eCommerce

Did you know it takes users around 50 milliseconds (source) to form an opinion about your website? And if their first impression and experience are bad, 88% of consumers (source) are less likely to return to your website. How your products are organized and how easy it is for your customers to find what they are looking for play a massive part in that first impression.

That’s where product taxonomy comes in. A well-defined taxonomy helps manage large inventories and create a seamless and efficient shopping experience. It can make or break the user experience and seriously impact your bottom line.

Let’s start from the beginning.

The shift towards sustainability in tech stacks, some even say towards building eco-friendly websites, is nothing new. It aligns with modern demands for responsible business practices. According to some estimates, the carbon footprint of our gadgets, the internet, and the systems supporting them accounts for about 3.7% of global greenhouse emissions (source), And these emissions are predicted to double by 2025.

Clearly, (besides hype), there is a need to embrace more energy-efficient and sustainable solutions and tech, and oddly enough, there are business gains that come with it.

The key to creating a sustainable, green, eco-friendly, energy-efficient, or (call it what you will) eCommerce tech stack and reducing your online carbon footprint is to focus on efficiency and scalability at every level, from infrastructure overbuild tools and practices to user interaction.

A headless Product Information Management (PIM) system represents an evolution in how businesses manage and distribute product data. Unlike traditional PIM systems, a headless PIM decouples the back-end (the services layer) management of product information from the front-end (the presentation layer), providing greater flexibility and scalability.

Now, we’ve already discussed what PIM is and why and how you should use it. We also discussed the headless architecture approach in length. As the first and original headless PIM platform, here we'd like to go a bit in-depth about it and delve into essential topics such as data modeling, information architecture, digital asset management, access control, data quality, and governance.

Imagine trying to grow a garden with poor soil and no water. Even if you’re starting with the finest seeds, you won’t get anywhere. Similarly, the hosting environment you choose for your application will have a huge impact on how successfully your eCommerce application launches, performs, and scales over time. You need a platform that’s as fast, reliable, and affordable as possible.

So, which of those millions of platforms out there is the best one for you?

As a headless eCommerce platform, our primary goal is to create services that delight front-end developers. This involves extensive research, hands-on experimentation with cutting-edge frontend frameworks, and the development of open-source eCommerce starters utilizing these technologies.

With React, Angular, and Vue, along with frameworks built on top of React, such as Next JS and Remix Run, and Vue, like Nuxt JS + frameworks like Svelte, Astro, and 11ty, the landscape of front-end frameworks appears nearly limitless. Still, this post is not about comparing or choosing the best one.

Instead, here we will highlight the frameworks we’ve found most rewarding to work with and believe should be part of your tech stack. By the way, our enthusiastic endorsement of these frameworks is admittedly biased, shaped entirely and solely by our own meandering experiences.

With Google having a clear bias towards big media publishers (trustworthy, authority sites) and thousands of mediocre AI content published daily, how do you fight for those top places in search engine results in 2024?

In eCommerce, it’s not uncommon to think that organic traffic mainly comes from the home page or (keyword-oriented) category pages. While this might be true for well-known brands (think of Nike, Channel, Longines, Porsche, etc.), this is not true in general.

As we became more search engine literate, Google (and Bing and others) became the starting point of buyers’ journeys, with the end destination being product pages. Over 23.6% of online searches for products begin on Google, while 43% of overall eCommerce traffic comes from organic Google search results (source link).

No in-between pages (like category) or online store browsing makes product page search engine optimization (SEO) hugely important. Many businesses already know that, so chances are your competitors are already investing heavily in product page optimization, and it’s about time you start doing it as well.

Many cool posts/guides/articles about product page optimization exist online. Still, many fail to point out that you should consider two aspects of product page optimization: SEO and clickthrough rate optimization (CTR).

The first is about the appearance of your product page in search engine results for desired keywords. The second is about your product's conversion or selling on those pages. The following tips/tricks/best practices are written with the two in mind. Luckily, the two are intertwined🤪

Composable Commerce represents a paradigm shift in eCommerce architecture, fundamentally redefining how businesses approach their online shopping experiences.

Gartner predicts that by 2023, organizations that have taken to the composable approach will outpace the competition by 80% in the speed of new feature implementation.

Monolith, headless, microservices, Jamstack, MACH, composable… just when you thought you’d caught up, a new tech term popped up on the market. Distinguishing what they mean for you and your business is as hard as understanding their subtle differences, so let’s unwrap them today.

Sure enough, staying true to your brand’s identity matters, but it matters just as much as creating a seamless, engaging shopping experience that easily guides visitors from the homepage to checkout. It matters just as much as your website performance or having an omnichannel strategy in place.

