This article is about Strapi, a headless CMS for eCommerce. It discusses what Strapi is and the benefits of using it. It also details steps on how to set up Strapi for eCommerce. Some of the essential points from this article are that Strapi is open-source, self-hosted, and customizable. It is also scalable and offers a variety of features to empower eCommerce businesses.

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Leveraging Strapi for eCommerce Development: A
Comprehensive Guide
successive.tech/blog/strapi-for-ecommerce-development/
As the world of eCommerce evolves rapidly, the adoption of headless content
management systems (CMS) has gained immense popularity. Strapi is one such game-
changing CMS that allows businesses to streamline their content management process
and delight customers with an immersive shopping experience.
Over 25k businesses are leveraging Strapi and it powers various industry-leading brands,
including Tesco, Toyota, Tata, Mug & Snug, Paradigma, and Walmart. Moreover, its rich
array of plugins, custom functionalities, and integration capabilities make it an ideal
choice for businesses to empower their online selling journey.
In this blog, we will discuss how Strapi can serve as an ideal headless CMS for their
business.
Understanding Strapi: An Open-Source Headless CMS
Strapi is an open-source headless CMS based on Node.js and used to manage, optimize
and develop eCommerce websites and applications. Its independent front and backend
architecture enables businesses to create and modify content in one place and update it
across multiple platforms simultaneously. By leveraging Strapi’s backend, businesses can

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manage their products and content while seamlessly linking it with their customized
storefront using APIs. With Strapi, it becomes easier to make updates across every
screen automatically without making manual changes in every place.
Key Attributes of Strapi for eCommerce
Strapi offers several features to empower eCommerce businesses. These features help
businesses to leverage Strapi and create a customized eCommerce store for their
targeted audience. Check out the list of Strapi features and leverage them as per your
specific requirements.
Open-source, Self-hosted CMS
Aforementioned, Strapi is an open-source content management system that allows
businesses to manage their eCommerce store’s functionalities and content from a single
dashboard. It is also a self-hosted CMS and handles hosting, domain, and software
dependencies such as databases, required software libraries, and more, streamlining the
eCommerce store setup process.
Customization and Flexibility
It allows businesses to integrate their store with their preferred microservices and
frameworks to enhance its functionality. Strapi also provides fully customizable APIs to
meet specific needs and enrich the end-user’s shopping experience. Strapi for

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eCommerce is the ultimate tool that assists in creating branded flexible content,
managing multiple digital channels and connected devices, and optimizing workflow.
Scalability
With growing business needs and customers’ preferences, it becomes vital to have a
scalable eCommerce store to manage the high-traffic scenarios. The headless CMS
architecture of Strapi allows businesses to expand their store simultaneously over every
platform as their business grows without disrupting its performance.
Flexible Integrations
Businesses can enhance their eCommerce store’s functionality and improve their tools by
integrating industry-leading software and frameworks. Strapi allows flexibility to integrate
frameworks such as Laravel and Symphony and API such as MUX to leverage their
potential for building custom functionalities based on their specific business requirements.
Seamless Content Management
Strapi allows businesses to manage their content from a single admin panel seamlessly.
They can generate appealing content and distribute it across multiple platforms
simultaneously. Working on one admin panel gives them access to create, edit, manage,
and publish content to blog posts, social media accounts, and homepage product
descriptions. Moreover, Strapi allows working with all content types, from text and articles
to photos and videos.
Extensive Plugins Marketplace
The vast availability of plugins in Strapi enables businesses to add custom features to
their eCommerce store and enhance its functionality according to their specific needs.
Strapi also provides various plugins, such as Google Analytics integration, Comment
Manager, and Record Locking, which set it apart from other CMS platforms.
Multi-language Support
In order to fulfill the localization and global selling efforts of an eCommerce business,
Strapi comes with multilingual support that enables them to sell across geographical
borders. Businesses can create different versions of their website for different countries
and localize the content by translating the text and adapting the messaging & structure of
the page to each version.
Also Read – Umbraco vs. Strapi
Setting Up Strapi for eCommerce
To set up Strapi for eCommerce, businesses need to follow several steps, including
installation, configuring necessary plugins, setting up front end, and deployment.

