Shopware is an open-source eCommerce platform based on Symfony framework and Vue.js used by hundreds of stores worldwide with a vast global network of developers that focuses on the user’s shopping experiences. Shopware 6 provides capabilities and flexibility for small, medium, and large eCommerce platforms. The eCommerce platform uses various features out-of-the-box and is ready for installing Shopware 6 plugins (so you may add additional features).
If you would like to collect more essential information about Shopware eCommerce platform and its robust features, please check our blog post, where we have covered all the necessary information about Shopware.
Move your fashion store to the online market
Everybody knows that the eCommerce industry is growing very strongly. When setting up a business in the fashion industry, no one is longer thinking about a stationery shop as it was many years back.
Take a peek at the world’s biggest retail giants, and see how their eCommerce works. The websites look very aesthetically pleasing and smooth, offer very high performance, and have access to the most convenient and the best integrations with the best shipping or payment providers. They offer integrations with professional software for product management on the website or general organization management. All of the above-mentioned functions are offered by the open-source eCommerce Shopware platform.
Why does choosing the appropriate eCommerce platform matter so much? A perfect fit for the fashion industry
Imagine a platform with functionalities designed to help grow the fashion eCommerce business.
No matter if you are a technical or non-technical person. Shopware 6 is a user-friendly platform for non-programmers. Of course, if you need a bespoke solution, your expectations and requirements are not the “out-of-the-box ones” and you dream of a professional eCommerce with a really proper foundation – you need to rely on a reliable Shopware agency (creation of eCommerce, creation of code and more).
Shopware 6 offers a native CMS that is versatile and uncomplicated to use. Thanks to its simplicity, the people responsible for marketing in your organization can create a landing page themselves without the need for programmers – streamline work and reduce costs. You can use the native CMS literally everywhere. From the homepage to category and product pages to static pages.
Default PWA functionality in Shopware 6? Check the view of your shop from mobile devices such as tablets and phones.
The built-in CMS that Shopware 6 offers (depending on the license selected) various solutions. Using it, you will receive:
- Very simple and flexible „Drag and Drop” functionality
- Possibility to preview the shop on the mobile and tablet version
- Quick and intuitive tool to build landing pages based on a block structure
- Built-in responsiveness, where individual page elements automatically adapt to format mobile
- Creation of different layouts
- Possibility of personalization by adapting specific templates to a given segment of logged-on users
Shopware 6 key features dedicated to the fashion industry
We present to you the most popular functionalities of the Shopware eCommerce platform, which will help you to meet the requirements of the most demanding online stores. Check what Shopware 6 has to offer for the fashion industry.
Loyalty programs
Loyalty programs have become very popular these days. With such a solution, you will make your customers stay with you for longer. You will encourage them to actively use your online store and purchase from your website.
This approach will allow you to create long-lasting marketing activities to build and maintain positive relationships with your company’s customers.
Manage your promotions
Everyone, literally every user of your online shop, loves promotions. By managing promotions properly, you can increase traffic to your website, engage more customers and increase product sales.
You can access advanced promotions management by opting for the Shopware 6 platform. Target your audience in this way, create promotions that surprise your customers, and enjoy increased sales.
Rule Builder
Do you want a modern tool for managing even the most complex business rules? In addition, would you like it to be free of programmer intervention? With Rule Builder, you can define rules for payment methods, shipping costs, promotions, or prices for individual customers or user groups. This approach will enable you to keep the necessary data away from unauthorized persons. Importantly, once a rule has been defined, it can be reused many times in different cases.
Page Builder
Unique functionality, with which you can create pages based on available blocks. With this functionality, you can make changes, design, and layout pages that will be visible on your storefront without technical intervention.
This functionality is built natively into the Shopware platform and requires no additional implementation or plug-ins.
Newsletter
Communicating by email with your customers by sending your customers engaging content for them is very important. In this simple way, you can collect information that is relevant to you. All a person has to do is sign up for your newsletter is provide an email address, thereby agreeing to your marketing consent, and you can target your customers in this way.
How to do this? Create marketing content, send birthday bonuses that your clients can use in your shop, create combined seasonal product offers, tag a selected number of people, and send them personalized emails. For the most active ones, pass on discounts; for the less active, create content to help get their attention.
Ready-made templates for the Fashion industry
In the Shopware Store, you will find ready-made templates dedicated to the Fashion industry that will reduce the implementation time of your platform. Thoughtfully designed for mobile-first, fully responsive, with dropdown menus, but above all – tested by a team of testers on the Shopware side and the agencies directly responsible for supporting the template.
Omnichannel
The ability to make sales from multiple channels is now the basis for creating online business. Thanks to Shopware 6 technology, which allows you to manage your sales channels, you can sell from multiple channels from one admin panel. It will help you to control the sales of your services or products across various channels. The most popular ones are Facebook, Instagram, Google Shopping, and the custom ones you integrate via API. Moreover, each sales channel can differ in assortment, currencies, language, and price.
PWA
Shopware Progressive Web Application was invented in partnership with Vue Storefront, assuring that the latest technology and best practices from the Vue.js community are used. With PWA, you can assemble a modern yet reflexive front-end for your eCommerce that meets the requirements of enterprise-level projects. Lean on PWA if you want outstanding integration and development capabilities for the front-end layer of your platform.
