Outsourse Web / Mobile / E-commerce Design

Category: E-Commerce

  • Ways ChatGPT Can Be Used in an eCommerce Business

    Ways ChatGPT Can Be Used in an eCommerce Business

    Something amazing has come to town, and it’s taking many industries by storm, from education to finance to law and so on. We’re referring to none other than ChatGPT, the highly advanced chatbot. And today, it’s making its significant presence felt in digital commercial transactions. As a savvy entrepreneur, it’s but natural for you to want to know more about this latest technology to rev up your online marketing and sales. So, in this blog post, we’ll unpack the top-notch ways you can use ChatGPT to boost your eCommerce business.

     

    What is ChatGPT?

     

    ChatGPT is a revolutionary natural language processing (NLP) technology that enables users to interact with computers as if they were human. It utilizes advanced deep-learning algorithms to grasp and respond to user input. This allows faster and more accurate information retrieval. As a result, the chatbot can help users quickly find the answers they need without manually sifting through long-winded search queries. What’s more, it can also pick up multiple languages, making it easier for customers around the world to access digital services regardless of their vernacular. The best part? ChatGPT is easy to use and requires minimal setup. Just plug in your data, and voila—you can start chatting away! So all that is well and good—but how can it help you with your online business? Let us count the ways.

    How ChatGPT can take your eCommerce business to the next level

     

    Here are some of the most effective ways that ChatGPT can revolutionize your online business. It can:

    1. Offer seamless shopping experiences

     

    ChatGPT can create personalized shopping experiences for customers, helping them find what they need quickly and easily. AI chatbots can leverage natural language processing (NLP) to understand customer queries, provide intuitive navigational guidance, and offer tailored product recommendations. This helps create a more seamless shopping experience, enhancing customer satisfaction.

    2. Automate time-consuming tasks

     

    Time-consuming tasks, such as order fulfillment and customer service inquiries, become a walk in the park with ChatGPT. Businesses can tap ChatGPT with its automated AI bots that can process orders quickly and accurately. At the same time, these can also provide quick responses to customer questions. This helps reduce the time it takes for customers to receive their orders while also freeing up employees to focus on more critical tasks.

    3. Increase customer engagement with conversational ads

     

    ChatGPT-powered conversational ads are becoming popular among eCommerce businesses. These ads allow companies to engage customers in genuine conversations and better understand their needs and preferences. By leveraging NLP capabilities, AI bots can deep-dive into the intent behind customer queries. Thus, they can better respond with relevant information about products or services that may interest your target market more. The result is more conversions and higher sales growth.

    4. Enhance development processes

     

    Online entrepreneurs can also leverage ChatGPT for software development automation. For example, the innovation can computerize the creation of specifications and deploy code based on those highly defined details. This could mean a more comprehensive understanding of customer needs, the ability to rapidly prototype applications, and the opportunity to receive feedback in real-time.

     

    ChatGPT could also be used for project management by providing insights on market trends that can inform product decisions. Ultimately, ChatGPT can help developers reduce time spent on mundane tasks such as debugging code or creating documentation. This way, they can focus their brain power on the more creative aspects of the development process.

    5. Improve cross-selling opportunities

     

    Additionally, AI chatbots powered by ChatGPT technology can help eCommerce companies improve cross-selling opportunities. For instance, they can offer real-time recommendations based on a user’s past purchasing behaviors or preferences. So, if a customer purchases a product from one category, the bots can suggest similar items from other affiliated categories in the same store that may also interest them. This way, customers also get to have the chance to enjoy more products that’ll suit their needs and tastes.

    6. Streamline checkout

     

    ChatGPT technology enables more streamlined checkout processes with intelligent automation techniques. Examples include payment process optimization and fraud prevention measures. These ensure secure transactions with minimal human intervention. This is advantageous to customers who are able to save time. From your end, you can also reduce your manual labor costs.

    7. Facilitate smarter shopping decisions

     

    With advanced natural language processing capabilities, ChatGPT-enabled AI bots can present detailed product information, such as reviews or specs. And they can even do this in a simple manner that customers can readily understand. In the process, the latter can make smarter shopping decisions.

    8. Handle complex queries more efficiently

     

    Traditional chatbot systems often struggle with complex queries. This is due to their limited understanding of the context behind the query itself. But ChatGPT’s deep learning algorithms enable its AI bots to better comprehend more nuanced questions from customers. As a result, they can provide more accurate answers. And this can go a long way in helping eCommerce businesses handle customer service inquiries more efficiently than ever!

     

    The bottom line

    By leveraging ChatGPT, eCommerce businesses can achieve greater success in today’s competitive digital landscape and remain ahead of their competition. Indeed, with this cutting-edge technology, the possibilities for online commercial industries are truly endless! Interested in supercharging your business with the latest tech innovations? Visit the blog of buildateam.io today!

    by Chatty Garrate.

