E-Commerce Blog

Expert tips and trends on e-commerce, Shopware and Magento

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You know the basics of GDPR – but it's in practice that things get really exciting. What happens when agencies, tracking tools, or international providers come into play?

Online commerce is growing rapidly - and with it the risk of cyber attacks on payment data. PCI-DSS sets clear security standards to ward off these threats and protect customer trust. From March 31, 2025, compliance with the new requirements of PCI-DSS 4.0 will become even more important.

PHP 8.4 is here! The new version not only brings more performance and security, but also makes development more efficient. In this article, you will find out why the update is worthwhile and which new functions will make your work easier.

Today in an interview: Nicole Mentzen, Head of Marketing at maxcluster. Nicole talks about her path to us, the most exciting projects and what makes a perfect working day for her.

Twice is already a tradition: our maxcluster Partner Day 2024 was like a land of milk and honey for tech nerds, networkers and LEGO enthusiasts – a celebration of ideas, encounters and good food 🙂

Fraudulent activities are also on the rise in the digital world and pose enormous challenges for companies and private individuals. Artificial intelligence can effectively counter these threats by recognizing suspicious patterns at an early stage and actively preventing fraud.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is playing an increasingly central role in modern e-commerce. Companies of all sizes are recognising the potential of these technologies to optimise their processes, reduce costs and increase customer satisfaction. AI can be particularly helpful when it comes to maintaining product data and content.

The central challenge in marketing isn't just attracting visitors to your website, but also converting those visitors into paying customers. This is where the art of conversion optimization comes into play.

Online stores are the backbone of modern retail. Any downtime or data loss can have catastrophic consequences, both financially and for a company's reputation. This is where backups come into play – an essential component of every e-commerce company's IT strategy.

Effective software lifecycle management (SLM) plays a crucial role in the security of e-commerce platforms and online stores, as it ensures that security measures are considered at every stage of software development and maintenance.

Almost daily, you hear about new security breaches where sensitive data is stolen or misused. In this context, it is crucial that you understand the significance of patches and updates as indispensable tools for ensuring IT security.

Welcome to our blog series dedicated entirely to the topic of Cyber Security for your online shop. We understand that you're working hard to provide your customers with the best and safest shopping experience. But how secure is your online shop, really?

With a touch of Cologne's zest for life and a healthy dose of anticipation, the doors to this year's Shopware Unconf in Cologne swung open. From March 23rd to 24th, creative minds from the world of e-commerce gathered there, ready to dive headfirst into a world without predefined topics.

The release of PHP 8.3 marks a significant milestone in the evolution of the popular scripting language. Packed with a wealth of new features and enhancements, this version offers even more performance, features, and bug fixes for developers worldwide.

In today's e-commerce landscape, data-driven decision-making is invaluable. The year 2024 brings forth a plethora of innovative analytics and reporting tools, enabling shop owners to optimize their online store's performance and better understand their customers. From advanced AI analytics tools and platforms to user-friendly reporting dashboards, these tools are changing the rules of the game for companies in digital commerce.

The e-commerce landscape is constantly evolving, and companies and agencies are always looking for powerful solutions to optimise their online presence and better serve their customers. We'd like to tell you about one particularly exciting piece of news: Shopware released many new updates in January!

For many companies, an online store is often the most important source of income. The biggest challenge: appearing ahead of the competition in the search algorithms. This can be hard to achieve - even for people with a lot of experience in search engine optimization.

Review - maxcluster partner day 2023

The month of September was all about the first maxcluster partner day for us. After intensive planning, we were very much looking forward to spending two days with our partner agencies at our premises, listening to interesting presentations and exchanging ideas.

On the last weekend in September, the Magento community met in Cologne for the Mage UnConference 2023. Together with e3n we supported the event as the main sponsors and want to share our impressions with you in this review.

Patch and update management

Anyone who runs an online shop and processes sensitive information such as personal customer data in it should give the topic of IT security a high priority. In this article we show how efficient patch and update management helps to minimise security risks in the application.

Deciding on a suitable hosting model is crucial for e-commerce traders. But which solution is the right choice? In this blog post, we compare the two hosting variants dedicated hosting and cloud computing based on scalability, security, control, data sovereignty and other factors.

