Imagine having a complete, highly customized, scalable and fully functional online storefront ready, within just a few weeks, without having to go through a lot of hassles.

Sounds incredible right?

Thanks to the cloud-based, software as a service (SaaS) e-commerce solution, the Salesforce Commerce Cloud for turning this possibility into a reality. Organizations purchase this e-commerce solution to provide a seamless shopping experience to their online customers, be it fashion-oriented, or business-oriented. The Salesforce Commerce Cloud has come up with a basic framework for merchandisers, retailers named the Storefront Reference Architecture with which they can design, develop, and customize their online storefronts as unique as their brands. They can also create new customer experiences, and expand their business across geographies. The Salesforce Commerce Cloud conducted an in-depth analysis of over 2000 mobile storefronts to identify optimal user experience approaches and built SFRA. Hence, this framework is responsive to any screen size, thereby providing a smooth and enjoyable shopping experience across all devices. The Storefront Reference Architecture issues a mix of premier practices from domains including merchandising, site blueprint and technical architecture for e-commerce site design and implementation.

Download Whitepaper : SFRA-Designed for the future of e-commerce

Uses of Storefront Reference Architecture

Improves Time to Market

This framework helps to build an efficient, responsive e-commerce website according to one’s requirements. Merchandisers and retailers exploit the potentiality of this framework once they decide to embark on a journey of new site design and implementation or if they want to revamp an existing storefront. It enables them to launch a website on a platform in a shorter span of time with lesser costs. Plus, they can get directed onto the right path with site design consultations and accelerators rendered through the Commerce Cloud practice team.

Enhances Mobile Shopping Experience

SFRA consists of the essential elements required for delivering a simpler, user-friendly, consistent and ideal shopping experience to the end users. Some of the features are fully functional shopping carts, home pages, checkouts, navigation, search functionality, product display pages and much more. Also, one of the newly added features includes a persistent search bar that makes it easy for shoppers to browse through the products of their choice. Beyond that, the framework focuses on highlighting only the most significant customer related shopping actions, thereby reducing extra noise. Also, it comes with technologies like Apple Pay, to provide shoppers with seamless pay options. By making use of this payment method, users can instantly check out directly on the product display pages, without having to go through additional pages, thereby reducing the number of clicks and enhancing their experience. These features of SFRA have helped brands realize an increase in conversion rates.

Results in Storefront Ownership and Cost Reduction

From a technical perspective, SFRA helps in saving time for developers because they can make use of its preconfigured storefront layouts and templates and can take advantage of the latest innovations quickly. This results in lower project costs, a quicker time to value and a faster go-live. Developers can add in new functionality and features with ease as and when they’re released. They can code outside the core code base and then plug in separately into the storefront. Since integrations are separate from the core code base, developers can own the code and customize it based on their brands’ unique requisites.

Implements industry-standard developer tools to innovate faster

SFRA

Ref : Salesforce.com

This framework works on the Model View Controller (MVC) pattern, which makes it easy for developers to maintain and update the storefront whenever required. The JavaScript controllers, which are a part of the MVC framework assist the developers to process each storefront request and generate an appropriate response to the end user. They also assist in handling the flow of control of the software application. SFRA leverages Bootstrap 4 for its development framework. Bootstrap provides more structure to the content that can be easily understood by the developers outside the Salesforce space. SFRA comes with annotated wireframes, which give the clients a clear explanation of the design decisions involved.

Read Blog : Commerce Cloud Storefront Reference Architecture (SFRA) – What are the things you need to consider while you make a move?

Use Case

One of the iconic sportswear company, PUMA, re-designed and relaunched its websites for 24 countries using SFRA framework and saw a boom in its conversion rate by 50 percent. PUMA focused on site speed, navigation, usability, content, and reduction in the number of clicks to create an incredible shopping experience. After the implementation, the mobile sites fully loaded 65 percent faster. Also, they were easily scalable and released updates quicker. So, this equipped the brand to deal with huge demand and traffic spikes without having to plan in advance, hence increasing their efficiency.

Thus, moving to SFRA will definitely ensure an ideal, hassle-free shopping and checkout experiences across devices, wherein brands will be able to offer these benefits to customers at lower cost and time. In addition to the improved user experience and redesigned front-end, the SFRA framework has greater extensibility and adaptability for future upgrades. Hence, it is a game changer in the world of business.

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