In the fast-paced eCommerce market, providing advanced solutions to end-users is a top priority. Don’t let legacy interfaces get in the way of your business success. Approaching modern ways like Microservices can help you overcome significant challenges and stay on top.
Microservices in eCommerce is a growing term that can allow the industry to overcome crucial challenges. Unlike the traditional Monolithic method, it’s not limited to a rigid state that creates a barrier to flexibility. Instead, Microservices allow you to advance the eCommerce software development key to delivering exceptional business performance.
With the help of Microservice architecture, the eCommerce industry can enhance its delivery speed, operations, and effectiveness, leading to higher customer experience, faster product launch, effective promotion, and support in competitive markets. This article will explore the different patterns and strategies of Microservices for eCommerce, along with the benefits and success stories.
Microservice Architecture the Future of eCommerce
The Microservices architecture is widely accepted in the eCommerce sectors because it lowers the barrier of Monolith’s rigorous all-in-one process and enables seamless eCommerce, which was challenging to do before. To stay updated with rapidly changing customer behavior and expectations, adopting advanced architectures like Microservices is a prime concern.
This approach helps you design an eCommerce store where the solutions work independently and allow you to run your business seamlessly. In addition, it will enable you to reduce technical complexity by improving the flexibility and scalability of services.
You can redesign your eCommerce site with customization in a Microservices approach. It will help cut down the load on the front end by distributing it to the backend team. In addition, implementing this agile process instead of the traditional method leads to efficient business processes.
Allowing independent business units has fostered improved customization and flexibility. This results in a better end-user experience in eCommerce. Therefore, choosing Microservices can be an excellent choice for the eCommerce industry to improve their overall business. Amazon, eBay, and Etsy are some core Microservices examples.
eCommerce Monoliths vs. Microservices, choose wisely
Having an excellent design for your eCommerce business is an essential element. Therefore, you must understand the fundamental difference between Monolith and Microservice when restructuring your business. Both platforms help to improve the performance of your eCommerce stores. However, most of us need clarification on choosing the right one.
Monoliths are a traditional approach to designing online stores. This architecture has developed the whole process as a single unit. Unfortunately, that reduced the speed of the application and resulted in productivity deficiency and poor customer experience.
This method has the disadvantage of lack of flexibility. In a Monolith, all operations are part of a single unit, which makes it difficult to change or update. Moreover, due to the large interface, it also needs more extensibility.
Besides, conducting changes in the application or fixing the errors is too complicated and expensive due to the united approach. For example, If a minor change is required in the application’s front end, you must re-develop the entire Monolith, as there is no option to change it independently.
These challenges reinforce the need for a modern approach, as with these barriers, it’s impossible to build an exceptional eCommerce store that is the prime requirement of the end-users. It eventually hampers the customer experience and leads to sales reduction.
To eliminate this problem, the modern approach of Microservices has taken place in the eCommerce market. Over time, this method has gained popularity due to its unique benefits. The main advantage of Microservices is the ability to operate independently.
Microservices divide the eCommerce platform into independent parts and connect them with APIs. Thus, it has helped the eCommerce platform perform better by making development and deployment more manageable.
You can now deploy or develop a single requirements-driven approach; no need to go through a complete modification process. It ultimately saves you time and costs. Microservices are designed to improve the user experience, which the traditional approach lacks.
This application allows you to solve problems more conveniently. The core benefit of this application is that it enhances the process’s efficiency by simplifying development.
It will allow you to split applications into individual pieces and shorten items to deploy and update separately as required. By driving this process, Microservices improve flexibility, scalability, speed, and customizability.
However, due to the combination of single and independent parts, Microservice development often becomes complicated. Fortunately, with the help of an expert or third-party vendor, these problems can be quickly resolved.
Microservices are recommended based on the higher demand in the eCommerce platform. It is expected to reach USD 2701.36 million in the upcoming years. Hence, adopting this approach will help your businesses to cope with the enhancing demand and market uniqueness.
Microservices Components
The Microservices components are associated with various aspects that help you to build a more structured eCommerce system. It is associated with the following factors:
User Interface
The user interface is essential for the eCommerce business, as it will connect the end-users with the specific operations. For example, Customers will use the user interface to browse, search for a product, or add it to their cart. Hence creating a customized, user-friendly interface is a core requirement.
The interface needs to be graphically evaluated, which can be a covenant to use from any device, such as mobile or desktop. These interfaces can be designed using client-based web development frameworks like Angular and React. It ensures an excellent consumer experience for the end user.
