A detailed walkthrough of SAP Spartacus

The ecommerce industry has come forth a lot with recent technical developments. For instance, the availability of cross-platform development techniques allows professionals to build device responsive storefront without writing OS-specific codebases. Similarly, many storefronts are nowadays integrated with blockchain software to store all customer and product datasets in the secured ledger. Yet there are numerous challenges that need to be addressed from time to time. One of these roadblocks is the internal connection between the frontend and backend of the storefront.

As a result of this, professionals cannot deploy the modifications or changes to either of the parts without taking down the entire storefront. Apart from this, there are issues with storefront performance, efficiency, scalability, and many more. This is why developers have started looking for alternatives to build a highly responsive and more efficient storefront. Fortunately, the SAP Spartacus framework has set the bar high, allowing professionals to develop and integrate an e-commerce storefront with amplified efficiency, responsiveness, and performance.

What is SAP Spartacus in e-commerce?

SAP Spartacus can be considered an open-source platform where an e-commerce storefront can be developed, deployed, and managed comprehensively. Its base code is relatable with angular JS, thereby offering a lightweight platform to the developers so that they can come up with a more reliable storefront having optimized performance.

Since it is a pre-built platform, the Spartacus framework offers the following features to all storefronts.

1. Homepage or main dashboard: It will allow you to manage and oversee all the parameters and control fields of your e-commerce storefront.
2. Product detail and category listing: Whether it is listing out different product categories or including the category and product details, this framework window can serve both purposes.
3. Search bar: Integrated with a search bar functionality, Spartacus storefront allows searching of any product directly without having to navigate to different linked pages.
4. Cart item addition: Your users can easily add more items to the cart without exiting from the product pages after each addition.
5. Cart page: Another feature that comes built-in with Spartacus is the cart page where users can see all the items currently added to the cart and the ones which have been removed or saved for later use.
6. Checkout: The checkout page integrated with the storefront allows users to choose from different payment channels, re-confirm orders, add personal details, and perform several other functions.
7. Order history: SAP Spartacus also allows users to view the order histories within a stipulated time range from a single page.

What are the benefits of developing a Spartacus storefront?

Before you invest in such a storefront, knowing about the benefits of SAP Commerce Cloud Spartacus is imperative. Considering this, we have discussed the ways in which Spartacus has set the bar high for the ecommerce industry.

1. Decoupled architecture: Unlike other open-source JS-based platforms, Spartacus allows decoupling of the frontend from its backend. In other words, both the backend and frontend perform independently of one another, allowing developers to push the codebase or deploy any latest change to the overall storefront without having to take it down from the server.
2. Extendable and upgradable libraries: One of the key features of Spartacus is that it allows developers to integrate the system libraries with an existing storefront for functionality extension. Furthermore, if the libraries are upgraded, all the new changes will be reflected in the existing websites without having to manually trigger the upgrade process or change configurations.
3. Agile platform: Thanks to the high agility level of the Spartacus Angular platform, it is possible for developers to make and deploy rapid changes in the codebase without taking down the entire storefront from the server.
4. Progressive: Also, it is easier to develop and deploy progressive web applications by using SAP Spartacus. These apps are highly device responsive, which automatically eliminates the need to write and deploy different codebases.

How to develop a Spartacus storefront and generate higher yields?

Since Spartacus Angular itself is a nascent idea, it might not be easy to get the desired results from the developed ecommerce storefront. So, before you invest in this technology, it is better to know the tricks of overcoming any unforeseen circumstance.

1. It is always suggested not to replicate and deploy the Spartacus source code. This is because the source codes have limited upgradability, which is why you won’t be able to deploy any change to the storefront. Rather, it is better to use the system libraries that can be further customized to meet the site demands.
2. Also, Spartacus itself comes with several built-in features that can be integrated with your storefront. So, it is better to re-confirm if you can access the features before developing them again for the store.
3. List down all the Spartacus features that you want to include to the storefront as per business requirements. This way you can avoid unnecessary feature integration and optimize its overall performance.

Conclusion

The Spartacus storefront comes with numerous that can be leveraged to amplify its overall performance, efficiency, and functionality. However, there can be roadblocks at the time of developing or deploying the codebases to the existing websites using Spartacus. That’s why developers need to be cautious while importing libraries or including the built-in features so that the configuration remains unaffected.