and expert (not trainee) skill sets.
Talking about the hospitality industry, service techniques and management approach will have to undergo drastic changes to cope with the highly automated IOT and AI ecosystem in most manually replaceable tasks.
The New Norm is all about smart learning, enlarged span to broaden the scope of capabilities and capacities of individuals.