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There are also several prerequisites that are required to be installed on their system:
Node.js (version 12 or higher required for Strapi)
NPM (Node Package Manager)
Strapi’s supported databases like MongoDB, PostgreSQL, MySQL
Let’s now understand how to set up Strapi in the below step-by-step guide.
Step 1- Strapi Installation
Once the above-mentioned prerequisites are installed, the first step is to open the
terminal and run a command to install Strapi.
Here is the command example –
<npm install -g strapi>
Once the installation is complete, the browser automatically opens a new tab. Complete
the popped-up form, create an account, and become the first administrator user.
Step 2 – Create a New Strapi Project

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Post successful registration, navigate to the “create new project” directory and enter a
command to build a new eCommerce project. Ensure to replace “eCommerce-project”
with the project’s name in the command prompt. The admin user will now have access to
the admin panel to create content categories, install plugins and manage their store.
Enter this command to create a new project –
<npx create-strapi-app@latest my-project>
Step 3 – Creating the Category Content Type and Defining API Endpoints
Strapi’s admin panel allows the user to manage content-type categories such as for
products in the case of eCommerce. Content types are essential to define data
structures. In the Strapi admin panel, under the “Content-Types Builder” section, create
the necessary content types for their eCommerce platform, such as products, gender-
based categories, orders, users, etc. After creating the content types, define the API
endpoints for each content type. These endpoints will determine how data is accessed
and manipulated via API calls.
Step 4 – Database Selection
During the project setup process, it will show a prompt to select the preferred database to
manage, store, and secure the entire data. Strapi supports various database
management systems (DBMS) such as MongoDB, MySQL or MariaDB, PostgreSQL, and
SQLite. Businesses are required to select their preferred DBMS for its seamless
configuration with Strapi and hassle-free, secured data storage.
Step 5 – Installing Strapi Plugins
Strapi has a vibrant plugin marketplace enabling businesses to add custom features in
their eCommerce store. Depending on their specific requirements, they can choose and
install plugins such as API.Video Uploader plugin to upload and manage videos, and
Content Tags plugin to add custom tags to their content.
Step 6 – Set up User Authentication
For an eCommerce platform, user authentication is crucial. Strapi provides businesses
with an in-built authentication and the flexibility to integrate their preferred authentication
provider, such as Active Directory, Okta, Keycloak, and OAuth, to manage the access
management and validate every user on their eCommerce web and app. They can
configure authentication settings and registration options as per their requirements to
offer a seamless signup experience.
Step 7- Frontend Set up
To set up the store’s frontend, it’s essential to choose a development framework such as
React, Vue.js, or Nuxt.js. Being a headless CMS, Strapi offers complete flexibility to
businesses to select and integrate any preferred framework as per their needs. They are

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also recommended to partner with a professional Strapi development company to
develop the frontend system efficiently.
Step 8 – Testing and Deployment
Lastly, once Strapi’s backend, APIs, and Frontend are in place, it must undergo testing to
verify for bug issues and resolve them promptly. Testing will ensure the eCommerce store
is ready for the final launch and will look efficient for their target audience.
Customizing Strapi for eCommerce Needs
Being an open-source CMS, Strapi has a customization feature, helping businesses
create, customize and manage their eCommerce store that aligns and augments their
brand identity. From a single dashboard, they can add and organize all their products and
content types to offer a remarkable shopping experience to their customers over every
screen.
Strapi helps eCommerce businesses to increase conversion rates, optimize inventory,
and integrate their preferred platforms and services to improve customer experience, with
features such as Role-Based Access Control (RBAC), Single Sign On (SSO), and
Enterprise Edition Support.
It also lets them add custom functionalities into the store, such as payments, search, and
helpdesk via plugins and APIs to improve its performance and security. Additionally, with
Strapi, businesses can create an eCommerce store that is accessible from every device–
web, desktop, and mobile, enabling customers to shop from their preferred platform.
Strapi also offers several other functionalities specifically to empower eCommerce
businesses, including inventory management, creating omnichannel CMS, integrating
microservices, custom plugins of Strapi for eCommerce, and multilingual support. Let us
now discuss each of these functionalities in detail.
Inventory Management With Strapi
While Strapi offers several features and functionalities to create a customized
eCommerce store, it can also be leveraged to handle and enhance the inventory
management process effectively. Here’s how it can be utilized for inventory management
in eCommerce.
1. Data Model Setup
While creating content-type categories in the admin panel, businesses also get an option
to define their inventory data model using these content types. For example, they might
create a “Product” content type with fields like name, stock keeping unit (SKU), product
description, price, quantity, images, and other product-related information. You can also
create related content types like “Categories” or “Brands” and establish relationships with
the “Product” content type.

