Tips To Develop An eCommerce Website With Shopware For Beginners

Today, as you are here it shows that you are interested in developing your eCommerce store. Well, you are at the right place. Keep reading!

After making your mind to start an online eCommerce, next you need to decide which eCommerce platform you should select. Don’t stress much, as we are here with a suggestion.

A successful eCommerce platform, perfectly feature-packed that’s much in use, is Shopware. Moreover, it’s expanding increasingly in the UK market with about 500% of growth rate.

Shopware comes with a smooth combination of commerce and content, provides flexibility through an API-first approach, has a plethora of outstanding features, offers a short time to market and less cost of ownership, and much more.

Today, we are here with an article to offer you a clear picture of the tips that you should take care of, being a starter, while starting with Shopware eCommerce development. We will help you with different versions of Shopware, its templates, themes, plugins, and more.

We will also guide you starting from the download of the latest Shopware version, to the development of an online store. We have emerged with the minimum need to begin and perform the task easily and successfully. So, let’s start.

Start Your eCommerce Website With Shopware

To begin, you need to download the latest Shopware edition that is free and open source. You can download Shopware from official site.

Shopware Hosting (Web Server) Requirements

It’s an essential job to choose a compatible Shopware web server as it would prove to be a great investment. You may connect with any top Shopware hosting provider, who will also offer you Shopware cloud hosting and more services.

Let’s check out Shopware Hosting and Web Server Needs:

• Linux-based OS with Apache 2.2 or 2.4 Web server with enabled mod, a rewrite module holding the caliber to override options in .ht access files
• MySQL 5.5 or higher
• Minimum 4 GB hard disk space available
• PHP 5.6.4 or higher
• Opportunity to set up cron jobs (time-based jobs for workload scheduling)

Shopware Backend (or Shopware 5 System Requirements Admin Panel)

Let’s check out the Shopware System Requirements:

• The latest version of Safari, Chrome, Edge, or Firefox
• 4 GB RAM or higher
• Cookies and JavaScript enabled
• Minimum 1366 x 768 pixels backend resolution
• Dual-core CPU or better

Shopware eCommerce Editions

Shopware has 4 Editions that incorporate Professional, Community, Professional Plus, and Enterprise. Every edition emerges with the specified features according to the user’s needs.

Let’s brief each of them:

• The Community edition is for the entry-level into Shopware eCommerce platform.
• The Professional edition of Shopware will prove to be best for any special brand and its services.
• Shopware Professional Plus offers various opportunities and arrives with its 12 premium plugins.
• The Shopware enterprise is best for big eCommerce projects.

Besides, the Shopware Enterprise version is used mostly for:

• 24/7 online presence with various backup servers and a group of databases.
• Location-based access is needed for accessing the nearest server that’s based on the location of the client all over the globe.
• Shopware enterprise incorporates the support of Shopware teams.

Shopware 5 Configuration List “Go Live”

Next, we have listed out Online Shopware shop configuration for beginners

• Adding the articles as the product in Shopware article listing
• Individual customization of company logos, invoice data, imprint, and more.
• Adding Product Categories of Shopware store
• Shopware backend’s User Management
• Shipping Method configuration of Shopware store
• Payment methods integration
• Shopware store Shipping Method configuration
• Status of Shopware Orders
• Email Templates for Auto-generated replies
• Customer streams and online shop articles
• Configuration of the additional plugins every 2-4 hours for each plugin
• Setting up many price groups for merchants
• Depending on the range of the required plugins configuration of Shopware 3rd party plugins

Tip: Well, the work duration of configuration varies. Altogether, one can expect an effort of 1-4 working days.

Options For Selecting the Best Shopware Theme Design

Next, we will check out various options that you may consider for selecting Shopware store design.

• Theme setting of default Shopware theme (Shopware Demo Theme) as per your CI (Corporate Identity).
• Buying a ready-made plug-and-play Theme and adapting as per the needs.
• Crafting an individual design for Shopware Shops for a more personalized impact on your online buyers.

Tip: Designing, developing, and implementing a Shopware eCommerce store design may take time of 2-3 weeks.

Shopware Templates

The selection and development of the Shopware template rely on the choice of design of the shop owner. Any appealing design and professionally crafted SEO-optimized template lay a great impact on improving the ranking in SERPs and increasing website traffic and sales revenue.

Templates play an amazing role in how the banners, text, page elements, block, articles, and article listing will be showcased to the end-user on every page.

Using templates, Shopware offers the best way to prove the most optimized user experience on mobiles, desktops, and templates. With its in-built module for Shopping World (which is available for all versions) along with an additional Premium module (that’s for Digital Publish and comes with Shopware higher or professional version) ease it for any online store owner to design and optimize the landing pages himself.