  • 4 Ways Market Segmentation Can Drive Your E-commerce Sales

    4 Ways Market Segmentation Can Drive Your E-commerce Sales

    Among the most important aspects of marketing is knowing who your target audience is. Identifying the people who are likely to acknowledge and act upon your marketing efforts is the key to proving their success and generating a return on investment (ROI) through increased sales. One way companies can do so is through market segmentation.

     

    Market segmentation supports brands in efficiently communicating with consumers by focusing on particular consumer segments. It does so by dividing its market based on demographics, needs, priorities, interests, and other psychographic and behavioral criteria.

     

    Through this strategy, companies can effectively make an approachable subset of customers and tailor products, services, and branding in a way that is most attractive to the group.

    More on Market Segmentation

    As mentioned, market segmentation is used to help businesses create marketing strategies and tailor their products or services to fit their target markets. They also use this initiative to study their competitors and develop ways to set themselves apart.

     

    This process breaks down the consumer base into smaller subsets and makes it easier for companies to gain a better understanding of their customer’s behaviors, motivations, and pain points.

     

    Effective market segmentation is also used in identifying markets with high growth potential to help businesses develop strategies for acquiring new customers.

     

    Having this knowledge then helps companies create the best possible customer experience for their patrons and prospects, which could then lead to better branding and increased sales.

    How Market Segmentation Can Drive E-commerce Sales

    Understanding the customer base is crucial for business growth and with market segmentation, companies can speed up this development. It’s especially beneficial for e-commerce businesses since they can easily connect with their target audience.

     

    Connecting with the consumers — whether they are existing, new, or potential customers — is only the start of driving up engagement and sales. Here are other ways e-commerce companies can boost online transactions using market segmentation.

    1. Allows companies to personalize their marketing strategies

    Personalization in marketing makes it easier for businesses to connect with their target audience and encourage engagement with their product or service. Even small companies operating in specific niches can gain benefits by tailoring their strategies instead of employing the same messages to everyone.

     

    Organizations can implement this initiative with market segmentation. By dividing the market based on a set of criteria, companies can pinpoint the specific wants and needs of their customers and prospects.

     

    This knowledge enables them to employ customer-specific marketing strategies that express clear messages, attract potential customers, and differentiate the company from its competition — all of which help increase sales.

    2. Helps in improving products and services

    By identifying the wants and needs of their customer base, companies can also innovate and improve their products and services to meet those demands. That’s because market segmentation helps in creating a customer persona.

     

    A customer persona is an archetypal representation of existing consumer subsets created to determine what kind of user will interact with the company and it uses the product or service. This portrayal then helps organizations better understand customer needs and build on their existing products to develop better designs.

     

    Knowing what their customers are looking for also helps businesses discover new opportunities from unexplored demographics. With this new scope, companies can create new goods and services that can solve unique consumer problems or provide their specific needs.

    3. Builds a stronger brand image and product differentiation

    One of the results of a market segmentation study is determining how different subsets perceive the companies that employ this strategy. This outcome then forces these businesses to take that perception into account when delivering their message and creating other marketing materials.

     

    That means companies will tailor their messages and advertisements to that specific subset to reflect their existing perception. Doing so enables the brands to uphold and build a stronger brand image that customers can easily identify.

     

    Aside from strengthening their brand image, market segmentation also helps companies differentiate their products and offerings from their competitors. They can do so by personalizing how they market their goods and services to make them more memorable and enticing for different segments.

    4. Enhances customer experience

    Through market segmentation, companies can unlock valuable customer insights that can help them improve their service and elevate the customer experience. This understanding includes consumer perception, how customers use the product or service, and their preferences.

     

    Market segmentation also enables businesses to determine which segments engage with their offerings the most and which ones use or interact with them the least. This data then allows them to understand this behavior and what they can do about it.

     

    For instance, they can maintain existing marketing strategies for the segment that shows greater engagement and develop new campaigns to improve the delivery of their message to the weaker subsets.

     

    Implementing these strategies improves how companies approach and interact with different segments — which then helps them build long-term relationships that can support sales of goods or services.

    A focused and precise approach

    With market segmentation, companies can properly allocate their marketing efforts and budget to the right audience. It also helps them make efficient use of their time and resources instead of targeting customers individually or the market as a whole.

     

    This is especially important for small businesses that take up loans for their marketing efforts. They have to make use of these funds by employing strategies that yield effective results — and they can do just that through the centered approach of market segmentation.

     

    Written by Chatty Garrate

  • The Role Of The Metaverse In The Future of E-Commerce

    The Role Of The Metaverse In The Future of E-Commerce

    Imagine this: you’re in the metaverse, a virtual world replicating the physical, and you can do all your day-to-day activities. Making new friends, shopping for the latest collections, and working collaboratively – these are all applications of the metaverse. With tech giants sold on this revolutionary concept, it will no longer be a figment of our imagination.

