Launching an e-shop with PimCore in four weeks
The path to excellence that some eCommerce sites reach is usually the result of a timely journey. Some projects come as products of massive research and planning. We know that a fully functional and capable online shop can be a reality in about a month. Stay tuned.
Moving merchandise quicker to a sale-ready state is always a significant advantage in eCommerce. What’s more, you can get recognized faster and stat making revenue without the traditional cost associated with online shops. Here’s how this.
Shopware: a glimpse at the future of eCommerce
Although presently Shopware enjoys only but a fraction of its notoriety, it has already gained the recognition of many successful companies, including brands like Philips and Discovery Channel. Shopware 6 is the latest version of a successful eCommerce platform, and its advantages since the initial release have been piling up. With it, merchants have the flexibility and freedom to quickly build the online shop and switch between strategies without disrupting the overall pace.
What are the benefits of Shopware?
The flexibility of Shopware, as an online selling tool, appeals to many online business owners. They can deploy their initial business plans, driven by the inspiring technical potential possible through this platform. One of the core ideas behind Shopware is helping vendors focus more on their customers’ shopping experience. The inbuilt analytics tools present opportunities to improve relationships with clients and solidify conversion rates.
Shopware is a solution built from the ground up by people who understand its purpose and stand firm behind it. The creators of Shopware started working on it from ground zero, which means they did not use an existing base to built upon it. As a consequence of this incredible effort and diligence, the platform became robust but flexible while uncompromised by a base framework’s requirements. When working with an upgraded platform, its core functionalities can quickly become outdated and undermine the whole project. To prevent that from happening, Shopware creators decided to initiate a project where the technology is built around your core business idea. And you can have that up and running in less than a month.
In contrast, you can adapt your goals to whatever’s achievable with the latest bits of technology. However, that would be a daring project since this is the exact opposite of what proven market leaders recommend. The customer-centric approach has alarming evidence of how strong brands eventually get the recognition they deserve.
Selling on all possible fronts is extremely important for any brand, regardless of the market segment’s popularity. In online commerce, every unused sales channel is considered a missed opportunity. With Shopware, you can maximize your exposure to potential clients using it in the best way possible, considering your personal goals and expectations. Shopware can be implemented as an existing Amazon shop hub, be the central tool in headless commerce projects, or be used in the incredibly useful PWAs and get a high start in the world’s mobile market. Additionally, the API-first approach of Shopware makes it easy for the integration of all kinds of valuable components like CMS or ERP.
Shopware is the instrument that merges commerce into the content. Making the difference between these two components indistinguishable is what we consider a sign for brands with a bright future. The world’s best brands diversify their awareness campaigns over multiple sales channels. This approach is essential — customers appreciate it when they get what they want and how they wanted it. Companies with good customer relations are in a superb position to sustain them using the tools within Shopware. Besides, these same tools are even more valuable to marketers who seek to improve the dialogue they have with their clients.
With Shopware, your content pages are search engine ready, and with the help of technologies like PWA, powered by Storefront UI, fast content delivery can be one of the signature features of your online store. PWAs allow their users to browse content offline, keeping and executing all offline interaction later, when the connection resumes. Although mobile usage is on a steady rise, mobile conversion runs low. PWA directly addresses this problem, making sales through mobile applications a viable option with substantial future potential.
PimCore and Shopware – for lightning-fast solutions that work
PimCore is a product information management system (PIM) that has a tremendous impact on online business quality. Information management sounds like a less important aspect of eCommerce until the management system cracks under a storm of duplicated or misplaced content. PIMs are essential in two ways 1) maintaining categorized, designated, and neatly distributed content and 2) using available data to extract useful information for analysis about trend changes, customer behavior, and so much more.
With PimCore and Shopware, multi-store management becomes a lot easier. Owners of more than one store can maximize all available sales channels by multiplying their influence across all the managed shop sites. This feature comes along with strong language management for better global coverage and content value.
When it comes to team contribution within the platform, PimCore is all-inclusive. This means that editors can use Shopware’s admin section with various technical backgrounds or access levels.
Everyone can work and not disturb others’ work, unlike some less-successful attempts that we’ve seen in the past, like, for example, WYSIWYG.
PimCore with Shopware is extremely customizable and easy to use. However, that doesn’t mean that one-day high management can roll in and ruin the home page by accident. The user management interface supports custom layouts and capabilities and is tailor-made for each contributor and their set of activities or roles. When it comes to a user interface, Shopware is easy to use for clients and their providers.
For Shopware, the experience of site administrators should be no different in quality than that of customers. An excellent shopping experience is about the quality of everyone’s journey. With PimCore on board, information management goes beyond simple administration – you can use your clients’ feedback and quickly improve their shopping journey throughout your wares.
PimCore manages data sources centrally so that vendors, suppliers, clients, and everyone with their distinct role in the mix.
Why launch your eCommerce site within weeks?
We already mentioned the time-to-market benefit coming from a quick online store launch. This factor is omnipresent regardless of market conditions or economic potential. However, we have one more obstacle to deal with today. Quick solutions for eCommerce are now a preferred method, especially in COVID-19 reality, where the market is stagnating, and customers focus on essentials.
During a crisis, conditions change fast, and therefore new eCommerce projects better launch quickly. Otherwise, their creators might be stuck with an initial idea that chases a lost opportunity.
The under-four-weeks eCommerce solution by Shopware is quick but with a unique outcome. With the high customization and personalization capabilities of Shopware, your site is guaranteed to have a distinctive look and feel different than any of the hundreds of digital shops on the net. Plus, Shopware is a boxed solution, which means there is little chance you can go over your set budget. With PimCore and Shopware, you get to start selling your products quickly and on a competitive level. You also can upscale and take advantage of many future development options.
PimCore and Shopware eCommerce in four weeks – the breakdown
Our experience with Shopware proves that online shops can be set up put into work relatively quickly. We have divided the process into four somewhat similar chunks of milestones, each roughly taking a week to complete.
Week #1: Research and Discovery
The opening phase is standard across many software development projects, and the four-week eCommerce race we describe here is no different. Before any design or development occurs, you must round up all project requirements and shape the final scope. It would help if you did a preliminary survey from a business, design, and data perspective. This magical triangle has the components that collectively determine the fate of any eCommerce adventure.
Week #2: Design and Layout
Web design has its separate phase because the role of looks in eCommerce is detrimental. Design is not about interface and layout, although these are the two components that most influence the site façade and its impact on sales and product presentation. With Shopware, shaping product pages and categorizing the merchandise is a breeze, but it should take another week to come up and prototype your site design.
Week #3: Customization and Configuration
After the eCommerce is designed and tested, all designers, developers, and QAs can then work together in setting up the outlook of individual products and categories, including images, attributes, active promotions, or discounts. If your product catalog is humongous, better starts entering products and manually adjusting individual items if necessary.
Week #4 Recap and launch
Your one-of-a-kind e-shop is ready for final calibrations before the launch. After a good retrospective run of all that led to your brand-new eCommerce tool, you are all set to start selling. On launch, keep your feedback channels wide open. Your immediate customer feedback can churn many customers for you, who otherwise might have easily chosen a different vendor.
Conclusion
Considering the sharp changes in our present reality, putting up a webshop in weeks is possible and necessary. Shopware has the agility to adapt to a shifting business environment quickly, and this is what ambitious sellers need right now. Sounds like a challenge to you? Until the no-code development platforms finally dethrone software engineers, we will use Shopware 6 to build unique online shopping sites. Bring your eCommerce idea to us, and find more about the real potential of your online store.
