The HCL Commerce v9.1 release saw major features, functionality, and technology changes. This blog series will focus on each of these components separately. Some examples of these changes include HCL Commerce Search, which is powered by Elasticsearch, a modern storefront that uses Next.js, containerized cloud-native architecture, modern business user tooling, and support for new integrations and companion software.
Part 1 of this blog series will focus on the HCL Commerce Next.js-based Ruby storefront.
Benefits of the Next.js Ruby Storefront
The Ruby Storefront is an HCL Commerce-provided Next.js-based B2B & B2C starter store that exploits the powerful features and capabilities of the HCL Commerce platform. It is a fully headless store utilizing REST services to interact with the HCL Commerce logic framework to drive the features and capabilities of the platform. The store uses server-side rendering (SSR), which helps drive improvements in initial page load times, Google Core Web Vitals, performance, and overall page optimizations. The store also provides a generic data layer for Google Analytics (GA4) and has built-in SEO capabilities, which are crucial for digital marketing. The storefront has prebuilt components, is CDN optimized, and supports the mobile-first approach that allows business owners a faster time to market.
Template-based Layouts in the Storefront
The storefront utilizes a template-based layout for each page, such as the home page and the product detail page (PDP). Having separate layouts allows customers to render each page differently based on the business requirements. These layouts support e-marketing spots and segmentation to drive a more personalized experience in the targeted area of the layout. There is also support for category and product-specific pages, which allow business users more control. Our team has taken advantage of the template-based approach to help incrementally migrate existing customers and leverage the benefits of the Next.js Ruby storefront with a hybrid migration approach.
Hybrid Approach
A complete migration to the Next.js Ruby storefront can be costly and time-consuming. As a result, the Perficient team has developed a solution that allows customers to migrate to the Next.js storefront using a hybrid approach. The solution enables the legacy Java Server Pages (JSP) based Aurora Storefronts pages to run in parallel with the new modern Next.js Ruby storefront pages. Additionally, as of HCL Commerce 9.1.15, HCL has provided the ability to use Elasticsearch or SOLR as the back-end search engine, which functions seamlessly with the Next.js Ruby storefront. This hybrid approach can be a cost-effective solution that helps drive ROI for pages where it is most needed.
Conclusion
HCL Commerce Next.js Ruby Storefront is a feature-packed headless storefront built using one of the latest and most popular technologies. The storefront can leverage either Elasticsearch or SOLR search as the back-end search engine. This serves as the foundation for efficient collaboration with our clients to migrate incrementally and cost-effectively from the legacy JSP Aurora store to the Next.js Ruby storefront.
To obtain further information from our award-winning team, please visit https://www.perficient.com/who-we-are/partners/hcl.
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