    What Is The Metaverse?

    One of the biggest buzzwords that everyone hears nowadays is the “metaverse”. But has anyone taken their time to wonder, what exactly is the “metaverse”? When you hear the likes of Mark Zuckerberg talking about this new concept, it’s easy to be intrigued by what it means. In the broadest sense, the metaverse is synonymous to cyber space. This idea does not necessarily mean a new type of technology, rather it focuses on the way we interact with technology.

     

    Still don’t get it? Here’s another way people define it: virtual worlds. These virtual worlds can be even found in games that are played on PC, consoles, smartphones, and even virtual reality headsets. And what’s a virtual world without a digital economy? Many companies intend to create and sell digital goods in these virtual worlds too.

     

    What Is The Role Of Metaverse In The Future Of E-Commerce?

    Okay, now you might be wondering – what does the metaverse have to do with e-commerce? Many companies are now hopping on the metaverse train, and the journey seems to show no signs of stopping. While we are still in the nascent stages of the metaverse, we can already see the future impact of metaverse on e-commerce.

    Building A Community

    Shopping online doesn’t always have to be a lonely experience. What the metaverse can bring to the table is an unparalleled community-building experience. When shopping online, you can easily see the reactions of other shoppers when a brand showcases their new products. Plus, if you need any advice on which outfit to pick, you can easily ask your friends in the metaverse! It’s a lot more fun to engage with the brand and other fans of the brand – it gives you a sense of connectedness. That’s why the metaverse is a great tool for social interaction.

    Better Market Insights

    For a brand to capture its audience, this idea always remains at the core: know your customer. There’s no better way to know your customer than by immersing them in the metaverse. Think of it like this. Customers get to see prototypes of new collections without having manufactured them in the first place. It’s easy to obtain feedback from them in the virtual world. In turn, you prevent the risk of a failed product launch. And if they love your product, you’ll have an idea of how much you want to manufacture. In short, it’s marketing research taken to the next level. Who doesn’t want that?

    Lower Product Return Rates

    For stores selling products that are difficult to assess online, such as fashion and cosmetics, the metaverse solves a big problem: high product return rates. When clients are given a chance to judge products up close, they are able to set reasonable product expectations to avoid disappointment. This, in turn, prevents product returns.

    Immersive Experience

    While online shopping has become convenient for many, it can be boring for some. According to a study by Shopkick, a shopping rewards app, about 70% of  customers rate the ability to try on and see products as their favorite part of their in-store shopping experiences. The metaverse solves this by merging physical and virtual worlds to fill the gap between online shopping and in-store shopping experiences. And, the immersive experience it provides sure helps in influencing customers’ purchase decisions.

    Customized Experiences

    The metaverse experience is not only immersive, it’s also customized. Personalization is the future, with many customers making it a priority in their shopping experience. Hence, the metaverse will be the perfect platform for brands to offer targeted promotions and other engagement opportunities. And because the metaverse is a virtual world, customers can visit virtual stores anywhere at their most convenient time.

    Increase Your Reach

    What makes the metaverse so appealing is how easy it is to expand your reach. With virtual real estate included in the metaverse, you can simply rent a piece of virtual land and advertise your brand as you would in a traditional billboard – only that it’s a more exciting option. In fact, many popular brands such as Coca-Cola have already invested in metaverse billboards to promote their products.

     

    Final Word

    The future is bright for e-commerce, thanks to the metaverse. While the technology still has a long way to go, many companies are in a tight race to dominate this new form of tech. After all,  it’s a fresh concept that benefits both customers and companies. Whether you’re a customer seeking personalized shopping experiences or a company wanting to know the market better, riding the wave of the metaverse seems to be the best way to go.

    Article written by Chatty Garrate

  • 7 Cyber Security Threats E-Commerce Websites Should Watch Out For

    7 Cyber Security Threats E-Commerce Websites Should Watch Out For

    Image source

     

    With looming security threats against online businesses, keeping your company safe should be your priority. The e-commerce industry in particular is greatly affected by these attacks. In fact, e-commerce companies lose 5% of their revenue to fraud every year. It’s important that you keep your website secure because it helps establish trust and credibility, especially among your clients. Now, the big question is: what are these threats that you should watch out for?

    What Are The Cyber Security Threats E-Commerce Websites Should Watch Out For?

    The e-commerce industry is now experiencing a surge in a number of security threats brought about by hackers online. Without you knowing, your website might have already been a victim of malware, phishing, bots, and other security threats. And with hackers targeting owners, admins, and employees of e-commerce companies, the best way to protect your company is to arm yourself with knowledge of these cyber security threats.

