Businesses, irrespective of their nature, viz., digitally native, omnichannel, or offline, have evolved tremendously over the last few years. The blurring of online and offline boundaries has significantly impacted businesses. These days, they are more driven by the shift in customer choices and purchasing preferences, hybrid business models. The rising of new business models has shown to the world that innovative tech solutions need to offer agility, flexibility, and creative control to develop new solutions without limitations. Headless commerce is one of the best ways to meet all the requirements, enabling companies to meet their customers' expectations efficiently. Its core idea is to ensure the smooth functioning of businesses while empowering them to mark their robust digital presence. It helps businesses connect their customers across various touchpoints, and devices provide a seamless operational process and growth expansion for firms. Companies adopting this approach can better engage with their customers and offer them personalized experiences. It also helps them pave the way for customer loyalty and greater conversions; hence, it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that headless commerce has emerged as a game-changer and offer them benefits at every level.
What is headless Commerce, and Why is it of Paramount Importance for Business Expansion? The concept of headless commerce is to decouple the backend from the frontend and allow businesses to add new touchpoints, functionalities, features, etc. while using the same backend logic. Hence, it naturally becomes the ideal solution to allow businesses to evolve. It empowers companies to curate interactive and immersive experiences with the help of API to implement modifications in the core. Therefore, this new approach brings a plethora of benefits to businesses. Let us look at the various advantages it offers to companies: 1. Provides Omnichannel Approach It offers creative control to businesses to develop agile and nimble solutions as the frontend, backend, and APIs work in tandem to ensure diverse and innovative eCommerce solutions. It enables companies to smoothly adopt omnichannel routes and offer seamless customer journeys across various touchpoints. With an omnichannel strategy through headless commerce, enterprises have better visibility across channels and customer engagement. 2. Offers Extensive Customization Personalization is one of the key factors shaping consumer behavior. In the digital era, where the customer is the king, businesses can't afford to lose any valuable and loyal buyers. If companies use headless commerce, they can seamlessly provide discounts, promotions, and other engaging concepts tailored to meet customers' specific demands. This decoupled architecture helps online businesses to boost their customer engagement and retention rates for greater conversions. Modern technology enables digital eCommerce businesses to experiment and build out-of-the-box solutions without putting the system at risk. The developers can enhance the user interface more efficiently without changing much at the front end in a cost-saving manner. For instance, if businesses integrate the best marketing software and switch to a new accounting tool, they still can make a difference in the market without making any major changes in the code. They can even perform A/B testing to find out the best solutions and software. 3. Adapts to New Trends Headless commerce is an ideal solution in these unprecedented and challenging times, where the market landscape can change within a few days. Thus, adjusting to these trends seems even tougher; therefore, headless commerce allows businesses to reduce operational costs while boosting their performance and availability. Its microservice architecture ensures the decoupling of various business modules, which make the business more resilient, agile, and faster at its core. The platform then uses new solutions or touchpoints and smoothly adapt to the latest industry trends. These solutions can further help scale up and down the platform as per the business requirements. Thus, it would be appropriate to say that headless commerce ensures that eCommerce businesses are able to meet customers' expectations. Its customer-first approach enables companies to edge over other businesses and provide a top-notch customer experience. Summing Up- In a nutshell, new-age customers associate more with companies that provide seamless customer experience across various touchpoints. Headless commerce is the only way businesses can meet their buyers' expectations with innovative, cutting-edge eCommerce solutions. The decoupled headless architecture offers a plethora of advantages to online companies and improves their user interface. Katalyst Technologies offers leading eCommerce solutions to online businesses to lead to more customer engagement, satisfaction, and loyalty and create a path for greater customer conversions. Its solutions will revolutionize the working of your eCommerce platforms and ensure a progressive future. Connect with us now!
