According to emarketer, the global eCommerce market size is estimated to reach $4.9 trillion by the end of 2021. The ease of ordering from the convenience of one’s home, easy payment options, attractive discounts, and the penetration of the internet are the factors that have contributed to the rise of global eCommerce.
This exceptional rise in eCommerce has lured many entrepreneurs towards itself and has propelled the demand for developing an eCommerce portal for various eCommerce business models. An eCommerce platform is a complex system to build from a developer’s perspective. The eCommerce system consists of many different processes like:
- Searching the product catalog
- Adding items to the cart
- Sharing discounts and promotional offers
- Doing payments
- Delivering the products on time at the correct address
To ensure that all the processes work together, one will need reliable technology to support all the processes efficiently. Node.js is a Javascript environment that lets developers build high-performance and scalable eCommerce applications.
Selecting the correct technology won’t be sufficient to build a robust eCommerce solution. You will need to hire the best eCommerce development company to leverage the power of Node.js and build a scalable and efficient eCommerce solution.
Biggest challenges of eCommerce
The phenomenal growth of the eCommerce sector has brought a few challenges with it. The developers who do eCommerce development need to address these challenges to build an effective eCommerce solution. We have mentioned below some of the major challenges that eCommerce developers face while developing an eCommerce solution.
To beat the competition, it is essential to build an eCommerce solution fast. Unfortunately, most of the eCommerce development technologies do not support both back-end and front-end development. In addition, most of these technologies do not have enough plugins to help the eCommerce developers finish the development fast.
The developers need to put in the extra effort today to build a multi-featured, complex, and scalable eCommerce solution. But, unfortunately fortunately, the huge demand for eCommerce solutions has created a shortage of high-quality eCommerce developers.
The customer experience is of prime importance in an eCommerce application. Fast loading time plays an important role in improving the customer experience. Therefore, an eCommerce web development solution needs to be lightweight so that it loads faster. Unfortunately, most of the existing eCommerce development technologies do not allow eCommerce developers to build lightweight solutions.
An eCommerce solution needs to be agile. Expert eCommerce developers should be able to introduce enhancements easily in the custom eCommerce development services. Therefore, the agility of an eCommerce solution is identified as a critical trait that contributes to its success. Furthermore, the eCommerce development technology should be such that it should allow the skilled eCommerce developers to easily introduce the changes in the eCommerce platform as and when required.
An eCommerce business needs to deliver a consistent user experience across different platforms like web and mobile. That’s why you will need an eCommerce development technology that can aid the developers that eCommerce store owners hire to deliver a seamless user experience across platforms.
To tackle all these challenges effectively, the developers need to build the end-to-end eCommerce solution on a top-notch eCommerce development platform like Node.js.
A brief introduction to Node.js working
Node.js is a JavaScript runtime environment that runs the V8 JavaScript engine of Google Chrome. Node.js is an open-source, and cross-platform app development technology that allows developers to build apps that can handle multiple requests simultaneously makes Node.js a very popular app development technology amongst top Node.js developers.
Before we look at the various benefits of Node.js, we will look at some inner workings of Node.js.
Node Package Manager (NPM)
The NPM is an online repository for publishing open-source Node.js projects. NPM is also a command-line utility that aids offshore Node.JS developers with version management, dependency management, and package installation. NPM boasts more than 800,000 code packages and is arguably the world’s largest software repository.
The fact that makes NPM popular amongst the Remote Node JS developers is that NPM is free and easy to use. The dedicated NodeJS app developers can search the relevant package on www.npmjs.com, and once they find the package, they can install it with a single command line. In addition, the vast repository of ready-made solutions makes Node.js eCommerce development easy and fast.
Node.js eCommerce
The developers and eCommerce store owners prefer using Node.JS to build an eCommerce store because the experienced NodeJS developers can develop the eCommerce store easily. The owners get faster delivery at lower costs.
Walmart served around 200,000 customers on its website on Black Friday sales, and PayPal noticed a 35% reduction in reaction time when it used Node.js.
Node.js has proven its ability as an efficient eCommerce application development technology, and the fact that major companies like Walmart and PayPal use it is a testimony to this statement.
Why is Node.js a better option for eCommerce store development?
The developers choose Node.js development because of the many benefits that the technology provides to the developers, making it an ideal choice for eCommerce development. We have discussed below some of the major benefits that Node.js provides to dedicated developers.
Scalability
An e-commerce store needs to be highly scalable as it needs to expand or contract its product range based upon the changing customer preferences. Node js provides quick scalability to the e-commerce shop. Therefore, an eCommerce store built with Nodejs can grow substantially in a short period.
The Node Package Manager (NPM) has built-in support for managing the packages, and it’s a tool that comes with every node js installation by default. In addition, the NPM is a set of tools that can be reused easily. The Node.js coders can reuse the code from the online repository, and this feature of Nodejs makes the entire project lightweight and scalable.
Node.js uses a single thread to handle non-blocking I/O calls, meaning that it will take much fewer resources for the Node.js application to accept simultaneous connections compared to the traditional approaches. With Node.js, the developers won’t face any issue when scaling horizontally or vertically across multiple servers.
This is the reason why a majority of developers prefer Node.js to build an eCommerce store.
Ideal for high traffic applications
The developers for hire need to design such eCommerce platforms that can handle high traffic easily.
