What is MERN Stack?
What is MERN? In short, it’s a tech stack. A developer stack, that is. The M in MERN stands for MongoDB (Mongo), which is a document database—similar to JSON and XML—that allows for hierarchical key-value pairs of data.
So what does that mean? It means you can build websites using only JavaScript—instead of Java or PHP—by combining MongoDB and React.
MongoDB
E stands for Express.js and is responsible for acting as a modular framework for Node.js. And R stands for ReactJS (React), which is an open-source JavaScript library maintained by Facebook and Instagram.
If you’re storing user information in a relational database, how do you make it searchable and add data to it? MongoDB makes sense because of its document model. Each user has an individual document with all his or her info, and you can search them using a custom document type based on their data structure.
In other words, they allow you to run massive text searches over complex fields without having to go through normalized tables of users and pulling out your hair as it takes 30 seconds just to figure out what data might be relevant.
Express.js
Node.js is an easy-to-learn framework that makes it possible to quickly develop and deploy applications. Since all of your data is stored in a single place, you don’t have any syncing issues, so your data remains consistent across every device. Using Node.js will allow you to deliver a better user experience.
The platform can also be used with MongoDB (more on that later), which allows information to be accessed anywhere at any time, even when there’s no connection available!
JavaScript is by far one of the most popular programming languages on both small and large scales and many developers are already familiar with it.
ReactJS
React is more than just a JavaScript library. It’s a fully-featured framework that can help with app development. Many developers have come to appreciate its one-way data flow and simple yet powerful composition model.
When you use React, you only care about what happens next in your code, because your data is always in sync.
Node.js
Node.js is a cross-platform runtime environment built on Google Chrome’s JavaScript runtime. This means it can run on all major operating systems such as Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows without any problems whatsoever.
It was originally released in 2009 and has enjoyed considerable success since then; many companies have embraced node.js as their backend technology of choice due to its scalability, speed, and ease of maintenance.
Here are some reasons to choose MERN Stack for E-Commerce Development
Better Performance
With its stable foundation of MongoDB, Express, React and Node.js (MERN stack), e-commerce software development has never been easier than it is today. MERN enables developers to create reliable online stores at a faster rate and with greater ease, which is why it’s quickly become one of the most popular stacks in modern software engineering.
It also improves performance while offering an amazing user experience, since users can browse through products that don’t require any reloading or resizing of new pages on their browser window. This enables merchants to focus more on selling than on developing new features from scratch.
High in Security
The first big benefit of using a MERN stack is security. A traditional LAMP or MEAN stack would require you to set up load balancing and SSL certificates. However, with MERN, you can take advantage of Kubernetes which serves as your master node. This makes sure that all components are running on top of Docker containers.
In addition, only those authorized by Kubernetes have access to each container and are therefore unable to tamper with data on user accounts or compromise sensitive customer information. With this in mind, it becomes clear why many e-commerce companies are shifting to the use of the MERN stack.
Not only does it provide high levels of security but also scalability, performance, and rapid deployment. Companies like Shopify, Matternet, and Tesla are some who’ve embraced the new technology and seen tremendous benefits from doing so.
Scalability
Sooner or later, your e-commerce business will grow too big for one server. By using MongoDB, Express.js, React, and Node.js (MERN stack), you’ll have an easier time scaling your app as your business grows and data storage needs to increase. And don’t worry about learning a new language: JavaScript is just that—common sense with some new syntax—and most front-end frameworks like React will let you continue using HTML, CSS, and whatever other web technologies you want to incorporate into your site.
Efficient Frontend (Fully Customizable)
When you start building an online store, your priority should be delivering a seamless and outstanding user experience. You can achieve that by creating a fully customizable frontend with Vue.js. The other great thing about Vue is that it is mobile-friendly out of the box, meaning no need to waste resources on additional plugins or third-party libraries.
Finally, Vue delivers blazing-fast performance because it uses lightweight components and a reactive data binding system which means it will always work flawlessly regardless of how many active users are on your site at any given time.
The best part about all of these perks is that you can get them all without even needing to learn a new language or framework—it’s just plain JavaScript! No matter what programming skills you have, Vue’s simplicity guarantees that you’ll have fun while developing an e-commerce website. If this sounds like what you’re looking for in a website development stack, we highly recommend using the MERN stack.
Code Reusability
The main advantage of using the MEAN stack is that it reuses most of your code. This, in turn, will help you write a smaller and more efficient codebase. So, if you want to reduce development time then MEAN is an ideal choice.
Moreover, if you’re building an application from scratch then it’s a must-use stack because everything is ready to go out of the box. If you need more control over your data interactions or database queries then the MEAN stack offers full control over all database operations. And, this comes with the support of MongoDB which is best suited for CRUD operations.
Flexible Modifications
Unlike most other platforms, MERN is open-source and can be easily customized and expanded. Open source allows developers freedom in their coding that they wouldn’t have otherwise; they can experiment with new ideas without being hampered by proprietary software.
With a platform as complex as an e-commerce system, developers must be given the freedom to create something customized, efficient, and tailored to their specific needs. An open-source platform also allows users access to code they can build on top of or fix if something goes wrong—which is less likely in proprietary systems.
This means more consistent performance. It also makes it easier to customize the user experience, which leads to increased conversions. Better User Experience: One major benefit of using the MERN stack for your development is the opportunity to focus on the user experience.
The site loads faster, looks better and provides customers with exactly what they need at the moment they need it. Without even realizing it, this will lead customers up the funnel and increase conversion rates over time.
Helps the web app to rank well on the search engine
If you want your website to rank on Google, then you must ensure that it has a fast loading speed. One of several ways to improve your website’s speed is by using JavaScript frameworks such as AngularJS and Node.js. However, if you don’t need all of their features, you can use a technology stack called MERN (MongoDB, ExpressJS, and ReactJS).
With an e-commerce store, search engine optimization is especially important because of its potential for high revenue. E-commerce companies save 50% or more in costs per shopping cart when compared with conventional channels by using an online marketplace model instead of traditional retailing methods.
When choosing the technology stack for your e-commerce store, do consider whether you will be selling physical goods or digital products. MERN is good for both!
Better User Experience
A typical e-commerce setup includes frontend and backend applications, web servers, databases (like MySQL), cache layers, application servers, and maybe a messaging queue or two. In short, there are many moving parts. But what does that mean from a user experience standpoint? Well if something goes wrong with any one of those components then you’re likely to see it reflected in your frontend application.
For example, there was an issue with communicating between our API and web servers — any users making an API call would get back an error. This meant that none of their product searches were returning results because we weren’t able to communicate with our APIs! We were also missing out on aggregating analytics information since we couldn’t talk to our other services.
Final words on choosing the best eCommerce platform for your project
There are two ways of looking at platforms, which sometimes makes it hard to choose one. The first way is choosing a platform according to its features: is it built on top of Vue, has support for embedded video, can it integrate with Stripe, etc. If you’re only interested in these high-level details, then maybe they’re worth checking out.
On a second glance though, maybe they aren’t worth your time: in a year or two most probably some of these new technologies will be replaced by something else that may also look fancy now (just remember how much ReactJS was hyped just several years ago).
The other way of looking at eCommerce platforms is the type of development team that needs to work on the project: if there’s a single developer, then he or she would rather use something like Shopify and spend less time configuring things; while if many developers are working together, each with their skill set and goals, it might be more beneficial to use more sophisticated tools like Rails, Django or Laravel.
So when it comes down to choosing the best eCommerce platform for your project, we recommend sticking with Ruby on Rails – an enterprise-grade framework that meets all criteria and still has the flexibility needed for any enterprise-level project.