    Malware

    A huge cyber security threat involves a term you might be familiar with – malware. Hackers are extremely clever people. They can design software that can infect your computer systems without you knowing. These programs include viruses, trojans, and ransomware. Whether it’s your admin’s or your customer’s system, a malware-infected system can have data swiped easily. And yes, this can affect your e-commerce website as well.

    Phishing

    Phishing is a common practice of attackers wherein they send emails purporting that they are either a legitimate shop or company owners. In this practice, they create a convincing clone of your website to fool readers into believing them. This, in turn, leads to readers providing sensitive information such as card numbers, passwords, and other personal information.

    Financial Fraud

    Financial frauds have existed since the creation of online businesses. The two major types of financial fraud include credit card fraud and fake return fraud. As implied by the name itself, credit card fraud involves a criminal using stolen credit card data to purchase goods on an e-commerce website. This type of fraud may also come in the form of cyber criminals stealing personal identities to apply for new credit cards. Meanwhile, fake return frauds refer to unauthorized transactions that falsely request returns. For any company, this results in financial losses. That’s why this is a type of fraud you must keep an eye out for.

     

    Spamming

    Sending emails is one of the standard means of communicating electronically. And when it comes to increasing sales and generating leads, it’s one of the most effective channels of communication. But, bad players can take advantage of this powerful medium. How do they do this? They attack through infected links in forms, comments, or messages. And when an innocent reader falls into the trap of clicking the link, they will be directed to the website where they become a victim. This website then downloads different types of viruses or spyware on their device.

    Bots

    Bots are specific programs that are created to perform a specific task. A commonly used bot is a web crawler:  a bot that ranks all websites by browsing all the pages on the world wide web. You might be wondering how these web crawlers pose a security threat to your website. It’s simple – these bots crawl through your website to obtain info on inventory on prices. And when the hacker is a competitor, data can be used to lower the prices on their websites in an attempt to lower your sales.

    To give you an edge against these competitors, include customized products in your catalog is a great  way to set yourself apart.

     

    DDoS Attacks

    DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks are a huge nuisance to many e-commerce companies. This type of threat involves a server receiving a barrage of requests from IP addresses that ultimately leads to crashing your website, making it unavailable to visitors. Your sales then suffer, making the attack successful.

     

    Man In The Middle (MITM)

    Have you ever feared that your conversations are being eavesdropped on? Your greatest fears are actually a reality on the internet. Many hackers eavesdrop on conversations between the e-commerce company and a client. When a user connects to a vulnerable Wi-Fi network, attackers can easily take advantage of it and steal personal data from these conversations.

     

    What Are The Solutions To These Cyber Security Threats?

    With different types of security threats rampant in the e-commerce industry, your company must be up to speed with the best solutions to combat these attacks. Fortunately, there are a variety of security measures you can take to keep yourself and your clients protected. Here’s what you can do to prevent a cyber security attack:

     

    Risk Assessment

    Conducting a regular risk assessment is a step toward combating these security threats. A risk assessment identifies assets that could be affected by an attack and the risks that affect them. This type of assessment ensures that the controls put in place are appropriate for your e-commerce company. Also, this data is used in helping company executives make important decisions on security.

    Anti-Malware Software

    In case you don’t have an anti-malware program yet, you should know that downloading one is an absolute must. This program is responsible for detecting and deleting viruses that can harm your computer systems. Make sure to download an efficient program and regularly update it so that your systems stay safe.

    HTTPS and SSL Certificates

    An excellent way to improve data security involves HTTPS and SSL certificates. Not only does it protect data transfer between servers and devices, but it also keeps your websites up in the rankings. This is especially needed for e-commerce websites due to the number of online transactions. Hackers can simply steal credit card information when there is a lack of security. Due to the number of financial transactions done on ecommerce websites, hiring a FinTech dev team is another way to ensure that your online transactions are safe.

     

    Final Word

    Keeping your website safe from cyber security threats is undoubtedly difficult, But, it’s a necessary measure all e-commerce companies must take if they want to protect the company and their clients. With hackers getting more creative with their attacks, cyber security must be a top priority of any company that wants to make it in the industry – and that includes yours.

     

    If you need to build a hacker-proof high-conversion ecommerce website – reach out to support@buildateam.io and our team will gladly help you with your project.

     

    Written by Chatty Garage

  • How to Transfer Your Love of Sports Into a Passion for Business

    How to Transfer Your Love of Sports Into a Passion for Business

    If you feel impassioned by sports and can’t imagine it being part of your daily life, then why not transfer your love for sports into a passion for business?  Here’s how to get started on this.

    Go into sports therapy

    If helping people on the sports field has always intrigued you, then why not consider becoming a sports therapist? This way, you’ll be right in the heart of the action and making a big difference in the lives of players by helping to speed up their recovery process.

