Alokai Bloomreach Integration is here. What benefits does it bring to your eCommerce?

Some time ago, we announced our partnership with Bloomreach. After that, we managed to run a joint webinar and release a demo, but - as we've found out soon - the benefits that came with the integration and the relations between our solutions are still confusing. We couldn't let it be that way, so we decided to dispel all the doubts. Read the article below and let us know if there is something left that we should address.

What is Bloomreach, exactly? 

Because of the unique nature of this solution, the answer is not straightforward. Bloomreach is not only a CMS (Content), and definitely not only a search (Discovery). It’s both. Bloomreach wraps these two services up under one user-centric umbrella, delivering the so-called “Bloomreach Commerce Experience.” And yes, on the surface, it might confuse the ones of you who are familiar with the MACH-oriented concept of “best-of-breed” services so let us explain it in more detail.

One of the main assumptions of the MACH - which stands for Microservices , API-first, Cloud-native, and Headless - is indeed breaking the limits imposed by the “all-in-one” solutions. Within MACH, clients across all industries are no longer doomed to choose one particular tech vendor and rely on the promise that he is good at everything. Instead, they can cherry-pick vendors who are masters in one area and build the entire - scalable, flexible, and tailor-made - system by combining their services via API. 

Does Bloomreach fulfill the MACH definition? Yes. 

First, the two Bloomreach products - Discovery and Content -  are not tightly coupled, and they can be successfully used separately, even though their cooperation - via API - is what makes the magic happen. Content can pull the data directly from Discovery, wrap it up, and display it in the form of the lightning-fast product- and content-rich sites. With machine learning optimized product grids and personalized product promotions based on user behavior, merchants are provided with tools to boost their conversions. 

Second, Bloomreach comes with no frontend but delivers a robust delivery API, and - as such - it enables merchants to choose the frontend they like; the frontend optimized due to performance out-of-the-box, and easy to extend considering its pre-built integrations. 

Given the API-first and Headless nature, Bloomreach has written itself perfectly in the Headless Commerce landscape. 

And this is where Alokai steps in. 

While Alokai dictates how those pages and products should be shown and handles the integration with your commerce backend of choice, Bloomreach takes care of content that dictates what should be on the page, and discovery aspects, that indicate the best products to drive conversion.

What are the benefits of connecting Bloomreach and Alokai?

Alokai in Bodiless Frontend Platform focused on API. Its main goal is to be, well, a platform where all other 3rd party services (search, payment, CMSs, loyalty program, and so on) “meet and co-operate.”

Vue Strefont’s uniqueness is based on two main traits:

1. flexibility - the API-first architecture allows to extend the frontend possibilities in any given way, making sure the UX is always up-to-date and align with business needs
   
   
2. performance - we use the unique set of best practices to ensure that all 3rd party services that “meet” on our platform cooperate smoothly and efficiently. 

Bloomreach - in turn - delivers two essential services from the merchants’ point of view: Discovery and the Content wrapped up under the name “Bloomreach Experience.”

Combining Bloomreach with Alokai, on the one hand, gives frontend developers easy to work with tools to build rich, dynamic sites, and - on the other - content creators gain the possibilities of managing the content creation and delivery processes on their own through a straightforward CMS dashboard. Like any other modern Headless CMS , Bloomreach Content provides them with ready-to-use components to juggle and fulfill with content. 

Alokai ⍯ CMS

Alokai gives merchants the tool to build a site, but not the tool to control the content on the site by the marketing team once it is live.

Headless CMS gives you a way to structure the site and manage all content including the necessary workflow to get a page live, while the presentation layer is defined in the frontend provided by
Alokai.

In our Bloomreach Integration, Bloomreach can be considered a neat package of two 3rd party services - search and CMS - placed between Alokai and the actual backend. 

Integration Docs Alokai Bloomreach Content

Integration Docs Alokai Bloomreach Discovery

Alokai delivers an editable, extendable, and performance-oriented frontend, and - thanks to that - the components created by developers are “injected” into Bloomreach, giving the marketers full ownership of shaping the user experiences from the Bloomreach panel with the use of those components with a no-code approach. 

Why Bloomreach and Alokai?

Joint forces of Bloomreach and Alokai create a foundation of modern commerce experience.  While Bloomreach directly takes care of delivering content, discovery aspects, and engaging users, Alokai gives it a solid, extendable, and lightning-fast foundation. With its native integrations and out-of-the-box features, Alokai cuts time to market, and - thanks to flexible API-first architecture - it can be connected with any third-party services, including marketing, and analytical ones. All of that enables merchants to compose their eCommerce system and adjust it to their audience’s needs, embracing personalization and omnichannel sales. 

Read about Alokai’s approach to performance

As a result, merchants are provided with a future-proof, flexible, and user-oriented system, easy to work with both for developer and marketing teams. 

The integration can be downloaded as a part of the Alokai Enterprise offering.

Contact us via Contact Sales, tell us a bit about your project, and we will guide you through the whole path to make it happen according to your own custom needs. 

Does the Bloomreach integration work differently?

Although the general idea of Bloomreach integration is similar to any other CMS that we are integrated with, the details are slightly different. Within Bloomreach integration, we use an SDK to pull data from the CMS, which basically means that we use Bloomreach directly on the frontend layer as there is no middleware.

The rest is just the same as within any other CMS integration