Magento 2 ScandiPWA Review: Another View On Headless E-Commerce

For almost a decade, we explore the global e-commerce market with all its sophisticated trends. It steadily evolves, providing players with lots of new conditions and opportunities. Every year, new and new software solutions increase its potential capacity, accelerating growth, and improving the environments customers, merchants, marketers, and developers interact with. Thus, we see a broad diversity of experiences, such as Magento 2 introduces today. The leading e-commerce solution not only provides a limited set of default features but enables numerous customizations. Both these advantages became a part of the platform’s nature from the very beginning. However, both dramatically evolved within the past years. While initially serious Magento 2 customizations were possible only via third-party extensions and themes, the e-commerce system now supports the headless approach. It means that you can take the power of the platform’s backend and create any frontend on top of it. Magento 2 even offers a set of native tools and a related theme – PWA Studio – to achieve this goal. At the same time, you can leverage such third-party alternatives as Vue Storefront and DEITY Falcon. If nither of these tools looks suitable for the realization of your business goals, pay attention to ScandiPWA – another Magento 2 PWA that provides a comprehensive set of features and top-notch productivity. Below, you will find this platform-agnostic progressive web app described. Besides, explore the Scandi Magento 2 PWA frontend.

Brief PWA Explanation

Below, we shed light on what PWAs are since they are the main topic of this article. The most notable characteristics of PWAs include:

• Top-notch productivity and fast load time, 
• Highly engaging user experience, 
• Reliability in all networks,
• Support for offline store browsing and operations;
• Extra scalability. 

Although our favorite e-commerce platform shares some of these features, you cannot access a Magento 2 website offline, and it won’t be fast during a slow Internet connection. However, you can easily make it accessible every time (even offline) and reduce page load time to a bare minimum due to PWAs. Since the headless approach has become possible, you can streamline the platform’s powerful backend and create an entirely new frontend experience on top of it.

Besides, you get the ability to save a PWA storefront on a homescreen of any device. It remains there as an application, but unlike common apps, it provides the ability to share its content via URLs. So, it is a mixt of an app and a regular store. So, what does a PWA do to Magento 2?

1. It increases the platform’s performance dramatically;
2. It enhances the reliability to the platform;
3. It enables offline functionality;
4. It preserves and highlights the platform’s strong points. 

Now, its time to choose a PWA system suitable for your business. Below, we shed light on one of the most prominent solutions – Scandi Magento 2 PWA.

Before going any further, let’s say a few words about migration to a PWA Magento 2 website. As you might have already guessed, the default platform’s tools don’t let you do that successfully. However, you can rely on third-party solutions. For instance, our  Improved Import & Export Magento 2 extension supports all major entities, multiple file formats, API transfers, Google Sheet import, and several other mechanisms that dramatically simplify data transfers. Since the module is frontend-agnostic, you can use it to migrate to all Magento 2 PWA solutions. We will describe its opportunities in the last chapter of this article. Now, let’s see what ScandiPWA is.

Magento 2 ScandiPWA Overview

Scandi is a ready-to-use PWA Magento 2 theme that offers the fastest way to create a headless storefront on top of our favorite e-commerce platform. Its key benefits include small page load time, better conversion, and higher priority in organic search. Thus, one of the Scandi PWA Magento 2 websites achieved the following results:

• +56% conversions;
• +10% SEO;
• +56% revenue. 

Such outstanding characteristics let the ScandiPWA power really huge Magento 2 projects. For instance, one of the PWA stores created on top of this solution consists of 34 store views and includes 60k products and 15k attributes. It is connected to 84 offline stores, providing real-time stock updates.

It is also necessary to mention that ScandiPWA differs from other PWA solutions. It is not a storefront like DEITY or Vue. Scandi is the first open-source PWA theme for Magento. Thus, it does not have a middle-layer that may slow down the performance of your website. Besides, the lack of this element eliminates all the related bugs. Of course, a Magento 2 PWA theme requires less maintenance resources than a storefront. 

Tou can install the ScandiPWA Progressive Web Apps theme on top of any Magento 2.3 or newer store. However, it is not suitable for other platforms or earlier Magento versions. You take the latest Magento version and enhance it with PWA benefits introduced in the theme. Thus, Scandi offers the fastest and easiest way to leverage the advantages provided by the Progressive Web Apps technology.

Thus, you enhance your Magento 2 store, adding all PWA features out-of-the-box. The theme supports instant loading time, homescreen app, offline mode, push notifications, etc. You can even deploy your e-commerce store to mobile app stores, including App Store and Google Play. Besides, the theme is open source and has a native app look and feel!

Also, note that you can install the ScandiPWA theme on top of the infrastructure you already have. Since it connects to the same backend that you are already using, the need for additional middleware is eliminated.

ScandiPWA covers all steps necessary to make a full purchase from product discovery to checkout. It supports promotions, multiple languages and currencies, custom prices, 301 redirects, several product types, SEO enhancements, different search engines, etc. The theme works with popular shipping methods, including FedEx and UPS. Numerous payment method providers are supported as well. You and your customers can leverage PayPal, Stripe, Braintree, Klarna, etc.

Scandi offers a smart caching layer that is situated between the user and the database. Thus, it accelerates content delivery to your store visitors. Besides, the platform reads and writes directly to Magento. It means that backend operations, reporting, and integrations always stay intact.

Another essential benefit of ScandiPWA is that it uses GraphQL as a single data exchange interface. The theme extends and optimizes it to ensure more simple development, testing, and maintenance experience than other PWA solutions offer.

