AEM-Magento Integration: The Combination of CMS and eCommerce

A successful eCommerce business is not only about providing a great shopping experience, but also about a personalized user experience!

After acquiring Magento, a leading eCommerce platform with over 250,000 users, Adobe has been trying to enhance website capabilities by merging content and commerce together. This is done with the help of a Commerce Integration Framework (CIF) that integrates AEM with Magento.

This has driven AEM with Magento into a flawless approach by offering the best commerce and content management within one solution. While Magento acts as your eCommerce system, AEM powers your storefront. This would result in improved customer segmentation and targeting, as well as, better content management.

Now, with the merger of a modern content management system and an ecommerce platform, things will find a path to ease out. Let’s see in the later sections why this integration matters:

AEM and Magento Integration Using Commerce Integration Framework

The Commerce Integration Framework (CIF) by Adobe is a recommended integration pattern. Using CIF, commerce services from Magento can be extended with the Experience Cloud. CIF allows AEM to –

A. Access a Magento instance
B. Bind the catalog data via GraphQL.

The product and category data is fetched on-demand from Magento. AEM authors can use Product and Category Pickers and a read-only Product Console to browse through it. CIF also provides an out-of-the-box storefront to expedite commerce projects.

AEM Venia Reference Store-Front:

AEM Venia is a modern production-ready storefront to showcase a basic B2C commerce journey. It is helpful in starting off commerce projects and facilitating them using AEM, CIF, and Magento. It showcases the best practices for AEM-Magento integration and uses the Commerce Core Components.

AEM Commerce Connector for Magento and GraphQL:

The AEM commerce connector facilitates the integration of Magento products and categories in the AEM Commerce console. It also offers authoring features to showcase data stored in Magento from within AEM.

The AEM Commerce console contains a hierarchical display of Magento products. This connector is used to better the AEM authoring experience by fully integrating with Magento products and categories.

Seamless Content Publishing For a Magento Store Through AEM

In the mixed page application that the AEM Venia Store Front is, AEM owns the glass while Magento powers the headless commerce backend. Server-side rendering (to deliver static content) and client-side rendering (to deliver dynamic content) are used in the storefront.

Product and catalog pages are rendered server-side using the AEM Core Components like Product Detail and Product List. These components fetch data from Magento via GraphQL APIs. This is done on AEM generic templates.

On the other hand, for incorporating the dynamic components such as Inventory or Price, the client-side components are used. These components fetch data from Magento via GraphQL APIs, after which, the content is rendered on the browser.

Catalog Management:

There is no import and storage of commerce data in AEM. Magento is fully responsible for commerce data like products, categories, product attributes etc. via the Product Console in AEM. Authors can take a look at the product catalog stored in Magento but they won’t have any editing access. Changes, if any, can be made in the product catalog via the Magento Admin UI.

Checkout:

AEM-Magento integration uses the client-side cart component. A complete experience integration pattern will be demonstrated with the shopping cart and checkout form. The cart component requires setting up the AEM Dispatcher with GraphQL routing, allowing the AEM page to access Magento’s GraphQL endpoint.

Account Management:

The development of client-side React-based components in this integration enables AEM to render these functionalities: Create account, sign in, and forgot password.

AEM-Commerce Integration Patterns

The commonly implemented AEM-Commerce integration patterns are explained below:

1. Integration Pattern 1: AEM owns the glass and commerce services are integrated via Adobe Commerce GraphQL APIs. This integration pattern allows AEM to be fully flexible with rich media site designs available on all devices.

2. Integration Pattern 2: A completely headless way of delivering commerce and content is depicted in this pattern. The delivery is fully client side, the pattern content is delivered via API and HTML, whereas Commerce data comes via GraphQL.

3. Integration Pattern 3: In this pattern, Magento owns the glass and embeds AEM authored content which can be delivered via Content Fragments and Experience Fragments.

4. Integration Pattern 4: This one is a common integration pattern where the glass layer is divided between AEM and a Commerce solution. In such a pattern, carts and user sessions have to be handled properly. For example, Magento stores the cart and user sessions as cookies. These can be shared between AEM and Magento.

What Can a Store Owner Achieve From AEM-Magento Integration?

eCommerce store owners can derive benefits from the combination of content and digital asset management needs that AEM provides.

Non-commodity businesses where storytelling, branding, content marketing, creating unique experiences, positioning etc hold significance, AEM comes as the most favored solution.

After its integration with the eCommerce system, Magento, has been following a headless commerce approach. If you require a Page Builder and an integrated Digital Asset Management (DAM), then the AEM-Magento integration works for you.

Here’s what the AEM-Magento integration helps you achieve:

1. Digital Asset Management (DAM): AEM’s DAM permits you to store content and manage visual assets etc which allows your team to access files from different locations. Editors can easily edit and publish information per asset.

2. Creative Dashboard: AEM project dashboard allows you to manage projects via a central environment. It facilitates adding tons of information to their projects such as connecting external links, team details, tasks etc.

3. Cloud Integration: Integrating within the Adobe Marketing Cloud is an effective way to fill in the gap between the DAM and marketing attempts.

4. Extensive Search: It provides you with an option of adding metadata and tags to cloud files. This helps you in finding the correct media within a lesser span of time. Altogether, it makes future searches quicker and easier.

5. Content Editing: Web pages can be created and managed within minutes using AEM. The preview functionality shows you what the page will look like after publishing.

6. Content Personalization: AEM simplifies the refining of content based upon the user profile and browsing history. This helps the user in viewing the content as per their tastes.

7. Media Conversion: AEM automatically converts your content files into numerous formats. This helps in getting engagements from different types of audiences across varied channels.

Key Takeaway

To sum up, Adobe Experience Manager has been outplaying its competitors and its integration with Magento has only brought laurels. An eCommerce business platform can benefit greatly with this integration which provides personalization till the checkout point. This integration is sure to leave a major impression on the eCommerce or digital businesses.

Learn more about AEM-Magento integration! Email us at [email protected] and we’ll take it from there!