Shopware 6 Plugin and App Manager
Plugin Manager is a veritable command center for extensions, templates, and integrated tools. From a single view, you can search for, install, edit and remove plugins applied to your Shopware eCommerce store. The extension manager will also notify you of tool updates waiting for you.
Shopware SEO
Shopware’s online shops are also prepared to plan and implement SEO optimization. In fact, SEO tools enhance your online visibility on search engines. We can highlight, for example, the possibility of adding structured data, crumb navigation, meta tags, or canonical links. In addition, the platform’s potential for SEO can be easily increased with the available extensions.
Ratings & Reviews
Each of us pays particular attention to reviews and testimonials of individual products or services when purchasing on a website, regardless of the industry. The same is true in the retail/fashion industry, where reviews are crucial for you to enjoy more frequent sales on your online shop.
With Shopware, you can take advantage of this functionality, thus gaining the trust of your buyers. Your business will definitely grow when more of these reviews and testimonials are added. #snowballeffect
Blog
An additional functionality you can get by opting for Shopware 6 is blogging. As you probably know, this type of content creation around your brand makes it more recognizable among your competitors, your website is ranked higher on Google, and you can post interesting information about your products that your audience will find relevant and interesting.
Checkout process
The checkout process is one of the most crucial elements that should be worked out to the finest detail of your eCommerce shop.
The most popular eCommerce businesses focus on simplicity and lack of complexity. After all, the point is for your customer to complete the purchase, not abandon it.
A one-step checkout process will enable your users to pay more efficiently and quickly. All the relevant information, such as a delivery address, supplier, shipping methods, payment methods, and the order processing time, is contained in a single site. This approach is user-friendly and will definitely help you to get more sales for your products.
Want to explore the best eCommerce technologies and deep dive into Shopware? Check out our free e-book – A comprehensive guide to choosing the best technologies for eCommerce
Connect your social media to the store – things you need to know
Connecting your eCommerce shop to the most popular marketplace platforms with hundreds of millions of people worldwide is a great opportunity to sell your products. Both platforms (Instagram or Facebook) offer the possibility to sell products through marketplaces, allowing you to integrate with your eCommerce shop.
With the Shopware 6 platform, you will have an opportunity to integrate with popular marketplaces. We encourage you to check out the Shopware Store, where you will find all available plugins or extensions for your online shop.
However, if your shop requirements are more complex and already existing integrations don’t cover them, you should use the help of experienced people who will know how to help you and will be happy to get to know your needs and advise you on the best solution.
Fashion brands that have trusted Shopware eCommerce in terms of implementation + Case studies
We will present a list of companies that have trusted Shopware 6 and share project case studies so that you can get a glimpse of what the Shopware platform has been up against:
HUMANOID (eCommerce from the Netherlands. B2B and B2C solution. Over 400 luxury offline boutiques. They offer 22 online shops, including 11 as B2C and 11 B2B oriented. Platform implementation time – 6 months)
Most important funcionalities:
- Shopware B2B Suit
- MailChimp integration
- Analytic tools like Google Analytics, Cloud4Fashion, Fashion Partner
- Sales channels management using the native integration with the Channable tool
Why do they have decided to choose Shopware 6?
- Shopping Experience (Native CMS) allows to easily build webpages of the brand and enhances communication with clients, and provides a unified shopping experience
- Shopware offers fast scalability for new markets (FR, DE, NL, GB, ES)
- Elastic frontend allowed to quickly match the client’s UX/UI requirements
- Possibility to easily set local promotions and different prices depending on the market
ARMEDANGELS (One of the leading eco & fair brands in Europe. Migration from Magento to Shopware. 2,500 products in over 30 categories. Sales in many European markets. More than 900 offline shops. MVP implementation time of 6 months. Shop Usability Award 2021).
Most important funcionalities:
- Fully automated return process, including vouchers and discounts
- Integration with FitFinder that helps you to match the clothes to individual sizes
- Integration with Emarsys, TB.One and Fashion XL
Why do they have decided to choose Shopware 6?
- Natively available tool to facilitate migration from Magento
- Headless architecture for PWA implementation
- Native support for multi-channel sales
- Simple and intuitive use of landing pages (CMS)
- Short page load times and good performance
- Possibility to easily scale to additional markets
- API-first approach allows simple integration with external systems and the possibility of building an entire eCommerce ecosystem around the Shopware platform
Domestic approach vs worldwide – which one will you choose?
Shopware 6 stores are designed for the internationalization of your business by default. However, thanks to the built-in components, you will have far more infrequent obstacles to confound to launch sales in foreign markets. Solutions presented by the platform include adaptation to legal conditions in specific nations, multilingualism and multicurrency, the configuration of pricing rules for particular needs, or configurable tax calculation — all to make it more comfortable for you to go abroad with your offer.
Summary
Deciding on an eCommerce platform is certainly not the easiest of tasks. However, it is worth spending enough time to choose the right one for your needs and business goals.
This blog aims to make you aware of what Shopware is and the benefits of setting up an eCommerce shop using this technology. We encourage you to consult all aspects of planning a new eCommerce shop or migrating from a platform you are not happy with.
At BitBag, we carefully analyze our client’s needs and act in an advisory/consultative capacity. Contact us if you want more information about Shopware development or our other services, and we will do our best to match your needs with the most attractive solution.