Challenges in building an e-commerce platform, Monogo E-commerce News, #57
At such a time, building an online business imposes appropriate challenges on companies. A well-constructed e-commerce ecosystem architecture will make it easier to perform well and better prepare for growth, or in other words, scaling an online business.
Going with the trends
Going with the trends or going against the flow? There is no single answer, but you can look at specific examples and refer to them.
AI
One of the obvious trends of recent months is artificial intelligence. This is not to boast about it already on the main banner. On the contrary. I feel that better results are achieved when the integration of AI is more subtle. If you can save a few percent from your budget by using AI, or get a few percent more satisfaction from your customers then it's worth it.
Personalisation
There is nothing wrong with customers expecting online shops to be the way they want them to be. They need a gentle customisation to suit their preferences. Introducing personalisation means a thoughtful strategy for collecting and processing customer profile information. It is important not to close the list of attributes and preferences.
Adding small touches to customer pathways that reflect lessons learned from past purchases or browsing history in your shop will certainly have a good impact on the customer experience. And a positive customer experience can be a decisive criterion for their next shop choice.
Responsible business, in harmony and with care for the planet
Social responsibility and care for the planet appear as highly desirable factors in consumer surveys. It is not without reason that the largest shops aim to enrich their communications with elements of their strategy that relate to green policies.
In e-commerce operations, whether at the production or delivery stage, there is plenty of scope for even a small (to start with) change. All so that you can communicate with a clear conscience what efforts you are making for the planet. Customers appreciate this.
Responsible business also means no exclusions. People with disabilities or sensory limitations will appreciate changes that make it easier for them to shop with you. WCAG is a standard that says how an interface should be built to reduce exclusions.
The technical background of your e-commerce system
There are countries that are seeing increases in the number of dedicated e-commerce engines. I don't rule out this approach at all. However, I know that the cost of producing and maintaining such a solution is incomparably higher than using an off-the-shelf engine such as Adobe Commerce (Magento).
I am also not saying that Magento will be the ideal solution. Rather, it is a good starting point, because business processes that are specific to your company need to be implemented anyway. However, this is an incomparably smaller part of the whole system that you then have to maintain. This is why we recommend that you very seriously consider building a dedicated e-commerce engine vs using Magento.
How about microservices?
At Monogo, we have worked with monoliths and microservices. After many years of gathering experience, we see the advantage of the latter solution. Especially as we are talking about a potentially scalable business, serving multiple brands or multiple countries.
Usually in implementation projects, when we are not building a solution for just one market, we create a Functionality Portfolio. An entity that enables subsequent implementations to be shortened by up to 90% (which also reduces the cost significantly).
The microservice itself is a relatively simple concept. It is the separation of a certain part of a path or business process into a separate entity. By entity, I mean a piece of software that implements a specific process. For example, payment. Sometimes it can be very difficult to integrate with multiple payment gateways in a monolithic system. When we elevate payments to a microservice, integrating new payment gateways does not have as many limitations. On the shop side, on the other hand, there is one unified API. Or maybe you need a payment module in your mobile app? No problem, you'll use the same API as in the shop.
Frontend
Over the last couple of years, we have seen the declining popularity of typical frontends, merged with a backend system. On the other hand, the popularity of completely separate applications handling the visual layer, popularly known as headless, is growing.
This approach, again, promotes reusability. Parts (pieces) of such an application can be embedded in other pages, or mobile applications. We also have good support for composing views for clients from many different systems. You don't have to build everything, many solutions are ready-made. You just need to use them
What's next?
CI/CD, Quality Management, containerisation are just some of the areas to talk about. I'm already inviting you to part two, where we will close the modern e-commerce ecosystem.