To say that eCommerce is one of the most lucrative industries in the world comes as no surprise. Jeff Bezos, the richest man in the world right now, is the founder of an eCommerce behemoth: Amazon. His success tells us quite a bit about why people are taking their business online. Generally, everyone knows that the digital marketplace is the present and the future, and a lot of people want to build their own eCommerce stores. Among the leading technologies out there, people opt for Node.js for eCommerce store development.

In this post, we cover the technical aspects of creating an eCommerce store. For this, we take a closer look at the go-to technology for building a robust and easily scalable eCommerce store: Node.js. Along with that, we will develop a better understanding as to why we should use Node.js for building an eCommerce site.

Related article: Transform your e-commerce website to a m-commerce app

What is Node.js?

Node.js is a JavaScript development environment used for building high-performance apps that can be easily scaled. Node.js is a good choice for applications like chats, real-time collaboration tools, mobile apps, and many more that handle several I/O functions. When working with eCommerce, you have multiple modules that work together. Every module has a different set of complex functionalities associated, for which Node.js is an optimal solution.

Biggest Challenges of eCommerce

In recent years, with the rise of public interest in online purchasing and selling, the eCommerce industry has witnessed an unprecedented increase in competition among online stores. Customers' expectations and demands are increasing too. To meet those demands and withstand the stiff competition faced every day, companies are perpetually investing in creating and enhancing web apps. While tackling this competition, there are several challenges that eCommerce businesses face today. Let's take a closer look at them:

• Since the market is highly competitive and demanding, developing a complex, multi-layered, multi-featured, scalable, and robust web app requires a modernized approach.
• With new technologies on the horizon, the software development market is advancing every day. As a result, it may be challenging to get an expert with relevant experience and the necessary skillset to get the job done.
• Most programming languages are heavy. This, consequently, makes it hard for future eCommerce applications to function efficiently.
• Agility issues: In the eCommerce industry, agility means efficiency with making improvements within the existing structure and deployment of new content. It is considered one of the most crucial initiatives for a better and securer future for a company. Regardless, quite a few corporations believe that the enhancement of existing technologies and the introduction of new features for users pose a difficult task since their current system is inefficient.
• Remaining consistent is one of the biggest challenges the eCommerce industry faces nowadays. For a functional omnichannel strategy to work for an eCommerce business, consistency is crucial. Customers move from platform to platform in search of a particular item. To gain a better understanding of users' interactions on various touchpoints and to create a user experience that is consistent is surely a necessary and tough task.

You can sense that the challenges mentioned above are screaming for a technological solution like Node.js. Along with robust technology, eCommerce relies on many different constituents like payment gateways, logistics, and suppliers, to name a few. Node.js is the number one choice for most developers, enabling them to build web applications with optimal performance, convenient scalability, and classy features.

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Why Use Node.js to Build eCommerce Web Applications?

We will now examine why Node.js development is considered the best for developing seamless eCommerce web apps and how it reduces complexities to the minimum:

Cross-Platform Solution

Without a doubt, cross-platform compatibility is a brilliant advantage to have when working with complex data structures and architectures; it is cost-efficient and time-efficient. Node.js offers this benefit. It works seamlessly on any given platform and provides optimum output. It is a JavaScript-based development environment, meaning that developers don't need to learn multiple languages to implement code or leverage demanded frameworks. JavaScript itself can be easily used for both; the backend and the frontend.

Swift Development

As mentioned above, Node.js works effortlessly on multiple platforms, which ultimately affects the duration it takes for programmers to build an app allowing them to create a web app faster. Other than that, Node.js offers another significant advantage, i.e., it enables developers to work on eCommerce web application development with multiple open-source libraries. These libraries help developers by taking care of numerous lines of code for the addition of extra features.

Scalability

Due to non-blocking I/O and event-driven design, Node.js promotes web app scalability. Ultimately, eCommerce stores built with Node.js are always scalable.

High Performance

Node.js is highly efficient when it comes to multitasking, which is also cost-effective. Node.js offers a range of features that suit the operations of a typical eCommerce store. For example, a buyer adding an item in a basket, leveraging the product's features, selecting a payment method, etc. These operations are well synchronized with Node.js features, proving to be a better technology than others for performing similar tasks more efficiently. Node.js conveniently performs mentioned tasks simultaneously, making it the top choice for eCommerce web app development.

Big Community

Node.js has a large community of developers, willing to help each other and committed to constantly improving the Node.js technology. With their continuous efforts, the technology is well-documented, updated, and continuously supported, making the development process faster and easier. Furthermore, there is plenty of prepared or reusable code available for various tasks, like you see on GitHub. Other than that, modules, plugins, and many other resources can easily be found on the internet. Additionally, if a random problem occurs, there is a good chance that you will find a solution on Stack Overflow.

Platforms Using Node.js for Building eCommerce Stores

Following are the few platforms that leverage Node.js technology to build an eCommerce online store:

Prime Fusion

It is a full-stack JavaScript framework, based on MEAN stack, which includes numerous tools like Node.js, Angular.js, Express, MongoDB, Webpack React, GraphQL, Babel Mocha, and Gulp. All of these frameworks and databases are sufficient enough for a developer to build an eCommerce store conveniently. When working with Prime Fusion, a developer does not need to be an expert at building online stores, as it already has the supported frameworks.

Reaction Commerce

It is a real-time, open-source platform built using the Meteor framework. Reaction Commerce is a fast, scalable, and flexible resource that works efficiently with technologies like Docker, npm, and React. Due to the modular codebase, it is easy to steer the solution according to your development needs. It allows everything as a package to be overwritten, installed, and extended. With the provision of extensive real-time analytics, Reaction Commerce helps with better eCommerce-related business decision-making.

Traider.io

It has also been developed using the MEAN stack. It provides a scalable and flexible API and covers all the necessary functionalities required for building an eCommerce store. Traider.io was a project built by a team of developers that previously worked on many eCommerce applications. They decided to make use of the existing code and use it to make it an open-source platform.

Conclusion

There is no denying that the benefits of using Node.js for eCommerce are far more than other technologies available. It is one of the go-to platforms to develop eCommerce web applications because of what it offers, and developers find it convenient to use, particularly because it is a JS-based technology. Therefore, it offers considerable flexibility as Java Script, and associated technologies are commonly used on most platforms. With convenience and flexibility being two main ingredients apart from a robust result that's stable and scalable, choosing Node.JS for eCommerce store development will almost always be your preference.

Have you decided to take your business online and looking for the right partners to help you with the development aspect? Contact us!