Challenge
Technology has led the entire society to digitize all its operations. On the Internet, users are able to purchase absolutely any kind of product or service and it is unacceptable for a company to have a bad website: it has a direct impact on sales and on the image that the brand projects to customers and prospects.
For that reason, the company turned to Rootstack: they wanted to improve the performance of their e-commerce, wanting a much faster and more agile platform that would provide a better user experience for their customers and boost their online sales. In addition, they were urged to have a mobile application for their business, diversifying access to customers to their virtual store and adjusting to the consumption and browsing patterns of current users.
Our solutions
It was a project full of complexities, but Rootstack took on the challenge successfully, adjusting to the particularities of this ecommerce. The first thing we did was clone the current site to work on Ruby on Rails, an open-source web application framework that allows the developing of high-performance websites, allowing engineers to work faster and more agile in optimization, achieving a more agile and functional platform than the previous one.
Then our experienced team focused on optimizing two aspects of the website: the development and connection of the APIs in the backend and the improvement of the frontend styles.
- How we work APIs
This was one of the challenges of the project due to the particular structure that this e-commerce has. The company has a platform for each of the countries in which it is available: Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Costa Rica, and the ‘International’ portal, for purchases made outside these countries. In addition, this site has two different portals for end-users and for sellers, configured in a similar way, but with additional functions for sellers.
Our team configured the business rules corresponding to each country and type of user for each of these platforms: although the rules between Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala and International shared similarities, the Costa Rican market had certain particular rules that we configured separately.
The core of this Lovable project was to achieve the development and connection of the APIs, making possible efficient communication between the website and the ERP, which provided all the data related to the inventory and the products that the ecommerce showed. This work with the APIs had to be replicated in each and every one of the platforms in the different countries.
The multi-country functionality that this ecommerce present makes it possible to change the currency, discounts and any other type of particularity that a certain market has. That is, the user can go from the Guatemala portal by viewing the local currency, by going to the Costa Rica portal, by displaying the currency of that country, and so on.
- Frontend styles
Of course, along with all this work on the backend, we also take care of optimizing details of the frontend after cloning. We worked the CSS of the original Lovable site with the SASS processor to generate the style sheets. We made a refactory of the site they already had in production, where the interfaces were not altered, but the internal structure was altered, allowing communication with a Ruby-based API to query the data to be displayed.
User types and payment gateways
The website is structured like this: it has a portal aimed at end users, at the conventional customer who makes their usual purchases; and it has a portal focused on the sellers of the products of this company, where they can purchase the merchandise that they are going to distribute to their private customers. Both types of user have a similar configuration, although the profile of the sellers has some extra functionalities for the type of activity.
We also configure the payment gateways for each of the methods offered by Lovable in this ecommerce, such as payment by debit and credit card and transfers. This configuration was done in each of the platforms by country and by each type of user, a task full of complexities that our experienced team was able to carry out satisfactorily.
Mobile application development
Another of the main needs that they had was the development of a mobile application that would allow them to expand their reach much more in this underwear market, adapting to the browsing habits of users today.
So, we created a platform with a clean and functional design, focused on offering the best user experience to customers. The arrangement of each of the elements on the screen guides the customer in their purchase process in a simple and friendly way.
By entering the app as a customer, users have access to their order history and most recent orders, as well as their profile, addresses and wish list. The search for products can be done by different categories such as women, men, boys and girls, accessories and discounts. Also by type of piece, use, size and by values such as price range and best-selling pieces.
Being the mobile app of an ecommerce store, images have a great role in the graphical interface, so we try to use this element optimally in the design.
Technologies
We work on the ecommerce backend in Ruby on Rails, adding the Nuxt.js and Bootstrap technologies to complement the work on the frontend, offering a graphical interface optimized for an efficient user experience. For the development of the mobile application we use React Native, one of the most powerful frameworks to create native applications for Android, iOS, among other operating systems.
At Rootstack, we truly give ourselves to our projects. We do not rest until we achieve the best results in each of the platforms and applications that we create. The satisfaction of our clients is our north and we celebrate with them when our work enhances their productivity and sales. We have the best ecommerce solutions for your business!
