Running an e-commerce store goes beyond selling your products and services online. It requires management of content as well as ensuring an interactive experience for the buyers. You need to look for a solution that blends commerce with content and community and Drupal Commerce is ideal for this purpose. An open-source e-commerce solution, it is built on Drupal CMS and is enriched with all the features of this powerful platform. It brings a range of modules that can be used to create custom e-commerce websites of all sizes and for businesses with diverse requirements.
Before knowing the business benefits of Drupal commerce, it is important to understand the challenges of custom e-commerce systems.
Top Challenges of Custom E-commerce Systems
Let’s come across the biggest challenges experienced with custom E-commerce system.
Slow Feature Implementation
The mindset during custom development is not proactive as everything to add in the e-commerce store needs to be built. With no frameworks the speed of e-commerce implementation services becomes sluggish resulting into higher operational cost.
No Third-party Platform Integration
Open-source platforms are perfect when it comes to integrations. Whether you need to add a payment system or a shipping tool, for successful e-commerce store quick integration is easily possible. When going for custom development, without the presence of frameworks integration becomes harder, expensive, and time-consuming.
Inadequate Front-end Experience
Custom ecommerce development is performed by developers where compete focus is towards the coding. The design and presentation is not given desired priority. Writing code and building engaging design are different job responsibilities, and a few developers can perform both tasks. Unfortunately, this lack of skills seriously impact e-commerce website performance, as customers look for alluring front-end experiences.
Inexperienced Community
Drupal has a strong community of experienced and skilled developers. On the other hand, if your website is custom-made, any issues you might experience is solved by your team of developers. When you integrate community-made modules, Drupal e-commerce services easily extend your site’s functionality. With the custom development, you don’t have that desired benefit.
Complete Dependence on Internal Developers
A company leveraging custom development is dependent on the original team that has developed website. Consulting a new development agency and hiring new developers is waste of money when a predefined framework is not available. Knowledge transfer and supporting new team in learning how existing code was written can prove to be highly challenging.
Drupal Commerce Features That Make It Ideal For E-Commerce
The framework is tailored for e-commerce as it bundles up some amazing features in addition to essentials such as shopping cart, product catalog, checkout form, and more. Besides this, it brings a full range of useful features that make it ideal for this business domain. Let’s explore them for you:
Full-Featured
Drupal Commerce is built on Drupal 7 and begets all the features of the rich and reliable e-commerce platform. The core systems provide essential features such as product administration, order management, tax calculation, dynamic product displays, and much more. Additionally, it supports multi-currency and multilingual functionalities which make it ideal for building highly functional online stores.
Content-Driven
The solution caters amazing user experiences as it combines content with commerce in one. Being the only platform built on an enterprise CMS, it connects products and content to drive online sales for e-commerce enterprises. It is easy for website admin to manage content like price update, product description, promotion campaigns and more without being technical.
Scalable
Being a scalable solution, it is capable of handling business growth in an effective manner. It is powerful enough to align with high traffic on the website as the business expands in future. Scalable website is really helpful during festival and holiday sales where traffic load is extremely high.
Flexible
Another feature that makes it ideal for e-commerce web development is its flexibility. Since it uses configurable modules to build the store, it is easy to adapt it to the changing business model or size. The site can be literally tailored to meet specific needs using the core interfaces of Drupal to manage the page and block layouts, data objects, and business logic.
Open-Source
Being an open-source solution, it is free for use for merchants across the world and does not need them to pay anything to access its features. At the same time, it offers high quality, fast speed, and an extensive community support. This is great when third-party modules need to be integrated and perform changes in real-time.
Social Networking
A Drupal Commerce site can be easily integrated with social networks such as Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, etc. This enhances the social connections of the business and it can avail the advantages of the customers sharing their purchases and promoting the products across their social profiles.
Responsive
Responsiveness is the need of the hour for online enterprises as they definitely need to gain the m-commerce advantage. This framework excels in terms of responsiveness too as it enables the creation of mobile responsive e-commerce sites with its base themes.
Extensible
The solution is enriched with unmatched extensibility too as it can be integrated with third-party applications such as payment gateways, social networks, accounting applications, and more. The API has been built to support the export and import of e-commerce data.
Easy To Maintain
A site built on the framework is easy to maintain and manage because there is only a single set of tools to handle. For this reason, functions such as SEO, CRO, and web analytics become much simpler and easier. The development time is less too as compared to a two-platform system.
