As a full stack digital partner, Lizard Global has worked on numerous projects ranging in many types of industries including e-commerce. As a platform where the typical shopping experience is replaced with scrolling through online stores, it is crucial that we deliver a seamless experience to the users. By prioritizing our users, the team at Lizard Global constantly strives to build high-quality and sustainable solutions for full user satisfaction. In terms of an e-commerce platform, our team utilizes Saleor as our e-commerce solution. Here is how we do it!

What is Saleor and how do its functions benefit mobile and web-app development solutions?

First of all, Saleor is a headless and open-source e-commerce platform that uses GraphQl, mainly suitable for small and medium enterprises to globally distributed multinationals. This helps improve the process of creating a web or mobile app with an existing API. Its core functionalities are focused on product, stock, warehouse, and order management. Besides, it also provides a handful of useful plugins for payment gateways, VAT calculations, email notifications, and more. According to our CTO, Guido, he describes that the platform is very loosely coupled. It allows developers to exclude what is not needed, thus making it an easy and logical system to work with, next to being very lightweight. You could say that Saleor is definitely developer friendly. Unlike other e-commerce platforms, Saleor is not a system that one can get into production by clicking a couple of buttons. The result on the other hand is that, as a developer, it is much easier to set up, customize and fit into proper CI/CD flows.

Why is Saleor a chosen solution that companies use?

The Lizard Global team prefers using Saleor mainly because of its functionalities and seamlessness mentioned. It represents a platform that allows developers the space to create very customized webshops for our clients and users. Most of the time, our clients come to us to build their unique idea, not just another online shop. They all have unique fulfillment processes, product configurations, and more out-of-the-box ideas that are yet to be conceived. Therefore, we trust that utilizing Saleor in our works can help us achieve that goal.

Apart from being fully customizable, our clients strive for excellence and tend to grow exponentially at a faster rate. Saleor, being built on Django, which is a python platform, reflects how the application itself is stateless and uses databases, both persistent and in-memory, to maintain a state (like shopping carts). This makes it perfect for both horizontal and vertical scaling, where horizontal scaling is a huge benefit. At busy times we can simply pop up another instance and create high availability during peak hours, which on the other hand, are being taken out during off-peak hours. We can do this globally in a cloud network as well to guarantee worldwide availability.

How do companies use Saleor?

What are the benefits of using Saleor compared to building custom-made e-commerce solutions?

In reality, e-commerce platforms are huge in functionality that most people take for granted. Like Saleor and other platforms, Magento, WooCommerce, and Shopify, to name a few, creators take years refining the solution, and still, most of them failed. We do not imply that we know everything about stock management and order fulfillment and take a few years of time and budget from our clients to prove this. We would rather focus on the unique part and get a shop online in a matter of months. Saleor provides us the ability to do so.

To further elaborate, Saleor is equipped with a dashboard that can be utilized immediately, which is easy for developers to get right into it. On top of that, another benefit that Saleor has is that it is an open source that can be modified to satisfy our clients’ demands. With that, it is more time efficient for the developers to finish an e-commerce project this way as compared to building all of it from the beginning. With the help of the right platform like Saleor, we can get the job done much more efficiently.

What are the projects that Lizard Global has done using Saleor and how is it done?

The main projects that Lizard Global has done using Saleor are Drinkies by Heineken and CNCRD.

There are many default functionalities provided by Saleor for developers to utilize. Among these include product management, inventory management, shopping cart process, and many more. Saleor has most of the functionalities that you can think of from any e-commerce platform! For our projects Drinkies and CNCRD, here are the main functionalities that have been implemented using Saleor:

i) Product Management

This function allows for submitting the product names, descriptions, SKUs, images, and other product details. As an e-commerce platform, it is important that product details are displayed clearly and accurately for shoppers to browse, explore and understand the product details before purchasing.

ii) Stock or Inventory Management

The inventory management function indicates the availability of a product for a more informative shopping experience.

iii) Product Search and Filtering

Like most e-commerce platforms, this functionality allows users to do a text and filter search based on tags. Users are also able to sort the viewing of products based on specific criteria like brands, colors, and price range.

iv) Shopping Cart Process

This is where shoppers are able to add their desired product to the shopping cart, check their desired items for purchase and finish their shopping experience until the payment process.

v) Order Management

As soon as the customer pays for a product, it will come in as a complete order made visible to the admin of the store in an overview of all other orders. This functionality assists the store manager to keep track of the orders made and ensure that each customer receives their purchases accordingly.

vi) Payment

This is where we connect the store with a payment provider to complete the payment process smoothly. Examples of payment providers include eGHL, iPay88, and Paypal.

Apart from using the default functionalities that Saleor has, Lizard Global also implements custom features that greatly benefit our clients, allowing them to stand out as innovative in the industry. These custom features include:

i) Custom Loyalty and Rewards Program

Everyone loves discounts and vouchers! With this loyalty and rewards program, customers are provided with credits as they purchase a product and the credits are redeemable for vouchers and discounts on orders. This improves customer loyalty and is good for building interest in your shop in users browsing through.

ii) Implementation with Inventory Management System

This function allows us to connect the inventory system of our clients who have different distribution centers to where we need to check based on the user's location if there is an availability of the product. The idea is to identify the distribution center that is closest to the customer and determine the inventory level there to service the customer better through little to no delays.

iii) Customer Address Handling

With Saleor, we are also able to create a function that sets customer delivery addresses and communicates the said address to the store’s delivery partner.

iv) Integration with Delivery Partners

As all e-commerce platforms require delivery to customers, we create this function for store owners to connect with delivery partners such as Lalamove, Pos Laju, and Ninja Van.

To wrap it all up, Lizard Global chooses Saleor as our e-commerce solution based on the many strengths that it offers us, our clients, and their users. With its easy and logical system, our developers are able to create a platform that prioritizes features needed by our clients in a faster way. By being fully customizable, we are able to fulfill the most creative features that our clients desire to see in their stores, helping them stand out in the e-commerce world.

Are you looking to build an e-commerce store? Get in touch with Lizard Global!

Whether you’re an entrepreneur or an existing business looking to establish an online store, we are more than happy to think along with you and become your full-stack digital partner! It is undeniable that e-commerce is on the rise and here to stay, so we are glad to help you get on the boat and ride the waves with you. You may also check out Heineken, CNCRD, and other partners that we have worked with to get inspired. What are you waiting for? Drop us a line and let’s get started!