December 11, 2022

How to power modern retail apps with Apollo GraphOS

Shane Myrick

Shane Myrick

Customers expect a lot from modern online shopping experiences today. Whether they want to place an order from a mobile app, an eCommerce website, or an in-store kiosk, that experience should feel as seamless as possible.

However, providing a consistent, frictionless experience for customers across channels is much easier said than done, especially when product teams need to bring together data from countless internal sources and third-party services to make that happen.

Luckily, a supergraph can unblock frontend developers and help them ship new features faster by unifying all cloud data and services into a single source of truth that they query using GraphQL. At the same time, backend teams can enjoy the flexibility of independently managing relevant portions of a supergraph schema with the safety provided by Apollo GraphOS.

What does a retail supergraph look like?

A supergraph-based architecture ultimately exposes a one-stop shop for frontend developers to get the data that they need and rapidly build out new product features as those capabilities are iteratively exposed by backend engineering teams in the supergraph schema:

Get started with a retail supergraph today

The best way to see the possibilities of a supergraph is to try one out. You can explore a retail supergraph schema and run real queries against it here.

We also have a series of retail best practices that dive into different elements of this schema to illustrate how Apollo GraphOS helps power essential features of modern retail applications:

You can also learn more about how Volvo has leveraged Apollo GraphOS to streamline its online car shopping experience, improve frontend developer experience, and application performance.

If you’d like to talk to an Apollo expert about how a supergraph can power your retail experience, please reach out to us.

Written by

Shane Myrick

Shane Myrick

Read more by Shane Myrick