Using a Progressive Web App (PWA) for a storefront site brings many advantages in terms of speed, search visibility and customer loyalty. Today we can see PWAs starting to be built into tools designed for e-commerce. In the e-commerce sector, PWAs have already proved their worth. We introduce them in our article “PWA: how important is it in e-commerce?”.
We will now turn to Vue Storefront, an e-commerce tool that builds in the PWA. What are the benefits and the promises? Here are all the answers.
Two creators behind Vue Storefront
Filip Rakowski is the co-founder and current CTO of Vue Storefront. Filip teamed up with Piotr Karwatka to create the JavaScript library. Their shared aim was to build an effective solution for developers, one that would meet the goals and expectations of the e-commerce sector, such as customer experience.
What is Vue Storefront?
In the beginning, Vue Storefront was a project between developers who shared the same goal: creating a tool that answers the needs of today’s e-commerce effectively. Released in 2017, Vue Storefront is an open-source JavaScript library based on the well-known VueJs framework. The aim is to help e-commerce businesses design their storefront while making implementation simpler and use more efficient than existing options.
Today the project has grown considerably and is expanding at a dramatic pace. Vue Storefront is used by many tools, such as Shopware PWA (front-end interface), the Storefront API and Storefront UI (a templating tool).
Another advantage of this JavaScript library is its API, which lets you connect the front end — built with Vue Storefront — to any e-commerce back-end service. Its headless design offers flexibility to developers, who are then free to choose the technologies they want to use.
The advantages brought by the PWA
Vue Storefront can be used to build the PWA of an e-commerce site. That brings many benefits, such as a development cost lower than that of a native application.
What is more, the PWA provides an effective e-commerce storefront. Users see no difference between the site and the PWA. They are not thrown off course, they are not asked to download an app, and they can browse offline thanks to service workers, which cache the site’s data on the user’s phone. The user experience is therefore greatly improved.
Finally, PWAs make it possible to send notifications directly to the user — a major advantage for e-commerce sites. Telling users about a new product that might interest them, or reminding them that their basket is waiting, helps build loyalty.
Beyond the PWA, the JavaScript library holds other features that online retailers can take advantage of to improve their traffic!
The promises made by Vue Storefront
Vue Storefront is a JavaScript library that has grown explosively since its release, and not without reason.
Faster loading
The library evolves quickly while keeping up with the new rules imposed by search engines, particularly around SEO. Google communicates about this often, and gives more and more weight to a website’s loading speed.
Vue Storefront claims it can reduce page load times on e-commerce sites even when those pages are heavy and unoptimised. To achieve that, the developers have worked on reducing bundle sizes, implementing lazy loading and many other web performance techniques.
Simplified changes
An e-commerce site is not static: it is bound to evolve and change. Sometimes these changes are minor, at other times they can be far more significant. Deciding to switch back-end technology in order to gain performance can very quickly generate substantial costs. The headless approach makes it possible to connect the front end to any back end, whatever the technology used. That is what Vue Storefront offers: by working on the front end independently of the rest, it becomes simpler and faster to change the back-end part.
Vue Storefront has this philosophy of minimalism. The library leaves the installation of features up to you. Its microservices architecture means you install only the packages that will actually be used on the site. Each package is independent and optional.
Vue Storefront looks like the promising library for online retailers. It answers the market’s requirements and expectations, but also aims to be high-performing and uses modern tools. This open-source project now counts more than 4,000 active members who keep bringing improvements in order to meet the challenges of e-commerce.
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