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React is designed to create interactive modular and cross-platform interactive user interfaces. Currently, it is a very much popular JavaScript framework for writing effective front-end applications. Originally developed for writing single-page applications (SPAs), React is now used to create complete websites and mobile apps. If you have experience in web development and you switch to React, you will find that your HTML and CSS code is increasingly converting to JavaScript. This is because React doesn't recommend creating or updating UI elements directly but rather describing the "state" of the user interface. React then updates the DOM to match the state in the most efficient way possible. Therefore, any changes to the user interface or DOM must be made through the React engine. While this is convenient for developers, it can have longer loading times for end-users and more indexing tasks for search engines. In this article, we'll look at the challenges you face in building SEO-optimized React apps and websites and outline strategies you can use to overcome them. Google gets over 90% of entire online searches. Let's understand via pointers about its crawling and indexing process.
Note that there is a clear difference between the processing step that parses the HTML and the renderer which executes the JavaScript. This distinction is made because JavaScript is costly to implement, given that Google bots must display more than 130 trillion web pages, according to the search engine land. When Googlebot crawls a web page, it immediately parses the HTML and then queues the JavaScript. The Google documentation says that the page stays in the view queue for a few seconds, although it could be longer. Also, it is worth mentioning the concept of crawl budget. Google crawling is limited by bandwidth, time, and availability. It is based on Googlebot instances. It allocates a certain budget or indexing resources for each website. If you create a large, content-rich website with thousands of pages (such as an ecommerce website) and those pages use a lot of JavaScript to display the content, Google may read less content from your website. Why is SEO Optimization for React Challenging? Software developers need to identify potential problems because of search engines while crawling, and indexing React pages. We will see the closer on what makes React SEO complicated or challenging and what developers can do to overcome this issue: Empty content of the First pass: React applications trust mostly JavaScript and often have trouble with search engines. This is because React uses a standard application shell model. The original HTML contains no meaningful content, and the user or bot must run JavaScript to display the actual page content. This approach means that Googlebot will find a blank page the first time it switches. Content is only visible to Google when the page is displayed. This slows down content indexing when you are working with thousands of pages. Loading time and user experience Javascript takes time to fetch, parse and execute. In addition, JavaScript may have to make network calls to get the content, and the user may have to wait a while before displaying the requested information. Google has introduced a number of web metrics related to the user experience used in ranking criteria. Longer loading times can affect user experience rankings and cause Google to rank pages lower. Page Metadata: The <meta> meta tag is useful because it allows Google and other social media sites to display relevant page titles, thumbnails, and descriptions. However, these website relies on the <head> tag on downloaded web pages for this information. This website does not run JavaScript for landing pages. React displays all content, including meta tags. Since the app shell is the same for the whole website/app, it can be difficult to customize the metadata for each page. Sitemap: A sitemap is a file that you use to provide information about the pages, videos, and other files on your website and the link between them. SEO like Google read this file to help index your website more intelligently. React has no built-in way to create sitemaps. If you're using something like React Router to manage your routing, you can find tools that can create sitemaps, though it might take a bit of work. Other SEO considerations: These considerations apply to developing good SEO practices in general.
We can solve various problems described above by using server-side rendering (SSR) or pre-rendering. Enter Isomorphic React: The dictionary of isomorphic dictionaries is "equivalent or similar in the form". Under React, this means the server has a similar client form. In other words, you can utilize the same React components on both the server and the client. This isomorphic approach allows the server to display a React application and send a visualized version to end users and search engines to see the content instantly as JavaScript is loaded and running in the background. A framework like Next.js or Gatsby encourages this approach. It should be noted that isomorphic components can differ significantly from traditional React components. For example, they can contain code that runs on the server, not on the client. They can even contain API secrets (though the server code is removed before being sent to the client). It should be noted that this framework abstracts a lot of complexity but also provides an interesting way to write code. We'll look at the performance tradeoffs later in this article. Website performance indicators: Let's see some of the factors that search engines use to rank websites. Google believes that a good website should not only respond quickly and accurately to user requests but should also have the following characteristics: • Needs to load quickly. • Users can access content without waiting too long. • Must be interactive with user actions early on. • It should not fetch redundant data or execute costly code to prevent user data or battery draining. These functions roughly correspond to the following indicators:
Next, let's understand the different rendering paths available to React developers. Road rendering: We can display the React application in the browser or on the server and give different results. Two functions differ significantly between client and server visualized applications, namely routing and decoding. Client-side rendering (CSR): Client-side rendering is the core rendering path for React SPA. The server serves applications that do not contain any content. The HTML content is loaded or displayed as soon as the browser downloads, analyses, and executes the existing JavaScript source. The client application manages the routing by managing the browsing history. This means that regardless of the route requested, the same HTML file will be served, and the client will update its display state once it is displayed. Code splitting is relatively easy. You can break your code using dynamic imports or React.lazy so that only the required dependencies are loaded based on the route or user action. If a page needs to fetch data from a content rendering server - for example, a blog title or product description - this can only be done if the required components are installed and rendered. Users will most likely see a "Data Loading" sign or indicator when the website pulls additional data. Client-side Rendering With Bootstrapped Data (CSRB): Imagine the same scenario with a CSR, but instead of fetching data after the DOM is rendered, the server sends the appropriate data loaded into the HTML. Server-side Rendering to Static Content (SSRS): Imagine a scenario where we need to render HTML on the go. The generated HTML has a fairly simple structure, and we don't need to React to manage and manipulate the DOM once the generated HTML has been served. So we only deliver HTML and CSS content. You can use the renderToStaticMarkup method to do this. The server completely handles routing as it has to recalculate the HTML for each result, although CDN caching can be used to serve faster responses. CSS files get cached by the browser to speed up page loading. Server-side Rendering with Rehydration (SSRH): Imagine the situation same as above, but this time we need a fully functional React client application. We do the server rendering first and send back the HTML content along with the JavaScript file. React rehydrates the markup provided by the server, and the app behaves like a CSR app from now on. React has a built-in method for performing this action. The server processes the first request, and the client processes subsequent rendering. Therefore, such applications are called Universal React applications (which appear on both the server and the client). The routing processing code can be shared (or duplicated) on the client and server. It's also worth noting that ReactDOMServer only does the flat rendering. In other words, even if visualization methods are called on your component. This result in revising your code to provide data to your components using alternative methods. This approach has had mixed results in terms of page yields, as we will soon see. Pre-rendering to Static Content (PRS): What if we could display the web page before the user requested it? This can happen during construction or dynamically as data changes. We can then store the generated HTML content on the CDN and wait more quickly when the user requests it. This is known as pre-rendering. Before rendering the content, the user requests. This approach can be used for blogs and e-commerce applications because the content is usually independent of the data provided by the user. Pre-rendering with Rehydration (PRH) We may want the pre-rendered HTML to be a fully workable React application when the client renders it. After submitting the first app, it behaves like a standard React app. This mode is similar to the SSRH described above in terms of routing and decoding functions. Summing up: Pre-rendering to static content (PRS) leads to the most efficient website, while server-side rendering with hydration (SSRH) or client-side rendering (CSR) can lead to miserable results. It is critically good to use several approaches for various parts of the website. For example, these performance metrics can be so important for a website that they can be indexed more efficiently, while they can become less relevant once a user has logged in and viewed private account information. Each rendering path is a tradeoff. What is important is that the development team can identify and discuss these tradeoffs and choose an architecture that maximizes user satisfaction. To truly harness the power of performance analysis, you have to understand the digital and eCommerce assets role in your business, define appropriate SMART goals and KPIs, and finally, adjust your digital content based on an analysis of your customer behaviour. This is the way to make your data-driven strategy work. At Katalyst, we help companies leverage their data and help them in optimizing their performance. Contact us now. The apparel industry faces various challenges. They are often unable to solve by standard software and hardware solutions, even if they have performed well in other industries. We understand. As a leading provider of apparel ERP software solutions for sales and manufacturing, we have addressed apparel challenges for many years. We do this with modular solutions for apparel companies and integrate cross-company and multi-currency accounting with forecasting, inventory and order management, costing and EDI. Suppose you want to extend your platform beyond ERP. In that case, our apparel solutions integrate with our apparel-based e-commerce, designed for B2B and B2C and CRM, offering real-time customer sales information and stable WMS using the latest browsers. All solutions are fully integrated with optimized processes. In addition, each solution allows real-time access to relevant information via a dedicated control panel.