     

    Sponsor your favorite team

     

    If you have the resources, why not consider sponsoring your favorite teams or those that are less fortunate to help them succeed in their sporting careers? For example, you can help sponsor uniforms, sporting gear, or even sporting grounds to make a big difference in your community.

     

    Open a business and lighting supplies

     

    As you probably know, lighting is a big deal when it comes to sports as the right light can dictate how closely or clearly you can see that winning try, for example. Furthermore, the lighting business is one to go into, as every stadium or sports field will require the right lighting to some degree or another. Suppose you need a little more information on this front, then why not use industry case studies to determine if these LED lights can be used for stadiums and more? Furthermore, you’ll get a better idea of the type of lighting that is required for average size to large size stadiums, as well as what the differences are between indoor and outdoor lighting as well as what lighting you’ll need for sports grounds from college level upwards.

     

    Create your own e-commerce website

     

    If you have a passion for buying and selling sports apparel, then you could even consider creating your own e-commerce business to advertise your trendy sporting goods.

     

    Jobs you can do from home

     

    In today’s digital age, you don’t even have to go out and work someplace else to make a business out of your passion. In fact, there are more than enough options to do what you love from home.

     

    Become a sports writer

     

    If you are mighty with the pen, then becoming a sports writer could just be the job for you. Moreover, there are many mediums you can lend your talents to depending on your preferences, including social media, major league websites, newspapers, and more.

     

    Become a website designer

     

    If you are a talented graphic designer, then why not consider going into the business of building websites for your favorite sports teams to help them gain more exposure and support online? After all, websites are pretty much mandatory, no matter the industry.

     

    Start your own podcast

     

    Becoming a sports podcaster is an excellent option if you have the gift of the gab. Moreover, if you are starting your own podcasting business from home, you probably don’t even need a Communications or a Journalism degree, provided that you are quite knowledgeable about the sport you are passionate about. Then it’s just about figuring out how to make your podcast as engaging as possible if you want your podcast show to have a more casual, chatty feel about it.

     

    These are just a few of the options you might want to consider if you can’t imagine a day without sports. Furthermore, it shows you can be just as involved as ever whether you choose to go into lighting, sports podcasting, or any of the above.

     

    If you’re looking for a remote team to help design and maintain your website, we’re here for you. Visit the Buildateam website for more information.

     

    Image via Pexels

    Written by Patrick Young

  • Reaction Commerce vs Magento 2

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    While Magento 2 is a new addition to the Magento family that already has been around for 10+ years, Reaction Commerce is just in its A investment round led by Google Ventures.  It has yet a long way to go to become as encompassing and popular as Magento, but it already has earned a handful of followers in the development community excited about the hot new stack, as well as clients that believe that it’s enough dealing with Magento reindexing and its time for something different.

    At Buildateam we think that the solution must match the situation and the business objective of product owners, so while there is a definite winner in terms of the availability of features out of the box, for those who are ready to invest time and effort to be ahead of competition there are advantages in using the new reactive stack that promises to offer a real-time personalized experience.

    At this moment, out of the box Reaction Commerce doesn’t offer as many features as Magento. But pragmatic Magento users might have already noticed that default plugins and features out of the box is one thing, but actually transforming Magento into a lightning fast, beautiful, interactive site with custom business logic takes a lot of time.

    Here are some differences between the 2 platforms.

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    Magento 2

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    Reaction Commerce

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    Comparing Architecture

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    • Magento 2 uses MySQL + PHP on the backend and jQuery on the frontend. This means that your team can consist of the following developers: backend PHP developers, frontend CSS/HTML developers and javascript developers that help with complex interactive logic on the front.
    • The main scalability principle of Magento 2 is the availability of a very strong caching mechanism that comes with the our of the box solution. This caching makes up for the extra time required for the PHP + MySQL to respond to frontend requests. Magento 2 can be configured to be pretty fast in that regard.
    • Since the caching requires rebuilding after each data update, for stores with a large number of products on practice rebuilding cache is usually limited to a manual update only a couple of times a day to reduce the chances of new users hitting uncached pages.
    • Magento MySQL EAV database allows having a large number of custom attributes that can be used for filters and custom logic.
    • Due to such aggressive caching and other complexities of the system, onboarding of new developers into Magento 2 has been reported as more difficult compared to Magento 1.x.
    • On the frontend Magento 2 uses jQuery which allows creating beautiful interactive frontend experiences using AJAX. JSONs are passed from the backend to the frontend and then used to build interfaces.