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2. API Creation
Strapi automatically generates REST APIs based on the defined content types. These
APIs can be used to perform various operations for inventory items, such as creating new
products, updating quantities, fetching product details, and deleting products.
3. Authentication and Access Control
Strapi provides in-built authentication and access control mechanisms such as role-based
access control and single sign-on. With these features, businesses can set up different
user roles (e.g., admin, warehouse manager) with varying access levels to manage and
secure inventory data. This ensures that only authorized personnel can perform
inventory-related tasks.
4. Integration with eCommerce Platform
Businesses with an existing eCommerce store can integrate their system with Strapi by
utilizing the inventory APIs. This integration allows the eCommerce website or application
to interact with the inventory data seamlessly managed in Strapi’s backend.
5. Inventory Tracking
Inventory tracking is an important process for managing inventory. Strapi enables
businesses to keep track of the available stock for each product. When a customer places
an order, the inventory can be automatically updated in Strapi to reflect the reduced
quantity. This way, businesses can prevent overselling and manage stock levels
efficiently.
6. Notifications and Alerts
Strapi can be configured to send notifications or alerts to designated users when certain
inventory thresholds are reached. For example, if the stock of a particular product falls
below a predefined limit, a notification will be sent to the warehouse manager to restock
the item and avoid the chances of repetitive “item sold out” scenarios.
7. Reporting and Analytics
Strapi is also helpful in gathering data on inventory trends, popular products, and sales
performance. Integrating with data analysis tools makes it easier to generate reports and
gain essential insights to enhance the inventory management process.
8. Extensibility and Customization
By creating custom plugins or integrating third-party services with Strapi, businesses can
extend their inventory management capabilities. For instance, they can integrate barcode
scanning functionality to streamline inventory updates or integrate with an order
management system to automate order processing.

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Creating an Omnichannel CMS with Strapi
Developing an omnichannel CMS is all about personalizing customer experience no
matter their location. Strapi simplifies and streamlines operations by allowing a business
to manage their content for all their digital touchpoints — website, app, social channel,
mall kiosk, etc. — from a single, centralized content hub. Content can be optimized and
quickly delivered to multiple channels to support new product launches, in-person events,
holidays, sales, and even real-life events. It helps create a seamless user experience
across all channels and devices.
With a flexible content infrastructure and omnichannel publishing feature, businesses can
link every stage of a customer journey, whether they are consuming content in an email or
on social media, using a desktop, smartphone, or tablet.
With omnichannel CMS in Strapi, they can unify their content on all channels so that they
work in parallel to enhance and personalize the user’s experience. This enables the user
to utilize multiple channels simultaneously. Any progress the user makes on one channel
remains saved so they can move to another channel and complete the purchasing
process seamlessly.
Integrating Microservices With Strapi
Before discussing further how microservices integration works with Strapi, let’s
understand microservices with a brief overview.
Microservices is a service-oriented organizational approach to software development,
where software is composed of small independent services communicating through
lightweight protocols, particularly APIs. It is an event-driven architectural pattern that
arranges an application as a collection of loosely coupled services, where each service is
responsible for a specific business process. Each microservice can be developed,
deployed, and scaled independently and can be used to perform a desired function.
Integrating microservices with Strapi involves leveraging Strapi, a headless CMS
(Content Management System), as a central data hub for content management while
allowing separate microservices to handle specific functionalities or services within an
application. This architecture enables the Strapi development company to build scalable
and maintainable applications by breaking complex systems into smaller, independent
services. As a headless CMS, Strapi allows flexible content creation and distribution
making it an excellent choice for leveraging microservices.
Now let’s discuss Strapi and microservices integration with this step-by-step guide below:
1. Plan the Microservices Architecture
The first step is to define the various services the application will consist of. Each
microservice should be focused on a specific task to enable the application to function
seamlessly. For an eCommerce app development, businesses can define services such