Routing layer
The routing layer is a critical factor for performing Microservices. When the user performs in the interface, they send a request to the routing layer, which sends this UI request from one to more target Microservices. This UI request includes an API gateway that helps to develop API for different scales.
The next element is a load balancer responsible for distributing API requests between Microservices. The service registry is a third component used to keep track of all instances of Microservices in an application. The last element is a message broker that ensures communication between all Microservices is stable and handled appropriately.
Container Ecosystem
The container ecosystem is responsible for storing the various units of Microservices. Each Microservice is responsible for different tasks, including managing inventory, customer support, ensuring cart optimization, and lots more. To improve the functionality of the Microservices, you can use a distant amount of technologies.
Using built-in technology or third-party tools to complete the process is also helpful. For example, hypergraphs are a valuable technology that can be implemented in Microservices to manage various assets. In addition, it can generate other pages, including privacy policy, FAQ, product details, etc. Several server-side web development tools can be used in Microservices; a few are Express, spring boot, etc.
Data Storage
Each Microservice has its own unique database. These databases help store different information related to the business. For example, it includes product, payment, and shipment details. These details are related to the eCommerce business and are required to run the process appropriately.
Core Microservice Design Pattern Used in eCommerce
In eCommerce, you can implement various Microservices architecture patterns. A few of them are stated below:
Strangler Pattern
This Microservice pattern reliably refactors code. In addition, it allows you to migrate specific functionality simultaneously with new Microservices. Furthermore, it helps monitor the process appropriately and reduce errors. Finally, this model ensures that the entire system has good test coverage.
This process replaces an old system that is hidden behind an invisible disguise. An API gateway is used during migration and to connect with direct users of a particular application. It further helps ensure application availability and simplifies the development process by reducing external migration. After the migration, the old method is ready to be adopted by the Microservice.
Saga Pattern
The Saga pattern is responsible for maintaining functionality between the overall applications. This Microservices architectural pattern provides and supports the transactions based on the sequence of local commerce. All the transactions are associated with an event that includes the next transaction step. By conducting this process, the Microservices pattern ensures data consistency among all the servers.
The Saga pattern can be implemented in two ways: Orchestra and Choreographer. Each server executes transactions and publishes events to the Orchestration Saga. Other departments always capture and receive notifications for fulfilling their responsibilities during an event. If a transaction fails, the Saga model triggers the rollback of transactions to handle the error.
API Gateway Pattern
The API Gateway pattern is an excellent solution for managing multiple Microservices. It connects all Microservices through a reverse proxy to route client requests. This model is linked to the end-user by backend Microservices.
It is part of the aggregation service because it can send queries to many Microservices and return the same aggregator to the client. The best part of the API Gateway is the single point of contact that reduces security concerns in the Microservices process. It can significantly support an eCommerce platform that deals with multiple clients and requires a single endpoint.
The Event Sourcing Pattern
Event sourcing patterns help update a sequence of change events. It can be an excellent pattern for monitoring the customer and order details. This pattern helps create new events whenever the business entity status changes. It helps to achieve a high performance, scalability, and secure process for the development team by streamlining the entire event change sequence.
Event Source pattern is crucial for the eCommerce business as it helps to get real-time status on a particular event, which is a core necessity for this industry. For example, This method can be an excellent option for monitoring and providing a real-time update on the shopping cart.
Aggregator Pattern
The Aggregator pattern can be performed in four steps. These steps include a service receiving a request, then making a request to multiple applications, combining the results from all the applications, and sending it back to the initial source.
This model’s core advantage is using a single user interface for all connected Microservices. It reduces the communication gap between the customer and the service, allowing for faster deployment. It has significant benefits for the eCommerce industry as it helps to provide consistent services throughout the consumer and service management process.
Microservices Benefits for eCommerce
Independent Deployment
Unlike the Monoliths approach, Microservices can work independently and deploy changes as they happen in a system. Therefore, deploying the entire server to a single deployment like a Monolithic approach is unnecessary. It ultimately speeds up the process and ensures excellent customer service.
Increase Scalability
You can enhance individual components based on specific consumer requirements using the Microservices architecture. For example, if a client needs to improve a small part of a web page, you can do it individually. It is optional to change the entire website.
It will also boost your eCommerce business by adding more instances for the specific service without hampering the current one. It will help to improve the scalability of the business process.
