In recent years there have been more and more different marketplace sites. Airbnb, AliExpress, Etsy, Shopify, etc, are on everyone's lips. Incident Intelligence estimates that by 2024, e-commerce sales will reach $6 trillion worldwide. Global digitalisation due to the pandemic has increased the number of online shoppers. This is the reason why the demand for market grazing is growing.
Companies must provide a good customer experience to win the marketplace race. For example, they are building a fast site with various security measures and protecting sensitive information from users. In this way, they can gain user trust and boost sales.
Building e-commerce also requires a robust framework. This includes the integration of payment gateways, product catalogues, etc. Well, one of the most appropriate technologies is Ruby on Rails (RoR). Why is RoR the most suitable technology for the marketplace? What makes this framework special? We'll cover that in a bit below!
What is Ruby on Rails?
David Heinemeier Hansson introduced Ruby on Rails (RoR) over 16 years ago. DHH developed RoR while working on the Basecamp collaboration series. He wanted programming that focused on the creative efforts of the complex part of coding. So he created a framework with an intuitive, concise and easy-to-understand syntax. This allows developers to write less code, thus boosting their productivity.
RoR has several principles that cover its characteristics. Let's take a closer look at each of these principles:
- DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself): Reduce the repetition of software patterns, then replace them with abstraction and data normalisation.
- Fat models, skinny controllers: Simply put, with the MVC pattern, you can add more features to the model. Plus, you can control and revive.
- Convention over configuration: specify the unconventional aspects of an app only. Don't create your rules. Try to apply and adapt default logical reasoning for every situation.
6 Reasons RoR is Ideal for Marketplace
Many programming languages and frameworks are available, but RoR is the perfect choice for building a marketplace. The availability and productivity of Ruby on Rails are the main reasons.
1. Security is your top priority
Shopify, an e-commerce platform that uses RoR, estimates that sales in the marketplace will reach more than $4.5 trillion in 2021. These numbers are fantastic. The success of Shopify makes this site a sweet spot for cyber-criminals.
There are several ways cyber-criminal exploit security holes in e-commerce platforms. First, they can allow malware to have full access to your system. Then the user may face skimming or credit card fraud. They can also capture user payment information in real time. These security threats can reduce revenue and customer confidence.
That's why RoR is the best choice. This framework offers strong security measures. You don't have to worry about Cross-Site Scripting, Cross-Site Request Forgery and SQL injection. RoR also offers an additional layer of security through RubyGems. It provides bundler audit detection, patch-level verification and more secure payments.
2. Cost saving
If you want to reduce expenses in marketplace development, RoR is the most appropriate solution because it is entirely free. RoR is also compatible with multiple servers and databases.
RubyGems, library extensions and utility classes enable rapid prototyping. You can quickly show MVP to users or investors to get feedback. MVP helps reduce the final cost of development services, so you don't have to implement all the functionality for testing. The less time it takes, the service is getting cheaper.
3. Growth support
One important thing is ensuring that the marketplace can maintain significant traffic with the increasing number of requests that continue to grow. And RoR's scalability is capable of handling this massive traffic. Let's look at the facts of the platform that uses RoR:
- GitHub has 28 million users and 57 million repositories.
- Shopify processes over 4 million requests per second.
- Airbnb hosts more than 5 million places from 190 countries.
But remember that the chosen framework is not the only one responsible for the site's scalability. Server capacity and database architecture are also influential.
4. Reduce development time
It is common knowledge that RoR can reduce development time by 25-50% compared to other frameworks. This is all due to the streamlined code base, object orientation of Ruby and the modular design. Another reason is because of RubyGems. RubyGems offers functionality specific to e-commerce platforms. So when you want to add special features, developers don't have to build from scratch.
Source: RubyGems
For marketplaces, you can use several functionalities such as charter, market_town, credit_card_validations, etc.
5. Easy app development
Ruby on Rails is an automated framework that helps developers quickly launch applications. You can get application prototypes faster. The DIY principle of RoR makes debugging smoother and less hassle.
6. Better communication and documentation
RoR is a software development that is open source and has strong community support. This is a plus point because it helps developers make cross-program documentation easier. Getting stuck with a particular problem is less critical than in other programming languages.
Marketplace websites using Ruby on Rails
To prove a successful RoR implementation, here are some e-commerce platforms that use RoR and are victorious:
1. Shopify
Shopify is a structured and user-friendly e-commerce platform. When the new framework appeared, Lutke teamed up with David Heinemeier Hansson (creator of RoR) to start contributing to Ruby on Rails.
Over the years, Shopify has opened more than 800,000 online stores and achieved $1.578 billion in revenue. And their staff numbered 3,000 employees.
2. Fiverr
Fiverr is a freelance marketplace. The purpose of building this platform is to connect companies with freelancers. Fiverr is made with a simple interface, so almost all users do not face any problems when using it. They combine technology, and RoR has a place there.
More than 3,000,000 services are on Fiverr with 100 different categories—some services such as technical writing, design, development, legal consulting, etc. Fiverr reported having earned $107.1 million in revenue in 2019.
In Conclusion
Ruby on Rails is the right choice for developing a marketplace because of its high security, scalability, cost efficiency, and short development time. These advantages can solve almost all the main problems in the development of e-commerce. So, there's no other reason not to use RoR to build a web app for your business.