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    • Reaction Commerce Platform uses Meteor.js + MongoDb on the backend and React.js on the frontend. This means that your team will have one common skill: Javascript. It might make it easier for frontend and backend developers to sneak peek into each others code without totally freaking out.
    • MongoDb allows extending the database schema almost on the fly, which makes it easy to add new attributes.
    • Meteor.js at the core adds reactivity to the platform which means almost instantaneous updates on all the screens displaying the information and database.
    • Frontend is powered by miniMongo, which is a little more organized way to store and retrieve the data in the user browser. It means there are no AJAX requests. The data gets updated in both miniMongo and MongoDB on the backend automatically in real-time.
    • Instead of using HTTP/S to transfer the data between the backend and frontend Reaction Commerce uses Web Sockets. HTML5 Web Sockets represents the next evolution of web communications—a full-duplex, bidirectional communications channel that operates through a single socket over the Web ( http://www.websocket.org/quantum.html )
    • Since MongoDb is located in RAM, its a step closer to the frontend compared to MySQL so it contributes to the ‘real-time’ data transfers via Web Sockets.

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    Comparing Frontend

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    Home Page. Category Pages. Product Page.

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    Cart & Checkout.

    [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row height=”medium” color_scheme=”” us_bg_color=”” us_text_color=”” us_bg_image=”” us_bg_video=”0″][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]Magento 2 offers a mini cart, a separate cart page and one-page 2 step checkout page with a totals sidebar. All pages are AJAXified, so its a smooth experience without page reloading.[/vc_column_text][us_gallery ids=”9459,9453,9455,9456″ columns=”1″][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]Reaction Commerce offers a mini cart that toggles from the top of every page without the cart page itself. The checkout is one page as well, with each step opening up in a new block after the previous one is filled in. The Reaction team took some steps forward to remove extra friction from user experience and a separate cart page is one of them.[/vc_column_text][us_gallery ids=”9480,9479,9476,9475″ columns=”1″][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row height=”medium” color_scheme=”” us_bg_color=”” us_text_color=”” us_bg_image=”” us_bg_video=”0″][vc_column][vc_column_text]

    Account Pages.

    [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row height=”medium” color_scheme=”” us_bg_color=”” us_text_color=”” us_bg_image=”” us_bg_video=”0″][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]Magento 2 account pages have a default sidebar with tabs and some default options that offer useful and so much options for the store users. By default each tab is a separate page.[/vc_column_text][us_gallery ids=”9447,9446,9445,9448,9449,9450″ columns=”1″][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]Reaction Commerce offers a simpler one page account layout which can be rewritten as a custom component to include tabs or any other layout.[/vc_column_text][us_gallery ids=”9478,9471,9472,9473″ columns=”1″][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row height=”medium” color_scheme=”” us_bg_color=”” us_text_color=”” us_bg_image=”” us_bg_video=”0″][vc_column][vc_column_text]

    To be continued…

    [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row disable_element=”yes” height=”medium” color_scheme=”” us_bg_color=”” us_text_color=”” us_bg_image=”” us_bg_video=”0″][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]Default Magento 2 comes with a pre-installed cute theme and a bunch of test products.

     

    Magento 2 Home Page
    Magento 2 Home Page

     

    Magento 2 Category
    Magento 2 Category

    [/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]Home Page & Category Pages.

     

     

    Cart Page. Mini Cart. 

    Default Magento 2 cart page
    Default Magento 2 cart page

     

     

    Default Magento 2 minicart
    Default Magento 2 minicart

     

    (Reaction Commerce Screenshots)

     

    Checkout. 

    Magento 2 Checkout
    Magento 2 Checkout

     

    Magento 2 Checkout
    Magento 2 Checkout

     

    (Reaction Commerce Screenshots)

     

    Account Pages.

    Magneto 2 Account Dashboard
    Magneto 2 Account Dashboard

     

    Magneto 2 Account Dashboard New
    Magento 2 Account Dashboard New

     

     

    Magneto 2 Account Dashboard Edit
    Magento 2 Account Dashboard Edit

     

     

    Magneto 2 Account Dashboard Address Book
    Magento 2 Account Dashboard Address Book

     

    (Reaction Commerce Screenshots)

     

    Orders.

    Magento 2 Customer Orders
    Magento 2 Customer Orders

     

     

    Magento 2 Customer Orders
    Magento 2 Customer Orders

     

     

    (Reaction Commerce Screenshots)

    Working in stealth mode on an in-house custom brewed node.js+react.js application to ditch Magento? Why not use an open-source platform with some ready docs to speed up the development and build a community?

    We hope that this comparison of Magento 2 vs Reaction Commerce will help you make the right decision for your business! If you have any questions or need a reliable outsourcing partner for Magento or Reaction Commerce projects, check out our E-commerce Design & Development Services!

    [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]

    I am text block. Click edit button to change this text. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Ut elit tellus, luctus nec ullamcorper mattis, pulvinar dapibus leo.

    [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row height=”medium” color_scheme=”” us_bg_color=”” us_text_color=”” us_bg_image=”” us_bg_video=”0″][vc_column][vc_column_text]We hope that this comparison of Magento 2 vs Reaction Commerce will help you make the right decision for your business.