Technology Diversity
In the traditional process, there are many restrictions on the choice of technology. But in Microservices, you can build each system based on the necessary technology stacks. It is also flexible to modifications, if necessary, after implementation. By adopting a process of technology diversification, Microservices distinctively develops the eCommerce business.
Fault Tolerance
By managing different systems individually, Microservices help reduce downtime. For example, changing your product description for a category will only affect specific eCommerce processes. In addition, it has benefited from improved efficiency and ensured a fault-tolerant process for the eCommerce system.
Better Team Collaboration
Microservices help to improve team collaboration among the different departments. By connecting all the departments individually in a single system, this method helps to ensure excellent coordination. Also, due to the individual part of the services, the impact on one department is not hampering the other.
Hence, it is a beneficial aspect of the eCommerce business as it involves various components, including a shopping cart, checkout, inventory management, customer support, resources, checkout, and lots more.
Enhance Security
Microservices use a secure API gateway constructed with higher security to protect data management. Data protection is a core factor for the eCommerce industry, and most consumers are concerned about it. Hence, choosing Microservices for your business can ensure a secure data management system that helps to build consumer trust.
Implementation of Microservices for eCommerce
Review your Present ECommerce Architecture
Before implementing Microservices in an eCommerce business, it is essential to analyze your currently used architecture. Understanding the gap between your traditional and new approaches needs serious consideration. Moreover, it will help you to give a reasonable idea of the current technology choice.
Move from Traditional to Advance
After reviewing your current architecture, you find that you are using the Monoliths process to execute your eCommerce business, which involves many limitations and impacts on your business operations.
To reduce this barrier, you must take an advanced approach called Microservices. To provide full support, you need to understand the benefit of Microservices architecture, and therefore, you can choose it to boost your eCommerce business process.
Leverage the Third Party
Once you understand the requirements of Microservices, now is the time to implement this approach in your eCommerce platform. However, the main challenge now is choosing the right one. Third-party experts can help you better enforce Microservices because they specialize in this area and can boost your business like never before.
Assign a Support Team
Whether you choose a third party or build the platform in-house, assigning a support team is necessary. This team should be combined with Microservices experts to understand the process better. Moreover, it will allow you to receive effective monitoring and support when needed.
Review and Scale Up
Now is the time to review your progress. Track every implementation step and outcome to understand the success rate of Microservices for your business. This will give you a clear idea of the evolution stage and help you develop further. Additionally, you can improve issues that may arise during the deployment phase.
Success Stories
There are various examples of Microservices architecture available for eCommerce businesses. Let’s explore a few of them.
Amazon
Microservices implementation starts with Amazon’s hand. The brand switched to this modern approach long ago, resulting in notable success in eCommerce. The brand uses Amazon Web Services (AWS) to build and manage its Microservices infrastructure.
This eCommerce business has undergone many changes after implementing Microservices. It helped them automate their operations, increasing traffic and faster deliveries. In addition, it has allowed them to improve the customer experience like never before.
ETSY
Etsy was facing poor server issues due to the traditional approach, which hampered its performance for a long time. By adopting Microservices, the brand has noticed exceptional changes in the operational process. They used a two-layer API with meta endpoints that helped them aggregate and combine other endpoints.
This transformation allows for the creation of device-specific resources. Customers can also enjoy personalization across their various devices. Here they have connected one API layer to their website and application to provide custom views to the consumer. Another API is responsible for communicating with other databases. It has helped them improve order processing, timely updates, and overall consumer satisfaction, increasing revenue.
Conclusion
Microservices are a modern approach to eCommerce, and implementing this architecture can do wonders for your business. It helps improve overall eCommerce store performance by speeding up the addition, modification, and deployment. But first, you can explore various Microservice patterns that can be implemented in your eCommerce store and identify the best one aligned with your business needs.
Most eCommerce leaders understand the benefits of Microservices architecture. This approach simplifies the development team’s tasks and produces excellent results, exceptional customer support, and immense sales rates.
As a result, the implementation of the Microservices approach is growing in the eCommerce industry, and it’s predicted to grow by USD 7.8 Billion by 2028. Amazon, eBay, Etsy, Spotify, and Netflix are the leading brands that rely on Microservices for their businesses and achieve great results.
It is high time to Implement Microservices for your eCommerce business, as a slight delay can cost you high on your revenue. However, when it comes to implementation, the main obstacle is choosing the correct Microservice pattern for your business. Selecting a third-party expert can help you to overcome these challenges and simplify your development process. Start your business transformation with Microservices and stay on the cutting edge of market demand.