Fast execution of codes is not possible with asynchronous code as it is executed sequentially. The sequential execution of synchronous code means that one thread cannot execute unless the previous one is finished. The synchronous execution, therefore, slows down the execution process, creating a bottleneck for the traffic.
To fulfill the heavy traffic flow, the eCommerce shop needs to handle the customers’ requests simultaneously instead of handling them sequentially as many clients access the eCommerce portal simultaneously.
A Node.js eCommerce platform can handle high traffic situations as it can execute asynchronous I/O operations speedily.
Cost-effective
Node.js helps the eCommerce startup save a lot of money, and this is one of the primary reasons developers prefer Node.js in eCommerce. The first reason why node js is economical is that it is an open-source framework. Second, node js allows the developers to finish the eCommerce projects quickly, thus reducing the developer hours taken to finish a project.
The developers can use node js for both clients as well as server-side. This helps to reduce the team size, ultimately leading to lower costs for online eCommerce store development.
There are many packages available in node js that expert Node.js developers can easily implement to build a web or mobile app. Furthermore, the ready-made packages save a lot of developer hours as the developers do not need to write the code from scratch. Therefore, these packages significantly increase the speed of online eCommerce store development with Node.js.
Nodejs allows the best app developers to build highly scalable applications and write codes that enable multiple simultaneous connections in a single server. Unfortunately, most of the server programs allow only around 4000 users to be connected simultaneously. To increase this figure, the eCommerce businesses must add servers, increasing costs in the process. With Node.js, the server costs can be drastically reduced as NodeJS can support tens of thousands of concurrent connections.
Real-time communication and easy management
An eCommerce store needs to interact with its customers in real-time to provide a better -customer experience. As Nodejs supports both front-end and back-end development, the best Node.js developers can easily integrate a chat-based tool that allows the eCommerce portal to interact with its client instantly.
Node.js also helps the developers manage the eCommerce store better. As an eCommerce website includes several products, it needs a simple and easy product management solution. Using the NoSQL database, the dedicated Node.js developers can simplify the product listing management. The NoSQL database helps the developers efficiently maintain many product variants. Nodejs is not limited to NoSQL, and it works with SQL databases as well.
Node.js executes queries using graph-based database systems like Neo4j, and Nodejs is also compatible with JSON making it work even without SQL. Moreover, with Nodejs, there is no need to switch between different database syntaxes to execute the front-end and back-end queries.
One can use the same Node.js syntax on both servers and client-side, making execution of database queries faster. The fast execution of queries is one of the major factors that tilt the scale in favor of NodeJS to build an online eCommerce store.
Cross-platform compatibility
An eCommerce portal needs to maximize its reach across various operating systems and devices to realize better revenue. Node.js allows the developers to build cross-platform solutions on platforms like Windows, Unix, Linux, Mac OS X, and mobile devices.
With Node.js, the developers can build an efficient cross-platform solution without knowledge of many programming languages.
Less development time
A factor that helps the skilled Node.js developers reduce the development time is the robust community support. The Node.js community is a group of developers who are instrumental in ensuring the consistent development of NodeJS. In addition, the vibrant developer community of Node.js keeps the framework well-documented and up-to-date.
The community produces many ready-made solutions, plugins, and modules that help cut down the time to develop a Node. js-based solution. Reduced development time translates into reduced billable hours.
Single data stream
With Node.js, data processing is easy and fast as it handles multiple HTTP requests from a single data stream. The ability of Nodejs to handle multiple requests simultaneously proves vital, especially in eCommerce, where there are multiple file requests in the queue for processing.
Using Node.js to build an eCommerce store can make the process much faster and improve the user experience through fast processing.
Optimum performance
A buyer’s journey at an online eCommerce portal involves numerous operations like adding things to the basket, choosing payments, changing product features, and so on. Hence, the technology used to develop an eCommerce portal should serve the tasks efficiently to ensure the smooth functioning of the eCommerce portal.
Node.js effectively handles simultaneous operations making it an excellent choice for eCommerce store development.
Easy customization
As Node.js is very extensible, the customization of Node.js modules is very easy. As compared to other technologies, with Nodejs, the addition and removal of modules are much smoother. In the dynamic world of eCommerce, the ability to customize the modules quickly can prove to be a game-changer for eCommerce firms.
Hence Node.js proves to be a great development option when you frequently want to customize your modules or add/remove any modules.
Many plugins and packages in NPM
One of the major reasons developers use Node.js to create an online eCommerce store is that they have access to many plugins and packages in NPM. These packages and plugins ensure that the developers do not need to write code for everything required in an eCommerce store from scratch.
The remote Node.js developers can leverage the ready-made packages and plugins and significantly cut the development time and the effort required to develop an eCommerce store.
Choose Prismetric for your eCommerce needs
The developers choose Node.js to build an eCommerce store because it takes care of the speed and performance of the eCommerce store. However, choosing the right technology to build your eCommerce store is just the first step in the right direction.
You will also need to select and hire top Node.js developers to build an efficient eCommerce development solution. At Prismetric, we have a team of expert Node.js developers that have the following traits.
- Mastery in asynchronous programming
- Proficiency in server-side template languages
- Secure coding, testing, and Node JS operations
We have delivered countless eCommerce solutions across industry verticals using Node.js, and we would love to take your eCommerce business to the zenith of success.
