Content Commerce Made-to-Measure with Microservices

As beck-shop.de offers so many products, it needed a more modern architecture and a stronger content management system. Umbraco was chosen as the CMS given its flexible application options and its open source ASP.NET structure. It quickly became clear who was to implement the project: Germany's first Umbraco Gold Partner byte5. The team integrated commercetools into Umbraco to scale the e-commerce platform. byte5 used Microsoft Azure for an intelligent cloud infrastructure. The demanding requirements for the frontend were solved with Vue.js, a web framework based on JavaScript. Though time-pressured, byte5 created a new, dynamic system for beck-shop.de which the client is impressed with.

The outdated, monolithic infrastructure was to give way to modern architecture. byte5 was faced with the complex task of implementing the complete restructuring of the web shop in an API-based environment. The focus was on content commerce: a model that combines e-commerce with content marketing. To realise this, the backend and frontend were to be separated from each other. byte5 as an experienced commercetools partner planned to integrate the toolset into Umbraco. In addition, all existing functions in the after-sales area were supposed to be kept. The high demands for user experience and the complex logic in the check-out area were the greatest challenges for the byte5 developing team.

byte5 was primarily responsible for the implementation of the store front end. The designs were supplied externally and implemented by byte5. Using components of the Vue.js framework, a shop interface was created that is intuitive to use for the user and that at the same time offers extensive product information – content commerce at its best. The use of the Microsoft Cloud Azure also guarantees an extremely high performance of the web shop. With the help of Azure DevOps, continuous process optimisation was also ensured.

Umbraco was used as a system that is slim and powerful due to its high adaptability. Thanks to its flexibility, commercetools was seamlessly integrated into Umbraco. One of commercetools’ many advantages is its scalability, with which every individual request could be implemented. The microservices infrastructure provide order in the complex infrastructure. Umbraco and commercetools as a duo was so strong in the beck-shop.de project, as both systems offer simple answers to demanding problems. The partially agile approach made it possible to identify and solve hurdles at an early stage.

Thanks to content commerce, the new version of beck-shop.de offers visitors a comprehensive shopping experience. It was realised with design, which appeals to the traditional audience of the juridical literature publisher and takes their needs into account all the while being also extremely performant. The publishing house C.H.Beck benefitted from byte5’s competences as an Microsoft Silver Partner and commercetools partner. Thanks to byte5’s expertise in e-commerce with Umbraco, the team designed and implemented an individual, stable and made-to-measure solution for the very special processes and data models of C.H.Beck. As a control system that requests and delivers content from commercetools, Umbraco is the driving force in the web shop’s backend. Due to the flexibility, the adjustments the C.H.Beck team can make on their own have now significantly increased.

For this project, C.H.Beck relied on byte5 and its in-depth understanding of the technological requirements. With the variety of functions commercetools offers and Umbraco’s flexibility, byte5 created a successful, high-performing beck-shop.de. C.H.Beck was extremely satisfied with the result. byte5 will continue to operate and optimise this website and will stay in charge of the hosting on Azure. Collaboration continues in new projects.