I've observed multiple AEM e-commerce implementations styles involving Search & Promote and AEM. I'm trying to understand the pluses and minuses of the two main implementation styles that I've observed.
- Use S&P to power onsite search as well as every category and facet filtering of the categories.
- Observations:
- Generally 3rd party cart solutions are used
- Client side DOM painting from parsed S&P responses
- Ajax/S&P controls facet filtering (URLs do not change)
- Thoughts/Concerns:
- User experience:
- Waiting for S&P response to be parsed to paint the DOM (slow connection speed and S&P response size have a significant impact) which results in some either delay of page load or blocking elements appearing over time
- SEO:
- Much of an e-commerce site's content on category pages are the products populated and again depending on the response size affects if the products are seen by bots
- Use S&P to power only onsite search while a separate e-commerce platform powers all the category and filtered category pages.
- Observations:
- Generally e-commerce platform that powers category also integrates with the cart
- Server side parsing before the DOM is painted
- Every filter has a new URL (new page load per filter)
- Thoughts/Concerns
- Requirement of an e-commerce platform (e.g. Magento, Hybris, Oracle) adds additional cost and management
- User experience:
- Not as seamless because a new page load is required for each filter URL
- SEO:
- Improved SEO value as pagination and filtering all have distinct URLs
So what is the best way to launch an e-commerce AEM site with S&P for optimal UX and SEO? Why? Is there a way to use S&P with server side parsing and full page caching (e.g. Akamai)?
Thanks!
Chris
