Reaching Beyond Sitecore’s Native eCommerce
If you are a Sitecore developer looking at the possibility of an eCommerce project the chances are you are thinking two things.
- Is Sitecore’s eCommerce capability good enough?
- How much customization will be needed to pull this off?
iMedia is a full-service interactive consultancy based in NJ, and we were faced with that exact situation when a client asked us to help them rebuild their website which was already on Sitecore. The question was how to handle commerce?
Our role
Already fully invested in the Sitecore stack, with editors trained and comfortable, our client looked to us to evaluate Sitecore from an eCommerce standpoint and help guide the decision to integrate a more well-known platform or build it all out on Sitecore. Given that iMedia has been rolling out Sitecore solutions for enterprise clients for over 8 years, we knew we could assess the terrain quickly. We’ve integrated 3rd party solutions into Sitecore for a number of scenarios from knowledge management to CRM, to eCommerce.
After a review of Sitecore’s eCommerce offering which basically entailed one very unnecessarily hard setup, we realized it was just not viable. We recommended BigCommerce, a leading SaaS-based eCommerce platform that is built to either be your end to end solution or weaved into your enterprise as Commerce as a Service.
Why iMedia Built a Sitecore Connector
When we looked at the challenge of integrating Sitecore and BigCommerce we realized that there were certain principles and features that were core to a successful integration.
- Editors were used to editing in Sitecore and wanted to retain that capability.
- User information had to be shared between systems, and one login should allow users to SSO across both platforms.
- We needed to maintain separation of concerns and allow Sitecore to handle content and BigCommerce to handle commerce.
- Products needed to be synchronized between the two systems, but we did not want to maintain any commerce specific data in the CMS like sku options, variants, pricing etc.
- We needed to build this to be customizable — Sitecore experiences are all very custom since it is a platform upon which developers and marketers build a solution, rather than a canned set of widgets that make up pages like other CMS systems.
When looking at these needs we realized we couldn’t be the first or the last team to have a similar set of needs. So we decided to productize our solution. Today it is called SitecoreExtend and it is a deployable Sitecore Package.
How It Works
The first thing we had to do was find a way to allow users to keep both systems in sync. So we created tabs in Sitecore that allowed editors to query BigCommerce and get a friendly display of what items were yet to be synced or what was updated on the commerce side recently.
Our connector includes Sitecore templates, classes, views and item types that allow editors to work with BigCommerce products, adding and extending whatever content they want, while retaining the ability to have our views and classes render out real-time sku options/prices and ability to add to cart.
This approach allowed BigCommerce to drive all pricing rules, availability, validation, etc behind the scenes and allowed our client’s Sitecore editors to focus purely on content.
By having all the product pages reside in Sitecore, site personalization became attainable. The following screen is a partial rendering of a page in Sitecore where all product sku options pricing and add to cart are handled by our connector without any coding needed by our client.
Once added to cart, the experience switches to BigCommerce, but we’ve build a robust service layer that if required could allow the full checkout process to be fully headless.
Features
Product Synchronization — Allows for searching and synchronization ability to not only pull product data in from BigCommerce but also to see what items have and have not been synced up yet.
BigCommerce Embedded API — A service layer that talks to BigCommerce, so developers can continue customizing as needed.
Scheduled Tasks — Product ships with tasks that can poll BigCommerce on a periodic basis to pull in items that are not yet in Sitecore.
Unify CMS / eCommerce Navigation & Footer — Software generates markup and pushes it to BigCommerce to drive unified CMS driven Header and Footer.
Bidirectional User Synchronization — Options available for setting up user logins / registrations are synchronized between BigCommerce and Sitecore, presenting the opportunity for personalization across both platforms.
Add to Cart from CMS — The software comes with views that handle fetching and rendering product sku options / variants, handling availability, pricing and add to cart without having to do any coding in Sitecore. Product pages in Sitecore are fully functional through the integration but can be customized for any look and feel through the Sitecore CMS.
Sitecore Powered Product Pages — Let your content editors drive the experience by building robust and unlimited product pages. The details of skus / pricing etc is handled by BigCommerce behind the scenes, in real time.
What We Learned
The main lesson we learned was that every Sitecore implementation is unique, and so our connector is also built for extension. We expect that once adopted it will be extended differently in every implementation so our solution architecture allowed for that. That’s what Sitecore is all about — fully customized solutions addressing specific business needs. We knew that the BigCommerce API was robust but through this process, we did get to see that it stood up to the enterprise integration challenge.
Conclusion
The bottom line is that any large organization that is serious about online content will be considering Sitecore. If eCommerce is also a need, serious consideration should be given towards BigCommerce, because our connector proves that a high level of interoperability, security and flexibility can be achieved. Both Sitecore and BigCommerce are leaders in their respective verticals, knowing that an enterprise headless commerce option is available for Sitecore should arm not only technologists but marketers with a strong strategy to help deliver more revenue to the bottom line.
If you are looking to get started with SitecoreExtend simply install it in your Apps page of your BigCommerce store and from there you can download the package. Or to find out more Contact iMedia!