And since ScandiPWA is an open-source PWA theme, you can grab a free copy to develop your ultimate frontend. However, it is also possible to configure your ScandiPWA store in the cloud, accelerating time-to-market even more!         

Features

Magento 2 Scandi PWA lets you create a unique customer experience due to the following features:

• Instant Loading. ScandiPWA reduces loading time to a bare minimum. With this Magento 2 PWA theme, the page load takes milliseconds, including visual content. It also ensures effortless scrolling, provides immediate interaction, and introduces much faster checkout. Thus, you can forever forget about a slow user interface, unresponsive scrolling, or futile clicking. Get up to 300% performance improvement!
• Outstanding Shopping Experience. The Magento 2 Scandi PWA lets you optimize the experience of your store visitors, ensuring higher conversion rates. Engaging customers with an immersive user interface which is not only fast but also exciting and easy to explore. And don’t forget that Scandi is device-agnostic, so your Magento 2 website will look and work the same on every screen.
• Offline Mode. Scandi lets your Magento 2 website stay accessible not only in the most uncertain network conditions but also offline. Even when the connection is suddenly lost, shopping continues uninterrupted. Your customers can add products to carts and complete checkout forms. Your store is saved on a user device, enabling access to it anywhere and anytime. When the connection is restored, offline orders are synchronized automatically. No impact on loading speed is provided.
• Push Notifications. ScandiPWA lets you keep store visitors engaged with push notifications. You can leverage this technology to decrease cart abandonment rate, re-engaging shoppers who didn’t complete the checkout, or left a full cart without going any further.
• Home Screen Support. With the Scandi Magento 2 PWA, your customers can add your website to a home screen of any device. This procedure is entirely unobtrusive since customers can do everything within a browser just in a few clicks, getting a full native-app experience. From the coding perspective, the necessity to develop separate apps for different ecosystems is eliminated. Although no browser is necessary to visit a PWA website, it still appears in search results and can be accessible from google or other systems.
• Great Accessibility. We’ve already mentioned that a ScandiPWA Magento 2 store is accessible on any device, in any network conditions. Besides, no download is required. Thus, the best possible accessibility is achieved. 

ScandiPWA Frontend Explored

Home page

The ScandiPWA Magento 2 home page looks quite standard since all the elements you are already familiar with are in their places. You have a menu icon, a search field, a customer account icon, and a cart icon. 

Next, there is a section that promotes categories.

Below, you can see a part of the home screen promoting products. 

A category menu lets you switch between store views and browse the website.

As for search functionality, it is not as flexible as the one competitors show in their demo. The problem is that results are shown for an entire word – not the first characters. However, this option should be configured. Or you can use a third-party search extension. 

Category page

A category page of Magento 2 ScandiPWA lets you apply filters and choose different sorting options. Besides, there is a search field on the top right part of the screen.

Product page

A product page looks quite standard. You can select product options or add a product to the cart/wish list.

Scroll down to see detailed information about the product.

Customer reviews and related products are available below.

Shopping cart

A mini-cart displays the selected product options and lets you edit its quantity or delete the product. You can view the order total and tax total. Besides, it is possible to proceed to checkout or view a cart page. 

A cart page shows the same information. However, it adds the ability to apply a coupon code. Although you cannot edit product options right here, the page redirects you to a corresponding product page.

Checkout

The checkout page is divided into several steps. You cannot proceed to the next one while the current level is uncomplete.

Pricing

Pricing depends on the complexity of your ecommerce project. Contact ScandiPWA for further information.

What People Say

Let’s summarize what the community is saying about the Magento 2 Scandi PWA. Since it is a theme, Scandi is a more simple solution than other PWAs. Although it may seem a disadvantage for tech-savvy users, most people enjoy this feature. In fact, you get a complete package to get started with a Magento 2 PWA website, but don’t need a team of developers to create what you want. Scandi is very simple and fast, and, currently, it is the best PWA open source theme for Magento. In other words, we deal with the most professional and straightforward PWA solution for the platform. If you want to implement a custom frontend based on ReactJS on top of the Magento 2 backend without headaches, choose ScandiPWA.

How to Migrate to ScandiPWA Magento 2 PWA Website

Scandi is a robust solution that powers the biggest Magento 2 PWA websites, providing the ability to leverage all the best elements of the Magento 2 backend, at the same time, creating an absolutely unique storefront on top of it. And as we’ve already mentioned above, it is impossible to migrate to a brand new PWA store, using the default Magento 2 tools. 

As the Improved Import & Export Magento 2 extension, it is the best data transfer solution in the entire ecosystem. Since the module is frontend-agnostic and perfectly suits the Magento 2 admin, you won’t experience any difficulties using it with a Scandi Magento 2 PWA website. 

With our import/export plugin, it is possible to transfer all entities from an old Magento 1 or Magento 2 storefront to a new PWA website within several clicks. You can simplify this procedure even more with a free add-on for Magento 1 (2) to Magento 2 data migration. As for other e-commerce platforms, Improved Import & Export is also helpful. You can use the extension to transfer your old Shopify, BigCommerce, whatever store to Magento 2. 

Besides, we provide migration services so that our specialists can do everything for you, transferring your old e-commerce website to a brand new Scandi Magento 2 PWA store. Contact us to discuss the migration. Follow the link below to find more information about Improved Import & Export: 

Get Improved Import & Export Magento 2 Extension