What is Saleor eCommerce Platform: Introduction

By Chris LojniewskiMarch 3, 2021

Introduction

Owning an online store seems to be a challenge nowadays. The progressing digital transformation and the trend of moving business online accelerated as the world’s situation changed dramatically in the last twelve months. Such a situation also changed the way people do the shopping and raised their expectations.

These two things combined led to a more significant demand for modern solutions in the eCommerce industry. Owners of online stores want their customers to have a better shopping experience delivered faster than ever before with many features simplifying or making the whole buying process more pleasing.

Such solutions include headless eCommerce platforms like Saleor. Keep reading to find out answers to questions like:

What is Saleor?
When to use Saleor?
How Saleor help you sell more?
What are the benefits of Saleor as a PWA?

More than that, you will have a better understanding of its core functionalities, and you may get inspired by a few Saleor eCommerce stores.

What is Saleor?

Saleor is a headless e-commerce platform for delivering blazingly fast, dynamic and personalised shopping experiences. It enables you to create great-looking online stores which have all the features modern webshop should have. Take advantage of an admin dashboard to manage products, people, and functionalities. You can use Saleor whether you are a small, midsize or enterprise-level retailer with a physical or digital inventory.

If you decide to use Saleor, your webshop will be available as both a typical online store and as a PWA application. The latter means that your customers will be able to browse the store offer and do shopping offline and with no internet connection.

Saleor is an open-source platform written with Python, React, Django and GraphQL. If you need more technical information, just check out their developer documentation.

Saleor offers:

Ability to use your favourite tools – you can integrate Saleor with favourite tools you already use like CRM, CMS or fulfilment API thanks to GraphQL API.

Front-end freedom – you can either use the default PWA storefront, JavaScript SDK or build a client from scratch in the language or platform you prefer. In other words, you can decouple the front-end layer from business logic.

Flexible products – you can set up products as they are and integrate them with accounting and inventory management systems. Some of product configuration options:
- Product bundles (this option will be available in 2021) – it allows you to sell individual goods or services as mixed and complementary packages
- Groups – this feature will make your online store more intuitive and easier to browse through thanks to grouped products
- Configurations – it doesn’t matter what you sell because Saleor helps you by providing the flexibility of products configuration

Possibility of going global from the day one – with Saleor you can sell wherever you want to thanks to:
- Multi-channel/Multicurrency – you can create customised sales channels with different currencies, pricing and product availability
- Multilanguage – at the moment Saleor supports more than 30 languages
- Multi-warehouse – possibility to assign particular warehouses to shipping zones allows for automatic calculation of available products depending on local stock levels

When to use Saleor eCommerce platform?

As a modern eCommerce platform, Saleor offers various features and functionalities (described later in this article) that help businesses achieve different business goals. However, these goals can be achieved with other eCommerce platforms as well, so the question is: when Saleor exceptionally shines?

When WooCommerce or PrestaShop is no longer enough for you
You are looking for a Magento 1 alternative (note: since June 2020 Magento 1 Open Source is no longer supported)
When Shopify is not sufficient, but you don’t want to pay for Shopify Plus
You have in-house Python and React competences
When you want to build a multi-tenant platform

Why choose Saleor?

All the things mentioned above wouldn’t be possible without a few things Saleor provides to its users. These include:

Blazing speed – page speed and performance are crucial Google ranking factors and reasons why customers choose (or not) a particular online store. Saleor helps you delight users with a shopping experience that loads in a blink of an eye.

SEO efficiency – the front-end layer in Saleor shops is static, and Google favours static pages as they are fast, light and easy to scan for robots.

Accessibility on any device – your online store will work seamlessly on all devices and screen sizes.

Rich user experience – having a good offer isn’t good enough, and creating a custom user experience is one of the things that can give you a competitive advantage. Experiment with your design without compromising the page load speed.

Instant changes – once the developer makes changes, these will be visible to the customers.

Safety – on the contrary to dynamic pages, static ones (the front-end layer of Saleor’s webshop are static) have no direct connection to the database, dependencies, user data, or other sensitive information. Your customers’ data is safe.

Want to build a customized webshop with Saleor?

Talk to our expert. It’s free!

Benefits of Saleor as a PWA application

As already mentioned, a webshop built with Saleor acts as both a typical online store and a PWA application. Now, let’s take a closer look at the latter, but instead of writing down its definition, it’s better to focus on the real benefits it provides.

Possibility to sell anywhere, anytime, and on any device

Design of Saleor’s online stores is 100% responsive and adapts to any device.
Browsing and buying are possible, both online and offline.
Push notifications make it possible to mix online and in-store experiences.

