The way people conduct their businesses has undergone a transformative shift with the growing prevalence of technological advancements. Businesses now need to maintain an effective online presence to enhance customer accessibility. One easy way to achieve this goal is to start a Shopify store.
Before starting a Shopify ecommerce store, you must choose the right technology stack for a favorable outcome. However, choosing the right stack can be confusing and overwhelming, especially if you need to be better-versed in technology.
Besides, choosing the right technology stack can be beneficial, leaving you with a non-performant and slow store. So, it is crucial to have adequate knowledge about what goes under the hood of your e-commerce store. It will help you make the right decision with minimal hassle.
Let’s learn more about technology stacks and help you pick the one that best serves your requirements.
What exactly is a Technology Stack?
A technology stack combines different technologies that help build a mobile app, software, or website. Tech stacks include everything from frameworks, apps, tools, platforms, and programming languages that can help you create a desirable digital solution that fits your requirements.
The notion suggests these technologies are stacked on each other to give you a functional app or website, which is the basis of the name technology stack. Every digital ecosystem has two different components: the front and back end. The frontend component is client-facing, and the backend is server-facing. Technology stacks have a combination of technologies that help the developers work on both these ends in solutions like e-commerce stores or apps, which are operated on both ends.
Choosing The Right Technology Stack For E-commerce Development
Of course, choosing the right technology stack to support your ecommerce website development is anything but easy. However, this challenge does not mean you can opt out of having a digital store. As per the current market and shopping trends, businesses with offline presence are missing out on many opportunities. Having a store on the digital front is crucial and helps companies get more exposure, sales, and traffic.
Hence, you must find a way to navigate those challenges and pick the ideal technology stack that serves your requirements. Being a professional ecommerce developer with years of experience, I have worked on unique tech stacks and observed what works best and what doesn’t. So here, I will help you learn everything about choosing the perfect stack for your Shopify store.
Here are some tips and tricks to help you pick the right technology stack for your e-commerce store.
- Evaluate Your Team Skills: The first step is to evaluate your team members’ skills. After all, it is your team that will work on the project. Try to better understand their competencies and expertise before choosing a technology stack.
It is better to ask the experts and provide them with all the available options. They can choose based on their expertise, the project requirements, and the business’s long-term goals. If you need to select a stack your team needs to improve in, you can always outsource the services of expert developers.
- Review Development Time: Time to market is crucial in deciding on the technology stack. Tech stacks with faster elements like React will help you build your store faster. On the other hand, some tech stacks may be more complex and increase the development time.
So, with your requirements, look for the stack that helps you complete the development process within a set time. If you are not in any rush, you can go with any competent stack. However, if you have a time crunch, look for technologies offering less market time.
- Scalability: The next important consideration is the scalability you expect from the app. Every business starts small and then scales its offerings and similar business endeavors. Hence, picking a tech stack that allows you to scale accordingly and meet all your requirements is natural.
In most cases, a little extra investment in your tech stack can help you leverage better scalability and meet all your requirements. For instance, if you wish to expand your ecommerce store, choose scalable technologies that offer easy expansion and changes in the future.
- Plan Your Hardware And Budget Requirements: No one can undermine the importance of pre-planning all your budget and hardware requirements when choosing the right tech stack. In most cases, these factors are influenced mainly by the software you use.
For instance, some might require a few servers or more to support the most basic functionalities, while others may work on a regular computer. Hence, it is highly recommended you sort these things out beforehand.
- Evaluate All Project-Specific Requirements: Another critical area to pay close attention to is your project-specific requirements. Different projects have different requirements that you need to address.
Once you know these requirements, picking the tech stack that best serves the project becomes much more accessible. Make sure you pay close attention to the details of your project, features specific to the project niche, and the size of the store.
Front-End E-commerce Technologies
The front end is the client-facing side of your e-commerce store. Hence, client-facing technologies are used to develop the front-end aspect of the website. Developers use many different front-end technologies side-by-side to form a perfect stack, and some of these technologies include:
- CSS (Cascading Style Sheets): CSS is a style sheet language that helps describe document presentations in different makeup languages. Like JavaScript and HTML, CSS is considered an essential technology of the World Wide Web.