Given that the design of your eCommerce store depends greatly on your product, product industry standards, and audience expectations, crafting a one-size-fits-all web design guide is not really feasible.

So, instead of creating a universal blueprint for eCommerce web design, here we’ll focus on articulating a set of best practices we see successful online stores (our clients) implement, be it for the sake of UX or SEO or they are simply cool to have 🙂

Modern-day eCommerce marketing strategies rarely go without content marketing in place. And to create and manage content that goes beyond product page requirements, you need to have a content management system (CMS) in place.

It's easy to feel overwhelmed by the sheer number of CMS platforms. If you're not using the right CMS, it could be holding your business back from realizing its full potential.

Let's examine these systems more closely and consider how to find the best one for your use case.

The global eCommerce sales for 2023 surpassed $6.5 trillion for all online products (source). What can we expect this year? Well, can't be sure about the exact number, but I feel it will only go up.

While this rapid growth means more opportunities, it also means tougher competition where only the best make it. I've read somewhere you need to sell where everyone scrolls, searches, and shops. It's only partially true because you need to sell where YOUR audience is scrolling, searching, and shopping, not everyone.

How do you do that?

I'm glad you asked. With an effective marketing strategy that helps your businesses increase brand awareness, drive traffic, generate leads, and ultimately boost sales and revenue.

That's easier said than done🤔

While it is never good when you have to explain why you are doing something, this article (kind of) deserves it because it has been in the making for quite some time and comes as a sum of conversations with our clients and my personal meandering past and present experiences. The article is tailored for emerging eCommerce ventures and seasoned brands aiming to enhance their digital footprint. It's crucial to acknowledge the unique nature of each business, which means that not all strategies discussed may align with your specific business model and use case.

The key takeaway for you is to use this article as a starting point for developing a strategic framework that will help your business increase website traffic and elevate revenue.

Accelerate your product configurator development. This boilerplate enables visual shopping experiences with complex products. Powered by Crystallize and CharpstAR and wrapped in the frontend framework Next.js, this open source gives you a foundational immersive shopping experience. You can check out the boilerplate live in our running product configurator demo.

New sales channels appear every day. Instagram now has a shopping tab, WhatsApp is getting one, TikTok is jumping onto the eCommerce wagon, and purchasing groceries from your smart fridge has become a reality. If your online store is your only sales platform, then you’re seriously missing out.

Yes, we get it.

First, it’s creating content for your website. Then, it’s creating content for mobile. It’s creating social media sales channels, smartwatches, and other IoT devices. Moreover, the number of these will only increase in the future.

And who has a team that large? Not many! But hey, that’s why you’re here because this is where headless commerce shines.

Headless commerce and headless architecture have gained much traction lately, so the market for headless commerce is projected to expand to around USD 2.2 billion by 2023. Over six in ten retail companies plan to migrate to headless commerce platforms by 2024, while over 20 percent already use them (source: headless commerce stats 2024).

In the ever-growing world of eCommerce, where consumers have endless choices, brands rule the world. Brands rule shopping habits. Brands rule shoppers' expectations. Well, we might not be there yet, but we’re pretty damn close, and that’s what makes building brand loyalty more important than ever.

It’s what can set you apart from competitors and ensure a constant stream of revenue.

And the industry realizes this. For example, 50% of marketers list brand loyalty as one of the top goals of their content marketing strategies.

How can you win the hearts and minds of customers so that they return to your business repeatedly? Why do people go from casually browsing for a product to fiercely advocating for a specific brand? How did the brand win them over?

A couple of months back, I talked about it with Bård Farstad, our CEO, and Ståle Eikeri, our sales guy and COO, and what you read are my notes turned into an article. It’s not like we share the best-kept secrets of turning shoppers into brand loyalists, it’s more like we share our experience and what worked for us.

In the dynamic world of eCommerce, satisfying customer demands while managing operations efficiently is a juggling act. Ever wonder how successful online retailers manage it all? The secret sauce is order orchestration.

The global eCommerce market reached a US $13 trillion value in 2021 and is forecasted to reach a whopping US $55.6 trillion by 2027.

With such growth of eCommerce year over year, it's essential for online retailers (and other businesses) to have the right technology to support their business and strategy. But with so many eCommerce platforms available, how can you tell which fits your business best?

How do you pick the one that suits your needs, keeps up with the development and market trends, and ensures your business's online success?

In part two of the five-part article series, we discuss choosing an eCommerce platform that's the right one for your use case.

Gartner magic quadrant view, business expectations, industry leaders' opinions, most popular solutions… best of articles come in all shapes and sizes. This one of ours about eCommerce platforms is a bit different… we hope.