    Working in stealth mode on an in-house custom brewed node.js+react.js application to ditch Magento? Why not use an open-source platform with some ready docs to speed up the development?

    Not in a hurry to be tech-oriented? Stick to whats already working and it might get you through for another decade or so.

    If you have any questions or need a reliable outsourcing partner for Magento or Reaction Commerce projects, check out our E-commerce Design & Development Services![/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

  • Migrating to NodeJS+ReactJS E-Commerce Store From Magento EE

    Migrating to NodeJS+ReactJS E-Commerce Store From Magento EE

    Some of the Magento Enterprise clients that outgrew their solution started building NodeJS+ReactJS E-Commerce applications in-house. Here is why, explains Delaney, CTO of one of the online book retailers.

    “The first decision we made was to drop Magento. As we invested in our commerce experience we found we would need an increasingly customer-centric experience which goes beyond a simple storefront, and even with a great and supportive.

    So why NodeJS/React?

    • It provides us with server-side rendering, making SEO “just work”;
    • It gave us a common skillset (ES2017 Javascript) for server & client development;
    • It has great default integration libraries all the 3rd party tools we use, from payment (Braintree) to order management (NetSuite) to marketing/analytics (so many!);
    • The event-loop structure of Node gives our servers incredible server volume, cutting hosting costs by >75%;
    • Javascript’s functional-first programming model helps us write high-performance web services by default, instead of having to fight for it (ie: PHP);
    • React’s model for client development is the best way to model UI we’ve yet found.

    Really, if you’re going to build a web app right now from scratch, you should use NodeJS/React.

    What’s hard?

    • The single greatest challenge of this approach is the required skill level of the development team. Everyone has to be a full-stack expert to make the most of it, and it’s easy to go wrong, so it’s both hard to get started on the team and hard to maintain the required level of quality. We’ve really had to invest in hiring, improve our internal processes and establish quality controls, but in the end, it’s been well worth it.”

     

    If you decided to build an application using Javascript, make sure to check out Reaction Commerce! Why develop from scratch if there is an awesome ready to use, open source E-commerce solution based on Meteor.js?!

    Make sure to check out additional resources like this one: 4 Node.js Logging libraries which make sophisticated logging simpler, log analysis and log monitoring by Loggly.

    Need help choosing the right solution and building it to fit your needs? Email us at hello@buildateam.io – we are here to help!

     

  • What E-Commerce Platform To Choose: WordPress, Magento, Shopify, Reaction Commerce.

    What E-Commerce Platform To Choose: WordPress, Magento, Shopify, Reaction Commerce.

    Launching an E-Commerce store? What platform to choose? Please see below our thoughts on some of the most popular platforms out there.

     

    WOOCOMMERCE

    WordPress has been around for a while and if you already own a WordPress blog/vlog/site it might be the perfect low-budget option to get started. As much as we all love WordPress, building a new E-commerce site using WordPress may not be the most practical idea. Originally WordPress was developed as blog software without E-commerce support.   WordPress could be used for building wonderful LMS (Learning Management Systems) for online courses, or for multi-million dollar blogs, vlogs, and business websites, but for e-commerce stores and marketplaces – its a little too much of a stretch frankly speaking. Even though you can make WordPress work – it would need much love and plugins in order to achieve E-Commerce experience that other E-commerce oriented platforms offer out of the box. Plus all the security concerns. When developing on WordPress many new entities become a variation of a ‘post’. You can do a lot of things with it, but its just such a post. Use WordPress for a great blog with an e-commerce store built on something more sales oriented.  

    If you are looking for an experienced team to help you with maintaining your WordPress site, check out our Outsourced WordPress Design & Development Services.

     

    SHOPIFY

    Great solution for smaller / medium sized businesses for its simplicity and reliability. Shopify is the easiest platform to launch from our list. It’s a hosted service, so if your requirements fit into its limitations there will be no operational costs besides monthly fees (from $29) and 2.9% + 30c for credit card processing fees.

     

    Shopify App Store offers many apps that extend store functionality. You can also create custom apps connected to Shopify platform via API and embedded frames. This allows creating a highly customized experience. Which means that after customizing the heck out of it, you start thinking that it might have been easier with an open-source platform.

     

    • Customizing using private apps also means that besides running Shopify you will also need to run a separate server / hosting for your apps;
    • Unless you are using ‘Shopify Plus’ you have no control over Shopify backend code, so sometimes it’s not trivial to develop complicated things;
    • Any customizations and additional data for products are stored in product meta fields. Any additional store data is saved in store meta fields or on your own backend connected via API.
    • Shopify has auto-scaling built-in and it had performed very well during the Black Friday, keeping the response time the same as if it was no load at all.
    • If you want to have international support with different languages and currencies, you will need to create a new store for each of those countries / languages / currencies.

