How to build an ecommerce store using ButterCMS?

If you are a product-based business and not using an CMS to build your ecommerce store then you might be missing out on a huge chunk of potential business and time-saving. 

An ecommerce CMS is an absolute essential to help you with creating an organised store and a smooth checkout process to delight the visitors and transform them into a loyal customer. An ecommerce store that is kept constantly up to date keeps you ahead of the ecommerce scene competition. To build an ecommerce store, you have to choose the right platform.

In this article, we will briefly discuss how you can build an ecommerce store for your business with the help of ButterCMS and create a seamless experience for customers shopping and making purchases.

Why does your business need an ecommerce CMS?

An ecommerce CMS or Content Management System is a website builder that helps you on two fronts, one being the content meaning it helps you create, edit, and update the content across the website. The other aspect is the ecommerce front, meaning efficiently tracking the inventory and managing the products paired with checkout and payment features. This way the operations and content management are streamlined which removes any scope of redundancy and saves time.

There are thousands of content management systems (CMS) available for developing ecommerce websites in the market. However, today we will be focusing on ButterCMS, which is a top choice for founders looking to build a booming online store.

Why should you use ButterCMS to build an ecommerce store?

ButterCMS is an API-first headless CMS for ecommerce that lets developers easily build ecommerce websites in any programming language and display content in any front-end application. This makes it simple to integrate with popular JavaScript frameworks like React, Vue.js, and Angular.

Need help to assess your needs and suggest a CMS? Let’s talk.

What are some of the advantages of using the ButterCMS?

When you're setting up an online store, picking the right content management system (CMS) is most important to make sure everything runs smoothly for both the people building the store and the people using it. Some of the advantages of using ButterCMS are:

1. Headless content management

Being a headless CMS for ecommerce it separates the ecommerce aspect such as the product descriptions, images, catalog, and content layer from the presentation layer which can be integrated with any front-end application to handle the look and ecommerce functionality of the store.

2. User-friendly interface

It has a user-friendly interface for developers to work on, without any hassle you can edit and update the content in no time. It is flexible and easy to scale when the need arises.

3. SEO optimisation

It offers in-built SEO optimisation features such as putting in keywords, using image compression tools to help the website load faster, and adding appropriate tags to make your website show up better in search results, ultimately increasing the visibility and traffic on your website.

4. Content organisation

It gives your store a structure for easy navigation, you can add tags and metadata to categorise and filter the products.

5. Decoupled CMS solution

It follows a decoupled architecture, meaning two independent entities that can seamlessly collaborate. One tool serves as a repository for all content, including text and images, while the other tool is responsible for presenting this content to users. The beauty of this setup is that these entities can work in harmony without being permanently tethered together.

6. Security

Regarding security and reliability, ButterCMS excels in prioritising these crucial aspects. This platform offers secure hosting, automatic backups, and enterprise-grade infrastructure to safeguard your ecommerce store and customer data. 

7. Multiple-channel publishing

You can even publish your content across multiple channels such as websites, mobile apps, and social media.

8. Inventory management and integrations

It provides you with a real-time update on inventory and keeps track of all the products. The API-first approach becomes a boon when you want to integrate a third-party payment gateway. It handles your store from customer visits to checking out along with keeping the owner updated.

Now, let's get our hands dirty and build an ecommerce application with ButterCMS.

How to build an ecommerce application with ButterCMS?

Creating an e-commerce store necessitates a sturdy and adaptable platform that can cater to the distinctive requirements of your business. Let’s see how we can build a Node.js ecommerce application using ButterCMS.

Note: We are using Node.js for the front-end support.

Alright, so we're going to talk about some important parts of a Node.js e-commerce app that you might not know about yet:

1. Cart 

This is an online shopping basket where your customers put all the stuff they want to buy.

2. Product catalogue

This is a comprehensive list of all the things that your store has for sale, that customers can select from.

3. Checkout

This is the page where the customers go to pay for everything in their cart when they’re ready to buy.

Also, you can connect your existing system to ButterCMS to make things even easier. You can use the API to sync up your product information or content from other systems with ButterCMS. 

Setting up the ButterCMS environment

Let's begin by creating a new directory for our application and initialising an NPM project. We'll need to install some dependencies, such as ButterCMS for interacting with the API, Express.js for managing the server and routes, and other libraries for parsing JSON requests and rendering templates.

Creating a product catalogue

We will set up our product catalogue on the ButterCMS portal. We will create a new page type called "product" and include fields for the title, description, and price. After that, we will fill our catalogue with some sample products.

Fetching products from ButterCMS

Next, we will create a server route to retrieve products from the ButterCMS API and send back their details as a response. Additionally, we will make an HTML file to showcase our product catalog, where we will fetch and display the items using JavaScript.

Adding items to the cart

In order for users to add items to their cart, we will be implementing a method in our JavaScript code that sends a POST request to a server route. This route will take care of adding the item to the user's cart, which will be stored in a persistent object (or a database in a production environment).

Checkout process

We will create a form in our HTML file that lets users start the checkout process by sending a POST request to a server route. This route will get the user's cart items, grab their prices from the ButterCMS API, figure out the total cost, and show a payment confirmation page using a template engine like EJS.

Currency and localisation

In order to support multiple regions and currencies, we will update our application to convey and display prices based on the user's selected region. We will make changes to the ButterCMS portal, HTML file, JavaScript code, and server routes to handle currency conversion and localisation.

And there you go, now you can add other advanced features to your app and there is a lot to learn now regarding error handling,and a lot more.

Creating an online store that can grow with your business is a big deal. ButterCMS is one of the best CMS for ecommerce website development. In this article, we've gone through all the steps to show you how to use ButterCMS to make your own online store. If you are a seasoned developer or just getting started to build an ecommerce store, ButterCMS has got you covered. This way, you can spend more time growing your business and making your customers happy.

Let’s start building your ecommerce store with ButterCMS today.