Driving customer acquisition, optimizing the eCommerce experience, fostering loyalty, and scaling operations are the reason why brands opt out for Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) approach in business and marketing. But is it for everyone, and how do you start with it?

Google announced Universal Analytics (UA) would no longer process new data in standard properties beginning July 1, 2023, and that you should be moving to Google Analytics 4 (GA4). It’s not like the world is ending, right? But what does that mean for your business?

Are you struggling to convert your website traffic into paying customers? Are you tired of spending hours and resources on driving traffic to your site with little to no return on investment? Then it's time to focus on Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO).

eCommerce is wildly different than it was ten years ago. With the rise of omnichannel and globalization, managing your store has become increasingly complex.

Not your average list but a comprehensive 19-point eCommerce SEO checklist with everything you need to know to optimize your store and successfully grow organic traffic and revenue.

When it comes to managing product information, two terms often used interchangeably are PIM and PCM. While they may sound similar, these two concepts are quite different and serve different purposes in the world of e-commerce and product management.

Product Information Management (PIM) is the key to eCommerce success.

With digital asset management (DAM) platforms, you get the power to store, share and organize all digital assets from a single secure location.

ERP helps to manage core business processes (manufacturing, supply chain, services, procurement, finance, HR, etc.) in an integrated system efficiently.

Welcome to another battle of acronyms! Who will come out on top: PIM or PLM?! Spoiler alert, ideally, they’d work together.

Businesses and organizations that need to manage and organize massive amounts of product-related data effectively should use PDM.

With the number of available tech solutions, tools, architectures, and approaches to web development today, it is easy to get overwhelmed when choosing the one for your online store.

When it comes to managing digital content, there are two main types of systems that professional businesses use (oftentimes together): Product Information Management (PIM) systems and Content Management Systems (CMS).

We just scratched the surface by explaining product information management (PIM) and digital asset management (DAM). Time to compare these two concepts and systems and describe the business benefits of using them.

Personalized experiences increase the likelihood of purchase by 80% for consumers. And with that, experience management platforms (XM) entered the scene.

MDM manages all types of company data, including those managed in PIM, making PIM a subset of MDM. Wait, what?

The benefits and competitive advantages of headless commerce are many. When done right, of course. Let’s look at some of the primary advantages that a proper headless commerce buildout can provide.

Check out the top reasons your ecommerce platform needs to be blazing fast if the satisfied customer is not a good enough explanation.

Genuine internet craftsmanship is performed by experienced UX designers, front-end developers, and information architects. The combined focus on customer experience, frontend performance, and beautiful reusable information architecture is rocket fuel for SEO, conversion and click-through rates, and reusable content services.

The differentiation is in the execution—in the details.

Creating a seamless and engaging on-site customer experience is the ultimate goal for everyone running an online store. Besides your product/service, your store performance and product videos ensure you get the much-needed attention.

It makes no sense, but it is true. The reason for waiting in line is that many online stores are running on outdated technologies that simply do not scale, like Elkjøp in Norway or Jeffree Star.

How fast and well your website can handle serious amounts of simultaneous order placements can make or break businesses. It depends on your chosen ecommerce platform, of course. So we tested ours.

The ability to offer a personalized, localized experience to your customers fast is hugely important for today’s businesses. With that in mind, let’s talk about Jamstack, ecommerce, and multilingual setup.

The Jamstack strategy is gaining momentum these days, and rightfully so. Benefits such as better performance and easier scaling alongside better developer experience come to mind immediately. One of the main reasons we got into the business of reimagining ecommerce is giving devs the freedom to BYOF (bring your own front end). To tailor-make the front end and build a process for continuous deployment for fast iterations and deliver the best possible customer experience.

To make it even easier to start a Gatsby JS ecommerce project, we combined our Crystallize PIM with Gatsby, a modern React-based framework, to build out a super scalable Jamstack headless commerce solution. The results are staggering. Pagespeed score of 100 and a 3ms average response time when scaling out with 500 concurrent users on Vercel. Fast.

With the rapid growth of tools and solutions available in the space now is probably the best time to move your online store to Jamstack eCommerce architecture.

You can use long-form storytelling to increase engagement by creating authentic experiences. Learn from Patagonia and The New York Times how to build trust and grow your online audience. Emotional stories that inspire are more likely to be shared and, if you are lucky, even go viral. We have created an open-source eCommerce boilerplate to get you started with long-form storytelling.

With site speed becoming an important part of a customer experience making sure that the number of backend requests during runtime has become important.

Tell the story behind the product.