Announcing the ACF Integration for Acquia + BigCommerce

Both content and commerce systems are great at their primary function and unsatisfactory in the other. Yet adding compelling content to commerce experiences—or the other way around— is an intensive, bespoke effort.

This has been a long time coming but it’s finally ready: By using a modern, front end framework Acquia ACF provides a super lightweight method to add a commerce experience from a robust, proven platform like BigCommerce very easily to your Acquia Drupal site. We’re excited for the BigCommerce + Acquia integration as a whole but even more thrilled that we’re developing the connector to make it all happen.

"To execute on the ACF integration, BigCommerce was looking for a partner with a specific mix of expertise that could seamlessly blend Drupal, modern decoupled JS components, and ecommerce concepts into a compelling, high-quality release. We not only found that mix with Third & Grove, we found a partner that would continue to innovate with us well beyond the scope of this project. - Nate Stewart, Head of Product Strategy, BigCommerce

What the BigCommerce Integration Means for Your Acquia Site

Acquia’s ACF plugin is an architecture that brings product information from your BigCommerce site into Drupal. Our connector goes a step further and provides a framework to leverage React components to bring commerce experiences into your Acquia Drupal site. Because the integration uses React, developers benefit from using a rapid, modern, well-supported framework to add buyer experiences (reducing development time by up to 80%).

When compared to traditional theming layers, React provides a truly near-instantaneous feeling for the end user in terms of the buyer digital experience. And as everyone knows in digital commerce, faster front end performance means more revenue.  

How the Connector Works

The connector imports BigCommerce product data into Drupal as content nodes, using a background process to ensure site performance is not impacted. Once imported, a site builder can use all of Acquia Drupal’s powerful experience features to embed and extend that product content in their existing content experiences. In addition, by leveraging React, the BigCommerce connector lets you embed commerce experience, like a cart and checkout flow, right into your site, rapidly.

This reference architecture can be used on its own or as an example of how to implement commerce interactions in Drupal. Once the modules are installed, and configured with your Big Commerce information, you can run the migration to import your products into your Drupal instance. In our demo we supply React components data that has been synced from Big Commerce and exposed via drupalSettings. What this means for developers is that they can write React components that depend on commerce providers data and use them as react_blocks.

This works as an elegant and seamless transition between your store and Drupal site. You can view merchandise in your Drupal site (synced with the ACF module), see your cart, and perform any action the commerce provider will allow via API in Drupal using React components. Imagine allowing users to add items to a cart, seeing and editing that cart, and never needing to leave your site to do this. It’s all possible now with the ACF connector.

How to Get Started with the Connector

You can start using the connector right now! While we are still actively enhancing the functionality, the connector is ready to start building on.

Find the ACF project on Github where you can get started, contribute or ask a question.