Are you interested in creating an e-commerce store using Node.js? In this guide, we will take you step-by-step through the process of building an e-commerce store in Node.js and offer best practices for success. Do many people have questions such as what are the best ways to make an e-commerce store in Node.js? What tools do I need to build an e-commerce store? How do I start building an e-commerce store in Node.js?
The upcoming trend of 2023 shows that eCommerce growth is inevitable due to COVID consequences, remote work, and a bunch of commonly known factors, that’s why offline sales will strengthen the market of digital solutions. The current situation has increased the demand for the development of high-speed platforms to gain customer loyalty and trust. Market leaders are doing their best to deliver an enjoyable and personalized eCommerce experience.
Customer shopping feedback is highly valued since it gives rise to updates and future improvements. That’s why eCommerce backends must be lightweight and effective in maintaining and delivering data to the user side. To make your app simple and intuitive, there is no better way than to choose a dashboard template on NodeJS.
The Future of eCommerce
Despite a challenging year for retail in 2020, we’re witnessing worldwide retail eCommerce sales growth to a total of $4.280 trillion, which means almost 28% for the year, reported eMarketer. General eCommerce statistics show that more than 95% of all purchases will be conducted via the eCommerce market by 2040.
We can name, offhand, at least 17 world-leading companies that have chosen Node.js as one of their technologies for their business platforms: Paypal, IKEA, Shutterstock, Shopify, NASA, eBay, Medium, Citibank, Yahoo, Walmart, IBM, Stripe, AliExpress, Asana, BitBucket, Mercari, Uber, etc. So, why did all of them choose Node.js?
Why Back up your eCommerce App with Node.js
Node.js is an open-source framework utilized to manufacture quick, versatile server-side web applications. Node.js is best suited for developing data-intensive real-time apps that can run on numerous devices. Opinions on the eCommerce platform differ, “Magento is overpriced. Shopify is limited, though platforms like Node.js are available for a bunch of reasons:
a) First off, Lightweight With Node.js cross-platform development is easy and affordable, since all your developers need to know is Node.js
b) Secondly, Node.js offers incredibly high performance and smooth functioning compared to others. Higher Performance is an essential aspect of an eCommerce application.
c) Thirdly, you will get 100% feedback from the developers’ community because Node.js has become a premium choice for enterprise-level organizations.
There are not many ready-made ecommerce solutions built on Node.js, that’s why dashboards templates with a range of components inside are most welcome for web developers. The reason for this is the presence in the market of open source PHP solutions like OpenCart, Prestashop, Magento, Drupal, or Joomla, which lets you manage your eCommerce store online from a single back-end.
But the point is that eCommerce solutions are more used for development in PHP. Javascript has become a relatively recent tool for building eCommerce stores, though it is a highly scalable, fast, and highly reliable technology. Statistically, almost 70% of world software developers prefer Javascript for programming.
For instance, with Node.js being a complex framework, you can build more multitasking websites in comparison to PHP thanks to better outcomes for lower costs. Whilst PHP and Node.js certainly differ in architecture, the PHP developer caste doesn’t feel the necessity to learn JS. PHP is still one of the most popular programming languages and is truly known for its lower barrier to entry for a newbie in web development.
As a rapidly growing alternative to PHP-based eCommerce solutions, web developers can use Strapi. Strapi is known for its cybersecurity options and efficient API interface to serve your database of choice from your hosting and server of choice.
5 Reasons to Choose Tailored-for-You eCommerce Website
1. Fast loading (Node.js enhances eCommerce website loading time)
If you have the ambition to build an eCommerce business like Amazon or eBay, then, I unhesitatingly recommend Node.js for development to create a scalable app. Node.js is an open-source JavaScript environment, extremely powerful, and popular among web developers. It is rightfully chosen for its high performance and fast time loading.
2. Prices and costs
Setting up your site based on platforms like Shopify may be risky, due to the necessity of constant upgrades that only raise the cost of website development. Often, the effort to customize a well-known theme to your business needs significantly exceeds the cost of developing the same features in a custom dashboard. Learn to see in perspective: the price of maintaining and modifying an off-the-shelf theme ends up costing you a fortune once you take into account all the emerging improvements and features.
