How Microservices are Serving Up Smaller, Faster, and Tastier Ecommerce Morsels

You're at brunch in a trendy Melbourne cafe, and you order a deconstructed meal (like the true hipster you are). You're presented with a plate of individual ingredients - a piece of bread, some avocado, a poached egg, a little pile of spices - each one carefully prepared and presented on its own.

That's what microservices are like for ecommerce. Instead of one big, complicated system, elements are broken down into individual components that can be developed and managed separately. If you decide to go vegetarian, you can easily remove the bacon off your plate because it's not baked into a quiche, or scrambled with the egg. If you decided you wanted spinach after all, it's no big deal to find space for it on the plate. And the best part? Each element of your breakfast is clearly defined and observable - the freshness of your spinach is plain to see. 

The applications of microservices in ecommerce have great benefits both from a technical and business perspective. Microservices can be language agnostic, which means any developer can contribute. This limits single point dependencies and broadens the pool for staffing or hiring. They allow for a reduced time to market for new features, allowing faster iterations and prototyping. For example, one could break out shipment management and make improvements without impacting interactions with other systems.

Microservices complement serverless architecture to provide powerful scalability. 

Microservices can be used to break down a monolithic application into smaller, more manageable pieces, while serverless architecture can be used to run those pieces at scale, without the need for dedicated (expensive) infrastructure. This means granular control over resources, allowing for cost reduction. For example, during a stocktake sale, one might want to give more resources to inventory services to ensure they are accurate throughout the peak period, then scale that service back down afterwards. This can be done to just that particular service rather than the entire platform, providing significant cost savings.

Ecommerce agencies like Aligent have used microservices since 2020 to integrate best of breed services and ecommerce components alongside core platforms, and recommends microservices as a method of de-risking the integration of legacy back office systems. Systems can have microservices added incrementally; it does not need to be an all or nothing approach. It is also the recommended approach for new to market platforms, as you don't have to order the full English breakfast from the get go. You can simply start with the bacon, and as your appetite grows, add more ingredients to the plate.

What does the future of ecommerce technology look like?

We can expect microservices to become even more popular as businesses continue to move towards cloud-based solutions and seek ways to improve their agility and scalability.

As microservices become more widely adopted, we can expect to see greater standardisation in the form of common frameworks and guidelines.

Serverless architecture is becoming more popular and we can expect to see more use of it in combination with microservices to allow organisations to focus more on building and deploying services, rather than managing infrastructure.

It is becoming increasingly important to have good observability tools in place as microservices become more complex. This includes logging, monitoring, and tracing to quickly identify and troubleshoot issues within the system.

With more data generated by microservices, there will be greater opportunities to use AI and machine learning to extract insights and optimise performance.

So if you want to create an ecommerce experience that's as cutting edge and sophisticated as a deconstructed meal in a Melbourne cafe, consider microservices.

Jonathan Day: The Secrets of Optimizing Site Performance 

Recently Jonathan Day was fortunate enough to be able to present an episode on Add To Cart where he was able to uncover some of the secrets to optimising your site performance. Jump in and find out why performance is not just a technical activity but incorporates customer psychology to get the best results. Not sure about what tool to use to measure performance? Jonathan will break down the metrics you need and other tools for your optimisation tool kit. 

Jonathan Day from Aligent: The Secrets to Optimizing Site Performance | #315

Changing lives and workplaces through skilled refugee migration

Widespread global conflict in recent years has seen families being displaced from many parts of the world. At the same time, Australia is facing a skills shortage in the workforce.

Global recruitment firm Talent Beyond Boundaries (TBB) is creatively and compassionately solving both problems -  helping displaced refugees from war-torn countries to find new beginnings in Australia while finding highly skilled staff to fill vacancies in Australia’s IT sector.

South Australian eCommerce company Aligent has been proactive and one of the first companies in South Australia to recruit and sponsor the migration of skilled refugees through the Skilled Refugee Pilot Program. TBB is collaborating with the Australian Government to not only help Australian companies fill their skills shortage, but also to help skilled refugees to settle in Australia.

Through this program, Aligent was able to search the TBB online job boards when recruiting, enabling us to connect with skilled refugees and displaced people.

Aligent Managing Director, Jonathan Day said “COVID and closed borders saw growth in demand for skilled specialised software and IT workers, we recruited in Adelaide and invested significantly in local talent but also needed to look elsewhere to meet the demand of Australian businesses,” 

“TBB connects employers around the world with refugees who are seeking work. Australian companies like ours, which require specialised skills, are now able to connect with displaced individuals who are looking for employment opportunities, hoping to relocate for work, rebuild their lives, and become valuable members of a new community in a different country.

“The suggestion that refugees place an excessive financial burden on a country by draining public resources is inaccurate, in fact their contributions add great value economically and socially to the wider community, and to our organisation directly.”

Multicultural Communities Council of SA Inc Chief Executive Helena Kyriazopoulos said: “Endorsed Australian employers are now able to tap into this overlooked talent pool of skilled professionals and tradespeople, and utilise this Labour Agreement to sponsor skilled refugees to work in their businesses.”

“This provides a safe migration pathway for thousands of refugees and displaced people over the coming years and assists companies around Australia struggling with a severe talent crunch,” she said.