Through real-time data, organizations can make better decisions according to the information available at present. What does it mean to you? By the time you read this guide, you may have questions. You may not be sure what ERP means in the first place. You may be frustrated with current software and wondering how to take your business to the next level. Maybe you need something more specific - for example, an ERP solution for clothing inventory or a clothing inventory management system. If that sounds right, then you've come to the right place. This guide will tell you a little bit about everything. We have covered the basics of ERP and how it relates to apparel and clothing production. This also includes finding the right solution for your business and information on successful implementation steps. Buying, changing, or upgrading an ERP system is an important decision with many consequences. This is not to be taken lightly. This in-depth guide will eliminate some of the problems associated with the process and provide ideas that might be hard to come by elsewhere. You should be comfortable with the ERP system you choose for your business. You need to be well informed to make the best decisions and choose the best solution for your business. Clothing enterprise resource planning: Clothing manufacturers and clothing organizations have been doing what "works" - or at least seems to work. You've used accounting solutions and the inventory solutions that older ERP systems offer. The problem is, if the system continues to run, as usual, a growth deficiency often occurs. ERP systems sound scary - there are many terrible stories out there about expensive and failed implementations. However, if the implementation fails, it means that your ERP is not being used as intended - not that it is ineffective. If your transition is unsuccessful, it means that your ERP is not implemented by an industry-specific vendor who understands the needs of business owners and managers like you. The bottom line is that an ERP solution designed specifically for the apparel industry can save your company time and money.
As technology becomes more powerful, ERP systems become increasingly important for companies looking to increase efficiency without adding program after program to their processes. ERP has been made to ease the complex processes and enhance the capabilities. ERP is not new but has grown exponentially in recent years. Gartner, Inc. from Connecticut coined the term. in the 1990s and is described as an "implementation and delivery strategy that starts from the ERP function and achieves the integration of critical shared internal and external processes, operations and corporate finances. " Today, ERP is more than just a solution. It is a process that aims to improve business in all industries. This makes it mandatory. According to Gary Forger of Modern Materials Processing, ERP acts "as the backbone for planning the company's core business processes". As the possibilities are almost endless, businesses are catching up. As per the Panorama survey, 81 per cent of the companies surveyed are in the process of implementing the ERP system or have completed their implementation but include:
ERP solutions are not suitable for everyone: Just because a solution seems to work in every industry doesn't mean its right for you. On this basis, some companies offer customized ERP software solutions based on a single element that can consume time and is expensive to implement and maintain. Because of these challenges, clothing companies often wonder where to start. The solution lies in a modular ERP solution. When apparel-specific ERP software is installed, it adds functionality while reducing isolated manual processes and spreadsheets. Examples of ERP software for clothing modules are: Order processing and return management: Simplified order management makes the order lifecycle - from receipt of quotations and orders to execution and invoicing - more efficient. This leads to more compliance with deadlines and increased customer satisfaction. Thanks to the clothing matrix, order entry and purchases can be simplified. The matrix allows users to enter specific quantities based on product variations such as color and size. The matrix also makes it easy to see available products in real-time to give customers an idea of whether orders will be filled or ordered soon. Decoration module: The decoration module goes further and streamlines the process, especially for decoration order maintenance. Apparel software manages the entire process, including accepting orders with one or more artwork records to attach to garments, processing proof-of-concept processes, and managing work order flows for creating art records, domestic or third parties. Purchasing and forecasting: The key to an integrated forecasting system is to decide what, when, and how much to buy. Automating orders from estimates and linking P/O with due dates is mandatory for any apparel solution. Style/color and size forecasts allow apparel companies to estimate at the highest level of style, ensuring that they can more accurately predict their clothing inventory needs. Financial Accounting and Management: Many apparel software solutions claim full-fledged ERPs but do not have their accounting and financial management solutions. Most apparel ERP solutions are integrated with accounting solutions. Since accounting solutions contribute to clothing's financial success, why would you want to integrate with external solutions? Inventory Management: Inventory tracking with a higher level of accuracy is essential for apparel production. A custom clothing inventory management system is specifically designed to show the inventory