- HTML (HyperText Markup Language): HTML is the standard markup language for designing documents that people see when opening a web browser.
- JavaScript: JavaScript is one of the most prevalent front-end programming languages. It helps embed interactivity into static HTML pages. Popular JS libraries such as Angular, React, jQuery, and Vue are also widely used for front-end development.
- Node.js: Node.js is another open-source JavaScript framework prevalent for front-end development. Developers even use this framework to develop back-end solutions based on JavaScript. This framework is highly advantageous for creating e-commerce solutions.
- Vue.js: Vue.js is a progressive open-source JavaScript framework that helps developers create single-page apps and user interfaces. It is also used to create lightweight e-commerce solutions.
- React.js: One of the most popular JavaScript frameworks, ReactJS is widely used for creating interactive elements of your e-commerce website. People even use the framework for e-commerce and software development to leverage the power of ReactJS for your project, consider hiring a ReactJS development company to ensure optimal implementation and results
- Angular: The front-end framework developers use to create dynamic apps for mobile, web, and desktops. Google supports the framework, which is best known for its robust nature.
Backend Development Technologies
The server-side part of an e-commerce website is also known as the back-end of the e-store. Developers use many tools and frameworks to facilitate successful back-end development. Some of these tools and technologies include:
- Web Server: This software is responsible for taking user requests, analyzing them, and offering an output of any requested documents back to the users. Nginx and Apache are two primary web servers known to be open-source and free.
- C#: C# is a general-purpose programming language that helps developers create dynamic solutions like e-commerce.
- Storage: Storage, also known as object storage or object-based, is a strategy that helps handle and manage data storage as different units called objects. These objects are placed in a single storehouse, not files stored in other folders.
- Databases: Databases are one of the most critical components of the back-end ecosystem, and they allow one to process and maintain different data points. The most prevalent databases include MongoDB, MySQL, Firebase database from Google, Amazon’s DynamoDB, and PostgreSQL.
Prevalent Tech Stacks For E-commerce Development
Developers use many tech stacks for seamless e-commerce development. Some of the most popular of these tech stacks include:
- Python Django: Django is one of the prevalent frameworks used alongside Python. The framework offers unmatched security for seamless back-end development with Apache as a web server. It also uses Python as a scripting language and MySQL or PostgreSQL to manage its database.
- PHP (Laravel): Laravel is considered the Best PHP Framework for eCommerce Website Development. It is an effective stack for developing interactive and appealing web pages as it can easily integrate with other stacks, making the development process much more manageable. But in case this seems like a hassle, you can reach experts from the Best Laravel Development Company.
- LAMP Stack: The next popular tech stack here is the LAMP stack, which stands for Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP. LAMP has long earned a reputation for its unmatched efficiency in e-commerce development. However, it does lag in performance and scalability.
The LAMP stack uses a Linux operating system, an Apache web server, MariaDB or MySQL for database management, and Python, Perl, or PHP as a scripting language.
- MEAN and MERN Stack: MEAN stack is an abbreviation for MongoDB, Express.js, Angular, and Node.js. This is a very popular tech stack that simplifies creating e-commerce stores. The tech stack uses Express as a back-end framework, MongoDB or MySQL for database management, Angular as a web application framework, and Node.js as a back-end platform.
When you replace Angular in MEAN with React, it becomes a MERN stack.
- .NET Stack: The .NET stack is one of the oldest stacks, having existed since the start of the century. Although Microsoft still owns the .NET stack, it is now partially open source and encourages more action. It uses the Windows operating system, ASP.NET as a framework, Microsoft SQL as a web server, and C# and JS as scripting languages.
Bottom Line
As you understand by now, picking the right technology stack for your e-commerce development takes work. Too many alternatives are available in the market, making it an overwhelming experience for anyone. Besides, too much is at stake to mess things up with e-commerce development, making it even more essential to pick the right tech stack.
So, use this information and pick the technology stack that best serves your requirements. The aforementioned four tech stacks are some of the most popular among developers of e-commerce solutions. However, the decision ultimately lies in your hands, and it would be best if you evaluated all your requirements before making a choice.