Advanced Security
Security breaches are quite common when you run an online selling store. Drupal prioritizes security by adding latest coding practices that follows industry standards. A dedicated eCommerce consultancy service provider constantly monitor the platform and ensures any vulnerability comes is addressed in real-time. Customer prefer to buy from platform that offers data security and authentication features.
In addition to an impeccable range of features, Drupal Commerce serves innovativeness out of the box. It is constantly evolving, with Drupal developers contributing new versions and modules. The consistent community support makes the platform all the more reliable for e-commerce vendors. At OrangeMantra, we serve quality solutions based on this rich platform to make sure that your business is able to reach its targeted growth.
Use Cases of Drupal Commerce
Customizable E-Commerce Platform for Fashion Retailer
A reputed fashion retailer was looking for a custom e-commerce platform for selling of its premium fashion items. The large collection of products having different sizes, colors, and styles, required an advanced solution.
Challenges
- Managing diverse product range categorized as sizes, colors, and styles.
- Ensuring brand image is synced with the e-commerce store design.
- One click tracking and managing of inventory across multiple categories.
- Having a custom and smooth checkout process for high-retention rate.
Solution
- The presence of Drupal commerce supported creation of customizable product pages.
- A robust inventory management system was integrated to track stock levels across all categories.
- The fast checkout process helped in streamline buying process. The checkout matched the client vision and customer expectations.
- Flexible theming allowed creation of visually stunning and engaging online presence.
Results
- Seamless and personalized shopping experience resulted into customer satisfaction and loyal customer base.
- Secure data management and fast checkout processes enhanced operational efficiency and eliminated errors.
- The client successfully attained desired results comprising popular brand image online, engaging new and retaining existing customer base.
Multi-Channel Selling for Home Decor Brand
A Singapore based home decor company was planning to expand its online sales channels. They need a platform that can manage sales, inventory, stock and customer data across both online and offline stores.
Challenges
- The real challenge was to integrate both online and offline sales channels for optimized customer experience.
- Get fast and accurate real-time inventory data across all business
- Delivering personalized shopping experience across all sales channel.
Solution
- We started by integrating e-commerce site with the client’s POS systems. Real-time synchronization of inventory for consistent performance.
- The platform is facilitated with features to manage customer interactions and transactions uniformly across all channels.
- Drupal Commerce assisted in marketing activities, allowing client to perform promotion activities for both online and offline channels.
Results
- The client revenue increased by leveraging multiple sales channels.
- The unified inventory management eliminated data redundancy, discrepancies and enhanced business operation
- Customers are actively participating and doing consistent shopping, increasing loyalty base.
Frequently Asked Questions
How my business can benefit from Drupal Commerce?
Drupal Commerce is powered by customization options, scalability, and third-party integration capabilities. It is suitable for businesses of all sizes looking to build custom e-commerce experiences.
Can your team perform customization of my existing Drupal website?
Yes, our Drupal e-commerce services specialize in performing customization of any Drupal store. We can improve functionality, user experience, and serve your specific business requirements.
Can you improve security standard of my Drupal Commerce store?
We from very first phase of development implement best security practices. It includes regular updates, secure coding process, and regular security audits. We even do continuous monitoring and support for advanced security.
Can you migrate my another CMS store to Drupal Commerce?
Yes, our Drupal team is skilled to seamlessly migrate your existing store from CMS like Magento, WooCommerce, Shopify, Joomla and others to Drupal Commerce. Our focus is to ensure data integrity and minimal downtime.
Do you have designer team for Drupal Commerce website?
Yes, we have a separate design team to create stunning and appealing e-commerce store interface. They are committed to build user-friendly e-commerce site that reflects your brand identity with an optimal shopping experience.
Wrapping Up
The feature set of Drupal commerce when compared to other in terms of scalability, flexibility, and security is prominent. The platform enable you to build a highly secure, flexible and stable online store. Moreover, for engagement you can offer personalized customer experiences. The compatibility with different devices and interfaces ensure high conversions and increase sales.
When you decide to build a new e-commerce website or migrate existing to Drupal, OrangeMantra is the right development partner. The skill set, agile approach and advanced technology suite will guide you through the right Drupal website development. Our collaboration will steer your business in the right direction with desired results. For desired outcome, stay in touch with us right away.