display of SKUs, styles/colors, or design. In addition, the ERP apparel system enables the exchange of critical inventory information within for higher efficiency, better management and increased product availability. Manufacturing: The manufacturing module automates supply chain processes within FDM4, improves transparency and reporting of external and internal costs, plans material requirements more precisely, and seamlessly interacts with external systems. Given the unique needs of the apparel industry, workflow processes are designed to handle multiple types of production workflows, even within the same production style, taking multiple material and workflow designs into account by style. All of the above modules are specially designed as ERP solutions for textile production. Modules provide a way to reduce the complexity and cost of customization. ERP specific challenges in clothing: To understand the benefits of ERP systems and apparel software, it is important to recognize the challenges that make this industry unique: 1. Cost savings Lowering costs is critical for experiencing growth. When clothing firms work with ERP systems, they can rely on less storage space due to better and more efficient planning. This, in turn, can lower operational and administrative costs and lead to better business process management – a benefit cited by 82% of companies implementing ERP solutions. 2. Clothing data management The apparel industry has a higher level of demanding production environments. With ever-evolving trends, ephemeral styles, and a wide variety of styles, colors, and sizes, it's no wonder clothing companies struggle to update their software databases with all the new information. The right apparel software solution will meet this need with an easy-to-use automated product loading module that enables the end-users to manage and load styles and items, including colors, sizes, features, images, prices, costs, and other appropriate information. This makes sure that once a new design is released, all necessary data is loaded without manual data entry and the complications and delays that often come with it. 3. Customer relationship management Without customers, your clothing store will fall apart. Your customer satisfaction ensures they stay loyal and your business remains stable. ERP solutions for the apparel industry make it easy to manage orders from start to finish in a single database without supporting multiple systems - which can cause delays and frustration on both sides. A modular-based ERP system for apparel is not optional. They are necessary for success. ERP is not necessarily a term that scares you. It doesn't have to be scary. Rather, it can be a way to take your clothing company to the next level. It can enhance and grow your business in a way that standard or legacy software solutions cannot. Sit back and think about your current process. What are your main pain points? Where do you see the hours and work you don't need to spend? Is there room for improvement through automation? Are you ready to make a change with robust ERP solution? We, at Katalyst are always ready to assist and deliver you best. Contact us today. For many business owners, the term SEO brings chills. While it may seem like a simple concept, but it takes years to master. Likewise, it takes a while for new websites to gain traction and establish themselves with good SEO practices. It can be challenging for new websites to get ahead in the business with new search trends and evolving industry practices. So how should new websites develop an SEO strategy? As a member of a team that does this day in and day out, here’s a few SEO tips and tricks that you can use to get a bigger slice of the pie. Let’s dive into the basics of SEO services for new websites: 1.Plan Your Site’s Architecture - Keep it Clean Architecture is an essential strategy for any website. A solid and planned structure helps Google understand where the heart of your site lies, which helps index swiftly. Moreover, it helps business houses prevent similar pages from competing with one another and puts up the most relevant and essential pages in the pyramid. Having a clean and organized structure also makes it easier for your website visitors to find out what they need, enabling you to offer a positive user experience. The websites can be made clearer by providing clickable links and breadcrumbs on your page, offering a more visible trail so users know where they currently are on your site. This strategy also helps search engines, such as Google and Bing, better understand your site and find new URLs to crawl.The easier is it is to find new links, the quicker your site can be placed into the search engine, offering you a competitive advantage over the others. 2. Show up in Google News – Rank matters Google News is particularly more significant for news websites expecting to draw more traffic. Your website content should be unique, have clean URLs, and crawlable HTML to be included in Google News. Google has made its requirements to appear on Google News and where to submit your website public. Google notifies you whether your site has been accepted typically within three weeks. Your work isn’t over once your site is accepted; keep working on producing strong content. Google news works on many yet similar SEO principles, such as an organic search. Your content should have industry authoritativeness, keyword optimization, and uniqueness, which will help you rank better and get more visits from Google News. 3. Mobile-Friendly Design – Smart websites for the smart user Smartphones are our new best friends, and therefore, having a mobile-friendly website matters. Although many people still use laptops and desktops to search the internet, the landscape is shifting since the introduction of mobiles. Therefore, your website must be mobile-friendly and easy to view and navigate via mobile device. A mobile responsive layout offers you a broad subject and involves several variables. When you set out to design your site, ensure you have kept mobile responsiveness in your mind. Google recently announced that the mobile-first index would be used for every website, meaning the version will be the primary result in Google’s index for any site with a mobile version. 