There power technology stack to harness for a typical e-commerce website should enable speed, scalability, security, flexibility and the like. Online shopping requires a reliable system that enables high traffic and the reliability of payment systems and smooth user experiences. Out of the myriad of web development frameworks currently available, Ruby on Rails, abbreviated as RoR, is the best for developing e-commerce sites.
In this blog post we will try to figure out why Ruby on Rails is the best platform for creating high performance, scalable and impactful e-commerce websites. Regardless if it is an application that is in the process of creating an online store or a business that is expanding, RoR has everything that a business needs for it to compete in the ever evolving e-commerce landscape.
- Density of Development and Time to Market
Where e-commerce is concerned, speed is a key factor and getting your website launched is very important. The time-to-market may be very significant when it comes to your revenues and competitive advantage. Ruby on Rails is therefore fast in development, whereby one can develop rich feature e-commerce website within relatively short period than when using other frameworks.
Key Speed Benefits:
Convention Over Configuration: Convention over configuration allows to make development faster, because RoR avoids creating complicated configurations which must be set every time. The developers can concentrate on writing less amount of code, hence, there would be quicker cycles of development.
Scaffolding and Generators: Ruby on Rails has tools like scaffolding that will generate most of the code for the model, controller and view. This enables the developers to create a proof of concept and create an MVP (Most Viable Product) without having to invent the wheel when developing new applications.
Integrated Tools and Gems: A key feature of RoR is the set of collections of pre-coded software libraries called gems that can enhance your e-commerce site with advanced functionality without code writing. From implementing payment systems, user authentication, to even managing inventories, there is a gem for nearly everything out there.
Through prototyping and deployment, Ruby on Rails can help e-commerce start-ups achieve rapid application development and, through this avenue, set themselves up to be successful in responding to consumer feedback.
- Ök.scrollHeight_select_text_for_autoorten_by grows for businesses that have strong sales, specifically in the e-commerce sector.
With growth in your e-commerce company, demands such as expanding website traffic, and transactions and an increasing quantity of products for sale is essential. Another benefit which Ruby on Rails offer is definitely the scalability one. It is important to know that RoR is designed for scalability and as your business grows, you have the ability to add feature upon feature.
Key Scalability Features:
Modular Architecture: As Ruby on Rails is a modular MVC framework, it implies that every segment of the app can be modified or adjusted without much affecting the others. This makes it easier to include a new feature, implementation of third-party services, and scaling individual components.
Horizontal Scaling: RoR is easily scalable, you can take additional server or even distribute load among more machines to handle more traffic. There are many cloud services like amazon web services (AWS), heroku, digital ocean where we find very handy provisions regarding scaling RoR applications.
Optimized Database Handling: Database handling through ORM available in RoR’s ActiveRecord reduces complexity as you grow your product catalog, expand your user base and volume of transactions.
Not only is Ruby on Rails suitable for small business, it is designed for growth, so as your business grows adding more features, partners, products, and clients, and your software can expand with you.
- Built-in Security Features
Security is paramount for e-commerce website since the website deal with sensitive customer information such as the personal details of the customer and their payment details. Another advantage of Ruby on Rails is in security, the framework provides strong shields to secure customers and businesses from ordinary Web application threats.
Key Security Features:
CSRF Protection: CSRF is an attack that can take advantage of users’ active sessions to perform a number of unwanted actions; RoR defends against it automatically.
SQL Injection Prevention: To avoid SQL injection attacks, a notorious problem with dynamic websites, neither Ruby on Rails nor its ActiveRecord ORM complies SQL statements straight over the run time parameters; instead it gives parameterized SQL statements to the real Database server.
Password Encryption: In the case of user registration and authentication, passwords can be very securely stored within the application because RoR supports encryption functions such as bcrypt to hash passwords that are stored in the database.
HTTPS Support: RoR integrates a compulsory feature to support SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) to enhance the security of transferred information, especially valuable to e-business Web sites that require buyer’s personal information input for financial transactions.
To be specific, with Ruby on Rails, you can be able to keep your e-commerce platform safe from some of the generic security threats that can put users and their information at risk.
- These components are highly customizable and flexible oriented.
This is because no two e-commerce businesses are alike and each comes with different need in terms of functionality, the user experience and integrations . Ruby on Rails has the freedom and versatility to develop personalized sites that address your business’s requirements for e-commerce.