The development of an improved and better online Shopping UI template includes the following:

• Arrangement of SEO optimized text on the Article Listing pages.
• SEO Optimized Banners and Blogs.
• Category Pages.
• Static and Inner Pages.
• Adaptability in the main Navigation menu points.
• Storytelling.
• Header section.
• Footer section.
• Shopping cart pages and checkout pages.
• Single page checkout.

Shopware 3rd-Party Plugin(s)

Along with the Shopware Premium plugins, you can install various third-party plugins as much as you want. This can be achieved through the Shopware eCommerce services providers.

The plugins come with more useful features that range from:

• Additional Shopware delivery methods.
• Additional Shopware online payment gateways.
• Designing of customized Menus, Mega Menu, and Images in Menus.
• Social Media Icons Integration in your eCommerce Shopware store.
• SEO-optimized Article listing for your Store.
• Chat functions.
• SEO for Store.

TIP: You can find all the available Shopware available plugins at Shopware Community Store. Currently, there are 3500+ and more plugins.

Shopware Multi-Shops: Shopware Mainshop, Subshops & Languages Shops

A robust eCommerce platform, Shopware, provides better division and categorization of Shopware stores depending on your needs. Subshops come with an entirely individual template, design, and layout.

The shops are divided into language shops depending on distinct languages and regions. Moreover, apart from languages, localization is also possible for the current management for individual language shops and subshops.

Individual eCommerce Shopware Development and Extension

For Shopware, extending an eCommerce site is a demanding task. It’s a flexible, open-source, and robust eCommerce platform. It facilitates easy and quick development of an online shopping system that fulfills all your business needs.

There are various specific needs of online eCommerce Shopsystem owners, like:

• Improving and providing the best user functionality to the eCommerce website at the front-end.
• Automation of processes in Shopware backend.
• Workflow automation, etc.

These were the individual needs and processes that were transformed into useful eCommerce website software solutions using Shopware plugin development.

One can perform the following tasks as per the plans, needs, and individual requirements of both Shopware frontend and backend:

• Shopware plugin developments whenever needed.
• Shopware plugin development for Shopsystem frontend.
• Shopware plugin development for Shopsystem backend using & extending Sancha ExtJs.
• Customized Extension and Module development within Shopware.
• Additional features improvement in the existing plugins.
• Extension and modification of the current plugins, both third-party plugins and Shopware plugins.
• Making third-party plugins compatible with the Shopware version in use.
• Updates current Shopware Plugin.
• Shopware theme development.
• Shopware widget development.

Shopware Migration For Secure Data Migration

When you migrate to Shopware, it states that you need to change your existing eCommerce platform. You can migrate your current eCommerce store to a Shopware platform regardless of whether it’s developed in WooCommerce, Prestashop, Magento, Shopify, or any other. Let’s check out a few types of Shopware migration:

• Magento to Shopware Migration
• PrestaShop to Shopware Migration
• WooCommerce to Shopware Migration
• Shopify to Shopware Migration
• Shopware 5 to Shopware 6 Migration

Shopware Theme Development

Well, a professional design is necessary for your online eCommerce store to be successful and widely known.

A few Shopware theme development services that a Shopware theme designing partner offers are:

• Icon & logo designing
• Theme designing
• Implementation of Corporate Identity (CI)
• Customization of Mobile Template
• Responsive web design
• Blog design & Magazine design
• Customized theme development, etc.

Shopware eCommerce Website Template Development

Another service in the Shopware development field, Shopware Template Development includes the context of theme files along with the HTML code and placeholders for real data. Template files include the HTML that’s generated for a specific piece of content, such as block, node, etc.

Updating Or Upgrading Shopware eCommerce Website

It’s quite challenging to upgrade any live system with Shopware as one needs to be extra careful when performing such a task.

Let’s check out all the necessary steps that are involved in Shopware eCommerce website upgrading:

• Take a backup of the existing system, if not available.
• Build a development environment (Staging), in case, doesn’t exist.
• Check the number of plugins in use.
• Upgrade to the latest version.
• Do check if any changes are made in Shopware “core files”.
• If yes, then restore such core files by making different Shopware plugin(s) for the features that were implemented using the Shopware “core files”.
• Check the compatibility issues with plugins of Shopware.
• Check the compatibility issues with any third-party Shopware plugins.
• If the plugins don’t go perfectly with the latest version, make them compatible.

Or, if you find all such tasks hectic, you can check whether the plugin in use is compatible or not. If you find it not compatible, then replace the installed plugin with a better one.

TIP: Don’t upgrade the Shopware system with the help of someone who is not sure as this is always a risky and tricky process.

Wrapping Up

Well, if you find the Shopware development jobs quite tough then you may hire a professional Shopware development company for Shopware ecommerce store development. This will permit you to use the extra time and effort in performing other important tasks of your business to make it achieve new heights. Building a robust ecommerce store may require the help of expert Shopware developers if you have some advanced features in mind.