Best practices for developing ecomm projects?

Question

Online shopping

What new trends are currently in ecomm development?
1. What is better to use cms, to do from scratch on the framework? (If cms then which one, if the framework then which one)
2. What is better to use on the front?
3. Do I need to do PWA?
I understand that the answer depends on the task. Imagine the task in a vacuum, what technologies would you use yourself if you don’t want to use the same wp (woocommerce), or ready-made solutions (insales)?
What you should pay attention to? Share your experience.

Answer 1

There is no best solution or best practices here. And it can't be. E-commerce is based on the needs of the business and the audience and is so different that ordinary online stores become just a drop in the ocean, and there are solutions on the market for every taste and color

Answer 2

I will say one thing: there are two types of development, development from business logic and development from infrastructure. From business logic, you write logic, cover it with tests, and then you think where and how to save, how to authorize, which libraries to use.
From infrastructure - you take frameworks and saw. Each has its pros and cons.
CMS is a separate topic, it comes with a set of ready-made business logic, if it fits into yours, use it.

Answer 3

It seems to me that you are more interested in technological trends in e-commerce. Among others, I would note the following.
Headless
This is a conditional API based solution. It can be implemented both on the basis of the framework (among PHP I would recommend Laravel), and on the basis of specialized Headless CMS (here, unfortunately, I won’t tell you what you should pay attention to). The headless approach makes it easier to implement mobile or PWA apps in addition to the main selling site.
PWA
It is well known that mobile users hardly install new applications. Therefore, a separate native mobile application is relevant only for large players in the market. PWA, on the other hand, allows you to bring the mobile UX of anyone closer, incl. a small store to a native application. For example, you can install an icon on the desktop, use it offline, receive push notifications. Of the PWA frameworks for e-commerce, I only know Vue Storefront , but I haven’t used it yet, so I can’t recommend it yet.
Speaking of a direct alternative to WordPress + WooCommerce, I would recommend looking at October CMS + Shopaholic. October is based on Laravel, which makes it possible to use its huge ecosystem and, in my humble opinion, October has one of the best DX (Developer Experience) in its class. Out of the box, October is very minimalistic, the exact opposite of monsters like Bitrix, for example. The desired functionality, for example, even users, is added by installing a separate plugin. This is somewhat consistent with one of the tenets of the UNIX philosophy.
As for Shopaholic, he follows the ideas of October and develops them. It doesn't have an API yet, but because components do not contain views, you can use arbitrary layout without problems. Adepts, for example, OpenCart silently envy this. =) Shopaholic has a powerful built-in caching system that allows you to work with directories of serious size out of the box on minimal hardware. Here, WP and Bitrix fans are already jealous. =) The main temporary disadvantage is still not such a wide ecosystem that does not cover all the needs of the market.