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as customer service to manage customer information, a products service to manage
product details, a tax service to determine taxes to be applied to products, and a
payments service to manage payments.
2. Defining Data Models
Before setting up microservices, it’s crucial to determine data models through content
types in the admin panel. These models represent the structure of the content.
Businesses can create different content types, relationships, and validations based on
their application’s needs. Based on the defined data models, businesses can then set up
microservices. However, each microservice should have a well-defined API to interact
with other services.
3. Communication between Strapi and Microservices
Strapi exposes content through APIs, which microservices can consume and utilize. The
microservices will use HTTP requests to access and manipulate content in Strapi. For
instance, when a new product is added to the product catalog microservice, it can make
an API call to Strapi to store the product details.
4. User Authentication and Authorization
To secure microservices integration with Strapi, businesses must identify how
authentication and authorization will work in their microservices architecture. One
approach is to implement an authentication mechanism such as JWT (JSON Web
Tokens). Strapi provides JWT-based authentication by default that the microservices can
verify and use to authenticate different users and their permissions.
5. Monitoring and Logging
As the application becomes more distributed with microservices, monitoring and logging
become crucial. Set up appropriate monitoring tools to track and improve the
performance of each microservice and the interactions with Strapi.
6. Testing and Deployment
Testing microservices integration with Strapi thoroughly is a crucial step before deploying
them to the final app. Since each microservice can be deployed independently,
businesses can update and scale individual components per their growth requirements.
7. Scalability and Performance
Microservices architecture comes with the benefit of scaling the application whenever
required and improving its performance. However, businesses must ensure to design
their system to allow easy scaling of different microservices independently, depending on
the evolving demands.

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Leveraging Strapi’s Plugin Marketplace for eCommerce
The Strapi plugin marketplace consists of multiple plugins to add custom features and
extend the functionality of the eCommerce store. Businesses can leverage various
industry-leading software via these plugins to manage and optimize their store, improve
its performance, and offer remarkable shopping experiences. Here are some top plugins
that power thousands of Strapi-based eCommerce stores.
Shopify Plugin
This plugin enables businesses to integrate Shopify into Strapi and build a Shopify-based
store while leveraging its key solutions. With this plugin, businesses can blend the best of
two worlds – Strapi (self-hosted) and Shopify (SaaS). This way, they can use Shopify to
create, manage, and sell their products and manage and distribute the content
seamlessly with Strapi.
Localazy Plugin
With this plugin, businesses can quickly localize their content for Strapi in a number of
languages as required. They may either translate the content manually using this plugin
or have the translation team handle it. This plugin enables faster bulk translation of the
entire content.
MUX Plugin
It is a plugin for uploading video and audio files to Mux and managing them within Strapi.
It provides the ability to upload content via a URL or a direct file upload to Mux and
manage the audio content easily. When the asset is prepared, Mux immediately updates
Strapi via Webhooks.
Strapi GraphQL Plugin
Being among the best Strapi plugins, it offers the capability of GraphQL with Strapi. While
the REST API endpoint has been generated by default for each content categories, using
the GraphQL plugin, businesses may add a GraphQL endpoint to fetch and edit the
content in Strapi’s backend easily.
Stripe Payment Plugin
Stripe payments plugin is one of the most popular eCommerce plugins in the Strapi plugin
marketplace. It streamlines the payment integration process and allows businesses to
accept online payments on their eCommerce stores. Not only online payments, they can
also create subscriptions using Credit and Debit Cards, AliPay, Apple Pay, and Google
Pay via Stripe.
Passwordless Plugin

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With the help of the Passwordless plugin for Strapi Headless CMS, users can access
email links to log in or register for applications. This plugin improves the Strapi User
Permissions Plugin’s capabilities.
Multilingual Support in Strapi
By leveraging Strapi development services, businesses can create multilingual
eCommerce websites and apps to deliver personalized shopping experiences to each
target audience, regardless of their language. Offering multi-language support, Strapi
enables them to localize and modify their content by translating the text and adapting the
messaging & structure of the page to specific regions.
Additionally, Strapi renders a specific plugin for multilingual compatibility called the
“Internationalization (i18n) Plugin.” This plugin allows businesses to create multiple
content versions, also called locales, in different languages and for different countries.
With clear navigation, smooth content editing feature, and flexibility to adapt the structure
of each locale, it becomes easier to reach global customers and distribute content in their
local language.
Integrating the multilingual plugin into their eCommerce website and app, businesses can
foster international eCommerce, broaden their customer reach, improve brand image,
and drive sales.
Conclusion
By leveraging Strapi’s remarkable features, a rich array of plugins, and custom
eCommerce functionalities such as inventory management, omnichannel CMS, and
microservices integration, businesses can undoubtedly create and manage their
eCommerce store that showcases their brand image efficiently. With the utilization of
plugins, APIs, and microservices to add features and improve performance, Strapi is set
to become the future of the headless eCommerce landscape.