Meet the Product – Shopware 6

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Wiljo Krechting - ShopwareWhen it comes to selecting an ecommerce platform, making the right decision is critical, not just considering what the platform can do today but also taking into account what you might want it to do in the future. That’s why Shopware 6 has been totally rebuilt from the ground up. With their API first approach, it’s designed for today’s cross-channel customer experiences and those that may arise in the future.

Today spoke to Wiljo Krechting of Shopware to find out how Shopware 6 can future proof your business for years to come:

Tell us about Shopware

Shopware is a leading eCommerce system and used by some Europe’s leading brands, retailers and manufacturers across B2C and B2B industries. As a trendsetting open source solution, Shopware gives retailers the freedom to quickly and easily realise their growth potential – with more flexibility and less complexity.

From our headquarters in Schöppingen, Germany, our 200 employees rely on a global network of 1,200 sales, technology and solution partners. A community with hundreds of thousands of members gives customers access to over 3,500 extensions and certified professional support.

You’ve recently totally rebuilt the platform – what were the main aims for this?

Shopware 6 is a complete rewrite of Shopware. Of course, we didn’t reinvent the wheel for aspects that we were happy with in Shopware 5; at the same time, we wanted to improve many topics we have not been able to address in Shopware 5.

Furthermore, we thought a lot about what ecommerce might look like in a few years, which requirements we might need to address – and which customer segments we want to reach. We quickly found that it was not about hype technologies, but about creating a broad foundation that small merchants, as well as enterprise merchants, could be successful with. And that’s Shopware 6: Simple, flexible, state of the art and open source.

In creating Shopware 6, we wanted to provide our retailers with a sustainable solution that could stand the test of time – so the new technological basis relies on standards-based technologies: Symfony for the standard framework, Vue.js for the administration, Twig for the template engine, and Bootstrap as the CSS framework.

What are some of the key features of Shopware 6?

Based on our experiences with small, medium and large ecommerce projects we asked ourselves: What do end customers want? What do retailers and developers need to fulfil customer expectations?

The result is that Shopware 6 consistently follows the API-first approach, offering the necessary flexibility for retail to take place where people are; independent of place, time and end device. Using the API, individual components – e.g. the storefront/administration, or even third-party solutions like ERP, PIM or CRM – can be connected within one centralised and integrated system. This means every retailer has the same opportunity to quickly react to market changes and create engaging cross-channel customer experiences. The overarching goal: to make your brand more present in people’s everyday lives and thus unleash new growth potential.

For internationalisation, we have new concepts for translations (and inheritance of translations), and the handling of gross and net prices, as well as prices per currency, has improved. The new Sales Channels concept allows for a new perspective on additional channels such as eBay, Amazon, Instagram, etc.

Shopping Experiences is a continuation of the Shopping Worlds feature from Shopware 5 – offering improvements in terms of usability and design possibilities. Virtually any content page of the online shop can be customised, and that applies to all sales channels. For the retailer, creating Shopping Experiences comes intuitively and does not require any design affinity or prior technical knowledge.

And with the new Rule Builder, retailers have the freedom to adapt Shopware to their own business model without any programming effort. Following the “configuration over coding” principle, you can create complex and nested rules that describe a customer you want to address for a certain use case. This not only makes easier to create “dynamic groups” (e.g. a group of all customers older than 18) but also makes it easier to give those customers special pricing, special content or restrict orders/payments/shipments for them. The new Rule Builder allows Shopware 6 to meet requirements that would have required a custom extension in the past.

What type of retailer should be interested?

Basically any retailer. From the first business idea to household name: Shopware offers suitable solutions for retailers at every step of the way, supporting their business model as it grows in the highly dynamic world of ecommerce.

Why should I migrate from my current platform?

To be prepared to meet the future challenges of ecommerce and unleash your growth potential. Shopware 6 is a future-proof platform – with powerful interfaces, the core is open to every conceivable channel. This enables retailers to react quickly to market changes and grow indefinitely.

Whether migrating from Shopware 5 or another platform, we have developed a Migration Assistant that will take you step-by-step through the process of switching to Shopware 6.

What will happen with Shopware 5?

Shopware 5 is a very stable, reliable and powerful ecommerce solution. Over the next five years we will provide long-term support for Shopware, which encompasses releases and security updates. Next to the regular maintenance and improvements, we will continue to react to feedback from the community and incorporate new features into the product.

What should I do next?

Visit shopware.com to learn more about how our software can grow your business! We would be more than happy to speak with you personally about your online goals and project requirements.

Case Study: Springlane goes Shopware 6

At this year’s Shopware Community Day, Springlane unveiled their vision for their innovative online shop – in which major tech trends like IoT come into play. Shopware had a vital role in the retailer’s online presence and is looking forward to one of the first Shopware 6 projects.

Founded in 2012, Springlane sells kitchen appliances, grills, cooking accessories and books online. Recently the company started concentrating on selling products under their own brands and offering original content.

Due to strategic changes, in 2018 the company decided to relaunch their online shop with Shopware 5 as the software basis. One of the determining factors for the switch came down to a better integration of content and commerce to strengthen their own brand.

Future plans with Shopware 6

At the Shopware Community Day 2019 Springlane made one thing clear: Companies have to be flexible if they want to stay relevant in the long run. As a pure player confronted with massive competitors like Amazon, Springlane is even more so determined to adapt quickly to new trends, technologies and changes in the market – and meet the evolving shopping preferences of their customer base.

So how exactly will Springlane approach this challenge? For one, they plan on strengthening their USPs in the future. This means combining content and commerce to provide customers and users with an entertaining and emotional shopping experience. But there are also plans to improve this experience across devices. The Internet of Things (IoT) is one promising trend that offers companies an opportunity for rapid growth, as seen in the numbers: By 2020, an average of 26 networked devices will be connected to one person. Springlane already wants to prepare itself for these developments and plans to increasingly have a presence in the everyday life of their customers through various channels.

Cynthia Mattingly tells you more about this in an interview. She works at Springlane as Lead Developer and answered some questions about the future of Springlane at the SCD19:

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