Through the program Aligent have recruited several employees, including software engineer Sarya who fled Syria in 2012 as a refugee, they offered her not only a job but supported the relocation of her immediate family.

“The scheme assists potential employers and refugees to work together to address the challenges of not having any documentation and proof of work experience as they fled their country since employers can directly assess the skills and vouch for the candidate’s capability” Mr Day said.

“Businesses have direct access to skilled candidates who would be excluded from the traditional migration pathways and visas due to inaccessible documentation, but we can be confident in their skills and work experience,” he said.

“Candidates showcase their skills through performing skills tests and interviewing for high-quality roles. We were blown away by the quality of the candidates and have now hired five engineers through the pilot program,” he said

“There is a huge demand from business to trade online and IT staffing has had a hit with closed borders for skilled independent migrants and less skilled graduates.”

“Sarya was selected after a competitive round of online interviews. She has a Bachelor of Information Technology and Engineering from Damascus University and was first introduced to our business in 2020.”

The scheme assists potential employers and refugees to work together to address the challenges of not having any documentation and proof of work experience as they fled their country since employers can directly assess the skills and vouch for the candidate’s capability

Since 2012 when she fled Syria with her family, Sarya had been living in Amman, Jordan, with her husband, 19-year-old son and 3-year-old twins in limbo with no legal working status, worried that they would be forced back to Syria

A broad range of companies are now able to access the pilot program to hire skilled Syrian, Afghan and Ukrainian refugees, who are displaced due to conflicts in their countries.

“Our local staff are highly supportive of this program that enables us to improve the lives of vulnerable people, and the initiative is a key part of our broader focus on community and inclusion. This is one more example of how diversity and social contribution makes our business stronger and better suited to the needs and mandates of the modern working environment.” Mr Day said.

The program is also designed to remove some of the barriers that forcibly displaced people face when trying to access employer-sponsored skilled migration pathways.

Talent Beyond Boundaries works with governments, partners, and the private sector to ensure that refugees have equitable access to skilled migration as a complementary solution to displacement.

A family reunited through talent mobility pathway

Accessibility: why you need to pay more attention

What does Accessibility mean in the world of e-commerce?

By making e-commerce accessible, retailers can reach a wider customer base and create a more inclusive and diverse online shopping experience, which has a positive impact on reputation and the bottom line.

A study by WebAIM found that 98% of websites fail to meet accessibility standards. (WebAIM, 2022)

According to the World Health Organization, about 15% of the global population has some form of disability (WHO, 2021); even higher in Australia at 18% (ABS, 2022)

There are over 690 million persons with disabilities in the Asia-Pacific region (UN, 2021)

Beyond the community benefit, the opportunity to reach into relatively untapped markets presents an attractive commercial proposition.

In addition to the benefits of increasing the pool of shoppers that can purchase goods and services, merchants who invest in accessibility reap significant benefits in terms of SEO. Techniques to improve accessibility are well aligned with search engine friendliness, particularly by adding labels and descriptive text. Further, accessible design often creates more intuitive interfaces for all users, reducing cognitive friction and increasing conversion.

Accessibility in e-commerce includes ensuring that websites and apps are designed to make them easy to navigate using assistive technology, such as screen readers or alternative input devices. Aligent is an example of an ecommerce agency who is collaborating with clients to drive accessibility improvements, recognising the opportunity that exists.  

Recently, the industry has increasingly recognised the importance of Accessibility in e-commerce and has invested in developing a greater awareness of requirements and related technologies. Aligent has explored insightful activities that are contributing to this movement. For example, the agency held an accessibility “showdown”, whereby employees were classed into testers and helpers, aiming to navigate leading e-commerce websites using only accessibility tools and software commonly in use.

With the importance of accessibility in mind, how are we responding to this opportunity as an industry? What is the present reality?

A tester would listen to the screen reader software, and attempt to navigate using a keyboard (without seeing the screen). Alongside each tester were two helpers, who provided guidance when a tester got stuck, noted when that happened and communicated tasks: “search for a product”, “add to cart (including specifying size or colour)” and “checkout with alternative payment”.

Multiple sites were tested and the results were staggering; you won’t fully appreciate the challenges until you attempt to do it yourself!

In almost all instances, testers couldn’t easily find the price of a product; in some cases, the form fields weren’t announced correctly and validation errors weren't announced at all. On the product listing pages, it was hard for testers to keep track of filters they had enabled.

For the websites that implemented them, landmarks were a lifesaver, making it much easier to jump around to different parts of the page. Similarly, semantic HTML made a huge difference when announcing content within a landmark.

Some immediate “quick wins” will directly address such issues mentioned:

Using aria-live on validation messages so that a screen reader will announce them;

Giving textual labels to visual elements that have semantic meaning;

Ensuring web page requirements are identified to the user, and the reasons why certain elements might not be available yet, such as filling in shipping details at checkout.

As you can see, small changes can make a big difference, so providing an accessible user experience does not need to be a big project on its own, but rather a consideration to keep in mind. The benefits will be significant, spanning business imperatives such as conversion optimisation, SEO and social good! 

Jonathan Day: The Secrets of Optimizing Site Performance

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