3. Uniqueness
Surely everything depends on how deeply you want to develop your site. Being a tech-savvy developer, your hands are not tied to setting all your widgets and options according to your audience requirements. Though it’s possible to customize/re-code the Shopify panel, you are more limited in what you can do, and you have to ultimately host your site on the owner’s servers. In contrast, a tailored-for-your-site solution is super flexible and organically adapts to your growing business needs. So, your custom development is a superb investment in the future.
4. Time spent
Working with Shopify templates also requires a substantial time investment. For young businesses, it is not the best possible variant. Custom template focuses mainly on the latest trends of UX design, high performance, conversion, and optimization processes. While you are building a brand, you don’t need heavy solutions, all you need is the main function of intuitive usage and a great checkout experience (purchase option). Consequently, all of this will ultimately improve your ROI.
5. Regular updates and flexibility
You would surely go for ease of managing and upgrading your code, wouldn’t you? Trends in web development are proceeding in space and in order to keep your site optimized and effective you have to get regular updates on the developing situation.
How to Choose a Framework to build your eCommerce store?
Choosing an appropriate framework is a totally subjective thing because every developer takes into account his knowledge base, the range of features available to work with, and so on. Some relevant criteria to make a perfect solution for your store may include the level of dev experience, project size, mobile application necessity, performance and productivity aspects, maintenance, and timely updates.
Node.js frameworks to choose
Reaction Commerce is an API-first, modular commerce stack made for ambitious brands and retailers. If you stand for/ require fully individual solutions, then Reaction commerce is a scalable and fully flexible solution with its microservices architecture that allows easy integration with your already existing systems.
Swell (Schema.io) is a fully functional piece of eCommerce software provided by Schema targeted at small to enterprise-sized businesses. It is a good option for Jamstack, it has customizable datamodels, flexible APIs and lots of other positives for building commerce applications.
The MEAN&MERN Stack Architecture for eCommerce
MEAN is a full-stack technology (shortened for MongoDB, Express.js, Angular, and Node.js) as an alternative to building a lightweight application or eCommerce platform in the early business stages. It is a component-based solution using Typescript, and high web response time due to the code running on a Chrome-based JavaScript engine.
Express.js should be the most popular and fastest framework with an API that permits users to configure different routes to send/receive requests between the front end and database. a wide range of features for the web as well as mobile application development. Check out the list of the most popular Node.js frameworks to work with here.
MERN in its turn, is a stack using trending React technology (MongoDB-Express.js-React-Node.js). The main difference between MEAN and MERN is in its framework’s productivity, while Angular offers better productivity, React.js is supposed to build faster apps.
There are numerous of them rated on GitHub, so you might have heard about Express.js, Meteor.js, Sails.js, Koa.js, LoopBack.js.
Node.js Drawbacks
NodeJS’s tremendous popularity has not been without several problems. We’ve defined several basic moments that should still be noted:
1. Heavy computing tasks slow down unit performance;
This happens due to Node.js, which sets all CPUs to process a particular request first.
2. Unstable API
This may cause frequent changes to the access code in order to match the newest Node.js API versions
3. Node.js is based on a crude model of concurrency whereby threads must report back to a single event queue, i.e an errant thread can even block Node.js
4. Lack of experienced Node.js developers;
Although the market of developers is soaring, finding a reliable Node.js programmer is a hard nut to crack; Btw, JavasScript+Node.js with Angular2 and Redux round out the top 5 of the most popular tech stacks in 2021
Node.js eCommerce Dashboards for Flawless Backend
1. Sofia React Node.js
Sofia React Template – is a fresh and modern React template based on widely popular Bootstrap, Material-UI, and Node.js backend carefully crafted by the team of Flatlogic. Sofia React Nodejs is a good jumpstart for e-commerce admin dashboards, any type of CRM platform, or SaaS applications. It is highly simple to use and has lots of well-organized UI components, tags, categories, and clear documentation.