Key Customizability Features:
Custom Features and Integrations: One of the key strengths of Ruby on Rails is, developers have lots of opportunities to implement individualistic features. The system enables the creation of specific business rules that can range from recommending specific products, to setting prices for a particular brand target audience.
Third-Party Integrations: If you want to work with third-party services such as payment processors including stripe and PayPal and delivery services like fed ex as well as UPS or marketing applications such as mailchimp then RoR comes equipped with an elaborate list of gems and plugins.
Responsive Design: Responsive design is supported out of the box by Ruby on Rails meaning your application can be used seamlessly across all devices, a key factor in the current mobile first e-commerce scenario.
This has a twist for you since it means that you can develop an e-commerce platform that can be tweaked to fit your business model and can always be adjusted as customers change their preferences.
- What is different between SEO and Performance Optimization?
SEO is useful for gaining targeted traffic without the use of paid promotion for your e-business site. The steps involved in SEO optimization are also made easy hence enabling optimization of product pages, blog post and category listings.
Key SEO Benefits:
Clean URLs: It becomes very simple to have keywords for URLs and RoR gives an option of entering product names or categories to be used in the links, thereby increasing the search engine ranking.
Meta Tags and Structured Data: You are also able to control meta tags and structured data for every page, which ensures great indexing by search, and higher CTR from SERP.
Caching: Rails has inbuilt facility for caching through which fragment and Low level caching are available which in turn will benefit the e-commerce site by reducing the server load and also decreasing the page loading time.
Asset Pipeline: In terms of website build, additional CRO, RoR has an asset pipeline for making CSS and JavaScript files smaller through compression and minification, which plays an important part of Website speed in both SEO and UX.
Due to Ruby on Rails, your e-commerce website is not only optimized for search engines but also guaranteed to handle a large amount of traffic.
- Gems and plugins are vast in the content management system of Ruby on Rails.
Ruby on Rails has a large number of gems and plugins which help to decrease the time for development dramatically because there are many precocious solutions for e-commerce. From a shopping cart to the payment processor or even a simple user authentication mechanism, you are likely to find a gem to match your needs.
Key Gems for E-Commerce:
Spree Commerce: Open-source customizable resource with a rich set of features for an e-business built with Ruby on Rails. Spree provides you full control over all the functionalities starting from inventory control to order fulfilment.
Solidus: An open source Rails application providing comprehensive and easy to use tool for creating customized online shops.
ActiveMerchant: An add-on that helps to combine one or multiple payment modules to one’s site with available choices which include PayPal, Stripe, and Authorize.Net.
Devise: User authentication is a crucial form of user management and one of the most frequently implemented gems for signing in/signing up, password reset or update and many other related services necessary to manage customers on an ecommerce site.
These gems are turnkey solutions that you can simply implement into your platform and save yourself time when developing crucial e-commerce offerings.
- Community and Support
Ruby on Rails are widely used by developers, contributors and enthusiasts; therefore, it will be easier to seek assistance and information when developing an e-commerce website. For this reason whether you have a problem or need help finding an answer in regard to troubleshooting, or you just wish to know the latest in development trends, the RoR community will be there to assist.
Key Community Benefits:
Extensive Documentation: One of the biggest assets of Ruby on Rails is documentation that aids development and makes it easier for app developers to utilize the framework to develop applications that handle large volumes of traffic.
Open Source Community: Since it is open source use, Ruby on Rails has received several enhancements and additions by the developers from all over the world. This helps in making sure that the current needs of industry is incorporated to the framework.
Support Networks: There are forums, slack channels, online communities to get help and people will provide advise which ever you need to cross the hurdle of development.
With such an extensive support network it will be possible for e-commerce businesses to keep the platform up-to-date, well protected, fully optimized, etc.
Conclusion: Ruby on Rails as the Right Solution for the E-Commerce Websites
Ruby on Rails brings in a number of capabilities that make it perfect for building tomorrow’s robust, highly usable e-commerce sites. For fast growth and ability to adjust to the needs of the client, integrated security, and improved speed and efficiency, RoR contains all the elements of building a good online store.
Whether a start-up e-business organization is embarking on a new online e-commerce initiative, or an e-business already in operation and growing, or an e-commerce firm aiming at improving Websites performance, Ruby on Rails has the flexibility, performance, and dependability, which e-commerce businesses require.
If you planning to develop an effective and modern online shop or a platform for managing your e-business, you should consider a cooperation with a professional Ruby on Rails development team.