     

    Moving highly customized themes and logic from staging to production is also a non-trivial task and requires some time for manual transfer. Unless you use a paid app that can do the data transfer for you. If you have been using meta-fields for customizing your store you will need to install an app that allows exporting/importing those custom meta-fields as well. The explicit limit on the number of possible product variations (100) can be a hassle to overcome when trying to fit in custom experiences with numerous SKUs.

    Though powerful, but overly simplistic interface and minor limitations of the platform functionality limit the imagination of an avid Magento user.

    CREATE A NEW SHOPIFY STORE

    If you are looking for an experienced team to help you with building your Shopify store, check out our Shopify Design and Development Services.

     

    MAGENTO 2

    Magento 2 is a great solution for medium-large Enterprise stores that don’t have that ‘technology first’ approach but still, want full control of their E-commerce platform & hosting environment. Magento has hundreds of plugins, well-established ecosystem, and a global network of certified developers. Community Edition is free. There are no additional charges. However, the platform is very resource hungry and requires skilled engineers for support and maintenance.

     

    There is no autoscaling out of the box. Scalability has to be accomplished by engineers utilizing additional software and server configuration. Magento 2 offers a much better user experience on both frontend and admin panel than Magento 1. It has a very strong caching mechanism built in and has evolved significantly in terms of the libraries used for creating front-end experience.

     

    It is also fair to mention that Magento has been an inspiration for a lot of new e-commerce platforms that emerged in recent years due to its very well thought through architecture and flexibility. There have been a lot of comments in the development community that Magento 2 takes more time to develop because of such an aggressive caching.

     

    Nevertheless, since this is an open-source platform where you have access to the code base with the right resources you can make it fully fit your needs and custom flow. If you have a complex store with custom logic on the frontend (category / product / checkout / cart / account pages ) and backend – Magento 2 is the way to go over the previously mentioned platforms.

    If you want a full control of your e-commerce platform & hosting, Magento 2 combined with Kubernetes on Google Cloud is a serious solution for scale.

    Read side by side comparison of Reaction Commerce and Magento 2.

     

    If you are looking for an experienced team to help you with building your Magento store, check out our Magento Design and Development Services.

     

    REACTION COMMERCE

    It’s a new Meteor.js based E-Commerce platform that aims at solving problems that Magento has at scale. Many large Enterprise Magento customers that we know, started developing their in-house Node.js+React.js based E-Commerce applications to get a technological advantage over the competition. Why not use an open-source reactive framework for that?

     

    Reaction Commerce is an open-source platform that has the power of Meteor.js under its hood. Reaction Commerce also offers managed Reaction Commerce hosting platform, which means that as its Enterprise user you get both: full access to the application and data with a scalable hosting that is fine-tuned for your needs supported by the platform developers.

     

    If you are a Javascript developer or have someone ready to work on your project who is not afraid of a new stack and fixing bugs you will achieve excellent results in terms of required resources, performance, speed, and functionality. Almost real-time updates allow you to take the personalization experience to the next level. Reactivity goes through the whole stack (Database + Server + Frontend). It’s a huge step up from ‘AJAX’. More functionality, scalability and less hassle.

     

    There are a number of layout changes from Magento as well. Login / Create Account / Cart do not exist as separate pages. They are represented as popups out of the box. Account pages and order pages are also different in layout from what you might be used to see in Magento. According to the Reaction Commerce Team, if your sales are over $10mln a year and you are looking for a cutting-edge E-commerce platform that is way ahead of the closest competition in terms of the technology used – Reaction Commerce is for you. Backed up by GV (formerly Google Ventures) in its recent A round, Reaction Commerce is an exciting preview into the future of E-Commerce.

     

    You will need some patience and skilled development resources in order to make the most out of all the flexibility that Reaction Commerce offers out of the box, but the result is well worth it.

     

    The community for Reaction Commerce is rapidly growing and it’s exciting to see the future of E-commerce take a new turn. Implementing the new generation software has a learning curve but if you do it right you will take the user experience to the new level.

     

    Read side by side comparison of Reaction Commerce and Magento 2.

     

    If you are looking for an experienced team to help you with building your Reaction Commerce store, check out our Reaction Commerce Design and Development Services.

     

    Summary

    Overall the choice for a new E-Commerce store depends upon your business goals and revenue. If you sell for example for $1k per week there is no point for you to sign up for Magento or Reaction Commerce at all. Use Shopify or any other hosted platform with a minimum fee. However, if you sell for $10k+ per week you certainly want to explore a more custom solution that will take your business to a new level. There are hundreds (if not thousands) of other E-Commerce platforms that can get you where you want. BigCommerce, OSCommerce, Moltin etc. If you use any other platform and would like to share the benefits of it – please feel free to comment below!

    Email us at hello@buildateam.io and learn more about our expert dedicated outsourced e-commerce design and development teams.