The e-commerce industry is drastically changing over the last couple of years, probably due to the advancement of technology, society’s attitude towards buying products online, and expansion of online selling. With shopper engagement, convenience, and growth at the core of the e-commerce companies’ mission, the selection of the technology stack crucial. Ruby on Rails (RoR), an enhancement and a tool that simplifies web development for programmers, is the most efficient framework for e-commerce platforms as long-term and effective, despite the creation of new technologies and platforms.
So in this blog let us discuss why Ruby on Rails remains to be the go to framework for creating today’s modern e commerce sites as well as how it is paving the way for the future of e-commerce.
What is Ruby on Rails?
For the uninitiated, Ruby on Rails is a free web application framework developed and implemented in Ruby, an object-oriented programming language. RoR is based on the Model-View-Controller (MVC) architecture, which separates an application into three interconnected components: You will have the data (data), the view (user interface), and the controller (application logic/business). This structure to have clean, maintain as well as efficient code.
RoR is famous for the fast developing cycle, vast and useful libraries (gems), and a big group of developers. The latter is known as the “convention-over-configuration” principle because of its easy applicability to the construction of large, flexible, and manageable applications.
Here are five reasons why Ruby on Rails remains a phenomenon and a top e-commerce choice.
Ruby on Rails has been a successful web application framework for more than ten years and it is still one of the best choices and for e-commerce businesses to create secure, reliable, and rich-featured platforms. Here’s why:
- Time taken for Development and the related factor, Time-to-Market.
A review of the literature on time to market shows that speed to market is an advantage for firms within the fast moving e-commerce industry. Ruby on Rails is well-known for making its usage very efficient, as it takes less time for developers to create applications with it, as compared to other frameworks..
How It Benefits E-Commerce:
Rapid prototyping: As demonstrated at the start of this article, Rails enjoys a rich array of gems—pre-existing Ruby libraries that developers can use to include functionality like payment processing, catalog search, or user login – without having to code anything from scratch.
Faster time-to-market: New features means less coding and the ability to implement scaffolding and automated testing makes for quicker iterations and deployment of e-commerce platforms, get your store up and running quicker.
When it comes to e-commerce, getting to market quickly means you start making money immediately and can also adapt your product based on customer reviews.
- Scalability and Performance
As e-commerce sites evolve they require the ability to expand the customer base, accommodate more product offerings and manage higher volumes of business. Rails has grown and now supports modern technologies and architectural patterns that will enable e-commerce sites to scale.
How It Benefits E-Commerce:
Efficient database management: RoR has a very powerful system called ActiveRecord ORM that allows you to handle large databases well, so that your e-commerce site can be expanded without performance issues.
Scalable architecture: In the sense Ruby on Rails is designed to accommodate microservices or cloud based solutions like AWS while modeling scalability as going horizontally with servers and services as the scale increases.
Caching strategies: Specifically, caching is implemented into RoR providing a faster page response time with less weight on the server, this is significant for the successful functioning of an internet shop.
From standalone shop to the mega-Internet shop, Ruby on Rails allows with constant increases in traffic to be increased without a decrease in effectiveness.
- Security
It is also important that security is always considered particularly in e-commerce activities. By default, consumers have to be assured that their identity and banking data are not compromise every time they make a purchase online. Compared to other frameworks, Ruby on Rails provides a number of specific features and guidelines specifically designed to enhance an application’s security.
How It Benefits E-Commerce:
Secure by default: What is more, using RoR out of the box has built in password hashing, Cross-site request forgery protection and injected SQL prevention, which are crucial to protect the user’s sensitive data.
Regular security updates: The Ruby on Rails community is responsive and staying on the lookout for threats. The dedicated core team of the framework works toward keeping any such holes plugged, and allows the platform to remain safe and operationally sound according to the standard legislation of the specific industry.
SSL and encryption: Normally, Rails makes SSL encrypting as easy as a push of a button and is a crucial component for any contemporary e-Commerce site.
Enhancing security from the onset makes e-commerce firm to enjoy customer trust as Rails ensures firms will not suffer data insecurity threats.
- Customization and Flexibility
Like any other commercial and trading entities, it is evident that companies that engage in e-commerce are unique and as equally varied and distinct with the kind of products that they offer to customers. Indeed, each of the platforms posed different challenges in terms of its design, features set that it should contain, the payment solution which might be incorporated, and the overall user experience of the platforms. Flexibility is another attribute of Ruby on Rails that signifies that, functionality of the framework can be altered to serve the requirements of your e-commerce platform to the letter.