4.Domain Name and Homepage URL – Pick a unique one Small factors, such as the site’s domain name and homepage URL, help search engines learn about the page. Recently, domains have been devalued as a way to exploit your keywords. Using your company’s name as the domain and homepage URL is a natural route for many people, and it’s a good place to start. But cramming your homepage URL with tons of keywords makes the site’s URL challenging to remember, leading to a negative ranking effect. The best bet in this situation is to go with other aspects of using keywords and taking a non-spammy route. 5. Optimize Crawl Speed – The fastest one wins When designing an attractive and fast responsive website, you want your pages to be indexed quickly by Google. People hate waiting around for a slow site to load, especially when they have wider options to search for various products from other platforms. Fortunately, several SEO factors can help with crawl speed, including site speed, hosting performance and XML sitemaps. The Choice is Yours- In a nutshell, managing websites and keeping up with the latest trends can be a daunting task. If you keep these tips and tricks handy, you will have a better-optimized site and enjoy more traffic. Katalyst Technologies' digital eCommerce services offer a one-stop shop to help you take your website to the next level. Reach out to our experts to schedule a consultation and find out how they can help you maximize your business success. Implementing ERP requires commitment, data accuracy, and understanding of the strategic goal. The team is responsible for installing needs to conduct exhaustive research and ensure nothing goes wrong. But what if they fail to disclose how the ERP vendor handles installation? This a significant step and cannot be ignored. Hence the local business expert. The entrepreneurs may choose the best ERP, CRM, or any other software, but their business will face numerous challenges to attain end goals if they ignore and don't feel the need to incorporate a local business expert during the implementation process. Reasons you need a local business expert and how their presence is vital for the company's growth 1. Offers Unparalleled Business Services Since each business has a specific requirement, there is no fixed or one-size-fits-all technique to install ERP software. Therefore, enterprises need a more personalized service that can help them seamlessly incorporate new software. This is where you require a local business expert who will listen and understand your unique business requirements and offer services based on it. They have a better understanding of your business and the industry you operate in. Besides, their knowledge of the local context is unparalleled, which turns out to be crucial while implementing the enterprise resource planning software. They will work with the top management to ensure that you get the best of their expertise while installing the ERP. 2. Provides Top-Notch Expertise The key to successfully installing an ERP system is to have a skilled team trained for the ERP system. In this scenario, having a local business expert is the best bet. They have the desired knowledge and can lead a team by directly getting involved in the installation of cloud ERP. Their involvement also reduces the scope of error, ensuring you face minimum challenges and difficulties while executing their plan. Additionally, they are a great asset to organizations as they can train and educate the team about using the software. 3. Enables Extended Partnership Once you have implemented the online ERP software, your relationship with the ERP vendor doesn't stop there. There are many things that businesses need to focus on, and only a local business expert can provide them as they have the required knowledge for it. They are involved from planning and researching to installing and optimizing which can go on for years and may scale up or down with time. Their expertise and knowledge can be used whenever an update and other business solutions are required. 4. Assists Implementing Other Products A local business expert has the expertise of various other software, such as CRM, WMS, and others, that your company might require in the future. Involving them will help you to their knowledge base in implementing various software. Since they already have a complete understanding of your business, its target audience, the nature of the industry and your long-term goals, incorporating their strategy would help you flourish in the industry and offer you a competitive advantage. Bottom Line- Companies need software that streamlines processes, easier to use, utilizes innovative technologies, and many other qualities. The local business expertise is capable of all the features mentioned above, and to top it all, they are the direct point of contact. Likewise, Katalyst Technologies offers business expertise to eCommerce enterprises in implementing the ERP software. These experts help your organization succeed in the ever-evolving online marketplace with their personalized services and technical support. |
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