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2. eCommerce React template
eCommerce React template offers a wide product catalogue to find the products quickly and easily. This is a sleek template for an eCommerce project that includes filterable products, unlimited style options, custom links and icons for social media, all the essential pages like Wishlist, 404, FAQ, About us, Contact us, and the ability to display product variations.
3. Light Blue React Node.js Admin Template
Light Blue React is the world’s first transparent dashboard template built with a Node.js backend, Bootstrap 4 and React frontend. It is SEO optimized through Server Side Rendering to further speed up your development. Light Blue React admin template can be used to create analytics dashboards, eCommerce apps, CMS, SAAS web apps, CRM, etc.
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4. React Material UI Admin Node.js
Flatlogic company created one more example of an admin template with a Material-UI framework, called React.js Material UI Admin Node.js. What is more, we integrated it with Node.js and Postgres database. It is a lightweight, fully documented solution that would work best for any eCommerce project. Updates are supported.
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5. Sing App Vue Node.js
Sing App Vue Node.js dashboard is a multi-purpose admin template built with Node.js backend and Postgres database. It is a top-notch dashboard for building SAAS, CMS, and all kinds of eCommerce platforms. Inside you will find Lean and powerful, and highly intuitive in use.
6. Lexa
Another fresh dashboard solution called Lexa is a nicely drawn admin dashboard with a clean design, built with JQuery, Bootstrap 4, HTML5, CSS3. Inside you get 6+ charts libraries, a summer note editor, Google maps, invoicing, dropzone file upload, and error pages included. The template fits completely to any type of CMS, CRM, or custom admin panels, an analytics dashboard, and an e-commerce site backend.
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7. CMS Cosmic
It is also a good solution for building an eCommerce store just from scratch. The most evident pluses of the Cosmic JS platform are SEO adaptivity, intuitiveness and perfect responsiveness. The Cosmic template includes a contact form and a full-site search. Cosmic is an extensible e-commerce CMS for managing content on various apps and websites.
Useful Tools for Creating eCommerce Stores on Node.js
Here is a shortlist of popular services to aid you when building a Node.js e-commerce store.
GraphQL
GraphiQL is an open-source language for API that lets you send the correct query data from your API without leaving your editor. Such platforms like Pinterest, Facebook, Coursera, Shopify favors (go for/ stick with) GraphQL. It works well with a range of general-purpose programming languages like C#, C++, Clojure, Java, JavaScript, Haskell, Perl, Python, PHP, Ruby, Scala, Go, Rust, etc.
Vue Express Mongo Boilerplate
Use Vue Express Mongo Boilerplate rich functionality while creating a starter repository. Vue Express Mongo Boilerplate is a full-stack JS web app boilerplate with Node.js, Vue.js, Express, and Mongo.
Node API Boilerplate
Node API Boilerplate is a tool for developing an es6/typescript API endpoint as a standalone (micro)service, backing up web front-ends and/or mobile apps.
Node Express Boilerplate
Node-express-boilerplate gives the developer a clean slate to start with while bundling enough useful features so as to remove all those redundant tasks that can derail a project before it even really gets started.
Serverless Node.js Starter
A set of features and tools compiled in Serverless starter kit may be a good help for a developer. Integrate serverless-webpack plugin with ES7 syntax.
Express4 Bootstrap Starter
A commonly known package for Bootstrap, Express4, is simple in use and helps you respond to requests with route support so that you may write responses to specific URLs. Plus, Express4 Bootstrap Starter supports multiple templating engines to simplify generating HTML.
Node REM
It has a lightweight boilerplate, production-ready backend setup. with clear and sharp syntax. Node REM requires NodeJS v8.12.0 and Mongo databases for installation.
Wrapping Up
If you need to build a massive project with a team of top-notch professionals, then opt for full-stack solutions. If you have long-term development, it’s better to stick with lightweight and flexible instruments. But, again, choosing the handiest variant is quite a subjective issue to raise. If you have real doubts while coding, please, you may contact experienced devs for a consultancy. Flatlogic has broad expertise in custom development and scale solutions for businesses.