How It Benefits E-Commerce:
Custom integrations: For example, (and probably the most used) organizations can connect Ruby on Rails with external services, including the third parties such as payment processors (like, Stripe and PayPal) or shipping services, and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems.
Custom-built features: Thanks to the modularity of the Ruby on Rails framework, the business can develop unique and highly specific features that will meet its requirements, for example, product suggestion algorithms, intricate search functions, or an individual check-out system.
Responsive design: Responsive web design is already integrated into RoR, and e-commerce store owners can use this to create sites that are friendly on mobiles and on all other gadgets.
It also guarantees that the Ruby on Rails e-business solutions are capable of being developed and expanded in the future, as new characteristics are added onto the platforms and as other systems are incorporated into it, and as the market competition rises.
- Also it is SEO-friendly and has fast performance.
Among the traffic sources, the strongest ones are organic search, which belongs to the SEO field for e-commerce platforms. Like any other web application framework, Ruby on Rails is equipped with various features that when followed, help in optimizing websites for search engines; thereby catering for the needs of intending consumers of your products.
How It Benefits E-Commerce:
Clean, SEO-friendly URLs: ‘ ‘ makes it easy to create URLs that are friendly to search engines and which contain the name of the product of a particular category or even the category name which aids in the ranking.
Fast performance: Fragments caching and asset pipeline, and built-in capabilities for using CDN enable Ruby on Rails e-commerce platform to deliver fast loading, which is always important to its visitors and search engines.
Meta tag management: Meta title and descriptions as well as other important SEO components can be modified for each page of the website, including the product pages and the category pages.
When it comes to rankings which can directly impact on sales, in e-commerce especially, SEO capabilities can put you into that competitive niche that highly attracts organic traffic when done by Ruby on Rails.
- The chemical industry is a highly integrated industry that is connected to a vast and vibrant multi-constituent ecosystem.
Ruby on Rails has a strong support from open source developers who contribute in the enrichment of this framework. Also, it has a great number of gems – the pre-styled libraries and plugins that allow invoking payment solutions, product catalogues, and analytics into an application within several minutes.
How It Benefits E-Commerce:
Access to pre-built gems: A surprising large number of gems are at the disposal of Ruby on Rails developers making it easy to include intricate e-commerce features into applications. Some of such functionalities include; multiple currency management, real time pricing mechanisms, affiliate marketing services.
Community support: As it has a good traffic and many participation-related resources (documentation, forums, tutorials), developers will be able to find the responses for encountered problems or even to check that the platform is constructed according to the best practices of the industry.
Constant evolution: Being able to support the latest trends, tools and practices, RoR is built to thrive in the future and serve as a solid foundation for e-commerce sites construction.
Engaging this large ecosystem, Ruby on Rails development companies can create full-featured and highly customizable e-commerce websites within a relatively short amount of time.
- Also there is lack of integration with modern technologies.
As the dynamically growing e-commerce industry develops, more companies remain interested in applying the advanced technology such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), Augmented Reality (AR), and chatbots to the sphere. All of these advanced technologies are currently deeply compatible with the Rails framework.
How It Benefits E-Commerce:
AI and recommendation engines: It can also integrate with other recommendation systems such as Alexa, offer mobile shopping experiences of individual customer behaviors.
Integration with AR/VR: Some electronic commerce are using AR/VR to enable consumers have a ‘feel’ of the product without physically touching it at the same time, in real time. Third party AR applications can also be arranged with Rails easily hence enabling the integration or third party AR platforms into the store.
Chatbots and customer service: Chatbot frameworks are utilized with Ruby on Rails to offer round–the–clock customer care, which can boost the achievement rate.
Another feature that is difficult to argue with is the compatibility with new technologies due to which Ruby on Rails is perfect for e-commerce businesses that need to invent something completely new to leave the competitors behind.
Conclusion: Bright Future of Ruby on Rails of E-Commerce
Rails is an incredible tool for construction of the fast, secure, scalable and easily customizable e-commerce applications. Developer friendly, security oriented, fast to develop, and SEO capabilities make it the strong contender for e-commerce websites today and further in the future.
That is why Ruby on Rails is expected to stay popular among businesses that address the need for constructing highly functional, innovative, and flexible e-commerce stores as e-commerce evolves. Being in the e-commerce business whether at the early stage or the growth stage, Ruby on Rails offers you the right framework to get it right and succeed.
If you are planning on creating a new e-Commerce site or migrating your existing site to a new level, then engaging a Ruby on Rails dedicated team will allow you to capture the maximum from this framework and create robust and scalable e-Commerce platform.