Higher customer engagement

Thanks to PWA, your online store will be more effective and engaging for your customers. Just look at the numbers below.

Choosing Saleor results in:

20% lower bounce rates
25% higher page views
80% quicker time to checkout
9% increase in revenue per visit
2.8x greater conversion rate

Lower development costs

Statistics are merciless – 80% of applications will be uninstalled within a week. So why spend money on something people won’t be using? With Saleor you don’t have to spend money on building a separate mobile application because your online store will work as a PWA application that doesn’t require installation.

Core Saleor eCommerce functionalities

Saleor combines ready-to-use elements and powerful integrations to let you create customised shopping experiences for your customers. These can be built on top of the GraphQL API, which makes everything much easier and faster.

Now, let’s explore Saleor’s core functionalities.

Saleor Storefront

No front-end limitations

There are no limitations of how your store’s front-end can look like – design and build a Saleor storefront with the technology of your choice.

SDK

Connecting to the API is effortless.

Total customisation

You can either use a pre-made PWA template or a simple front-end SDK to make your online store look the way you want.

Multi-device accessibility

Save money on building a separate mobile application as your online store will work well on any device, both as a typical online store and as a PWA application.

Constant UX optimisation

Creating user experience (UX) once is not enough – improve it continuously with A/B testing.

Headless development

Work separately on the frontend and backend thanks to decoupling them.

Powerful product configuration

Flexible product types

Your inventory can contain both digital and physical products with multiple variants that are easy to configure.

Unlimited product attributes

Sell products of different types that can have different attributes depending on what you need. In other words, Saleor adapts to your inventory – not the other way around.

Product bundles and collections

Create product bundles and collections by grouping similar or complementary products to increase revenue per order.

SEO optimisation

Take care of organic traffic by creating SEO-optimised content for products, collections, and categories.

Multi-warehouse inventory

Manage multiple locations seamlessly by tracking stock levels, editing multiple products at once and checking items that aren’t available anymore.

CSV import and export

Saleor makes it possible to import and export any product data to Google and Excel.

Internationalisation and localisation

Multi-language

Saleor already offers more than 30 languages.

Translations module

Translate dynamic content in the dashboard to create different language versions if you need them.

Localised data

Saleor takes advantage of geolocation – it checks your location and matches it with the location of your customers. This way, you can sell both locally and globally.

Global support

Whether you are in Europe or the US, Saleor supports you in building better shopping experiences.

Global taxes

Thanks to integrations with Avalara and Vatlayer, tax calculations in major markets are covered.

Data-driven marketing and sales

Tracking sales history and metrics

Track performance by viewing individual or multiple sales numbers in real-time or past time.

Experimentation

Use data and A/B tests to optimise your store and its user experience.

Upselling with machine learning

Saleor offers machine learning tools to generate more revenue through upselling. It delivers not only a better shopping experience but also a higher average order value.

Modern, PWA storefront

High performance and speed

PWA is the fastest technology that any eCommerce store can use. Forget about Magento load times and buffering once and for all.

Enhanced SEO

Take care of SEO by editing all essential aspects of your online store, like URLs, metatags and Open Graph. These are things that are important for higher organic traffic which means new customers.

Quick product search

Integrate your online store with Elasticsearch so your customer can quickly browse through the store.

Order management

Shipping freedom

Give customers the possibility to choose their favourite carrier or delivery method. You can also set different rates for each option depending on a shopping zone, price, or weight. Tracking info can be added to every item.

Customer profiles

Get a bigger picture of your customer base by creating individual profiles for each customer.

Solve different issues easily

If there are some problems with inventory or customer service, you can try to solve them by creating dummy or actual orders.

Refunds and returns

Manage refunds and returns easily in one place on the order fulfilment page.

Cart and checkout

Payment integration

Use global providers like Paypal, Braintree or Stripe to collect payments.

Sales and vouchers

Increase conversion rate by creating sales and vouchers.

Abandoned checkouts

Remind customers about abandoned carts as the Saleor online store saves such information.

Customise carts and checkouts

Modify the checkout process according to your needs and data.

Back office

Staff management

Invite staff members and assign privileges and roles to them.

Authentication keys

Make it possible to log in through Google and Facebook to prevent unwanted access to the admin dashboard. Use authentication keys for that.

Make your store comply with GDPR or other laws to make sure your customers feel safe about their personal data.

Google Analytics integration

Measure and analyse traffic to your online store thanks to Google Analytics so you can check who your customers are and how they behave.

Manage your pages

Adding new content like articles or additional pages is easy as pie.

Examples of Saleor eCommerce shops

Roomlab

Patch

Results:

Sales increase consistently at 30% per month

Pretty Green