After the successful premiere last year, we again supported the Shopware Community UnConference 2023 as one of the main sponsors. What we experienced from 24 to 26 March in Cologne, we report in this review.

August 2024 – and with it the "end of life" of Shopware 5 – still seems a long way off. However, experience shows that the deadline comes sooner than expected. Co-initiator Carmen Bremen reports in an interview on how the community initiative safefive can support shop operators in terms of security after the EOL of Shopware 5.

E-mail authentication in e-commerce

E-mails are the most frequently used form of communication in e-commerce. In this article, we look at the SPF, DKIM and DMARC frameworks. We show how they can contribute to secure and authenticated emailing.

On 8 December 2022, PHP 8.2, the new minor version of the PHP scripting language, was released. In this blog post, we show which innovations and changes are contained in PHP 8.2.

maxcluster - the 2022 review

2022 was a special year for maxcluster. 10 years have passed since its foundation and the company has evolved from a university spin-off to an important player in the German hosting industry.

Web server solutions in comparison

Receiving requests, retrieving data and transferring it to the client: web servers make data from websites available on the net. But which web server solution fits which requirements? Here you can find out everything you need to know about web servers in e-commerce!

The Mage UnConference has been an integral part of maxcluster's event calendar for many years. In 2022, we were not only on site with a team of seven employees, but also supported the event again as one of the main sponsors.

Greater success on Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Co.

Black Friday, Black Week, Cyber Monday, Cyber Week: Both in e-commerce and in stationary trade, retailers lure their customers every year towards the end of November with discounts and offers. These tips will make planned campaign days a success for shop operators.

In e-commerce, headless commerce is the term for online shops whose frontend and backend function decoupled from each other. In this article we look at the background to this solution approach and the advantages and disadvantages of its use in e-commerce.

Our digitized world is based on an ever-growing mountain of data. Database management systems such as MySQL act as a central tool for storing and managing these data volumes.

Changes to the Google algorithm, so-called core updates, can have positive and negative effects on the findability of online stores via the search engine. In this article we show what to consider in order to be well prepared.

After the SCD 2020 and 2021 took place exclusively online, this year the community could (finally) meet again live in Ahaus. We were there with a team of seven. All news, trends and highlights of the SCD22 can be found here in our review!

Whether it's a large, dynamic online shop or a small blog with exclusively static content: In our blog series, operators of web applications of all kinds will find helpful tips, tools and tweaks on the topic of performance!

In over ten years of maxcluster, we have not only gotten to know the _UnConference_ event format, but also come to love it. Our anticipation was all the greater after the news that there will be a Shopware Community UnConference for the first time in 2022. We were there as one of the main sponsors!

In e-commerce, the saying "time is money" is to be taken literally, because slow loading times can mean direct loss of sales. Even if there is often no financial connection with static content, a fast loading time is also of enormous importance here. The following performance tips can help!

Visit the online shop, find the desired product, buy the product - put simply, this is the ideal customer journey in e-commerce. But what should be done if the online shop loads too slowly and visitors leave it prematurely? Operators of online shops based on Shopware 5 and Shopware 6 will find answers in this article.

According to the platform Gründerpilot, 80% of all start-ups fail in the first three years. maxcluster is not one of them. On 28.12.2011 the company was registered in the company register and celebrates its 10th anniversary this year.

Hosting is one of the basic technologies of the internet and now has an incredible number of facets. In this article we give a basic overview of web hosting and take a closer look at the special features of e-commerce hosting.

On 25 November 2021, almost exactly one year after the major release of PHP 8.0, the latest version of the scripting language, PHP 8.1, was released. This release also brings with it a whole host of new features and improvements. But when and under what conditions does it make sense to switch to PHP 8.1?

When the term Open Source is mentioned, developers' hearts often beat faster. The concept of Open Source promises great creative opportunities and a lot of freedom on the code level.

In e-commerce, it is of great importance that online shops run fast and efficiently even with a lot of traffic. We show you how to optimally exploit the performance potential of your online shop with the full-page cache Varnish.

Good performance is the be-all and end-all of any online shop. A decisive factor here is the load time. If a shop loads too slowly, the user experience suffers considerably. This has a negative impact on the conversion rate and quickly leads to a loss of sales.

Shared Hosting? Cloud Hosting? Colocation Web Hosting? Managed hosting? When looking for the right hosting solution, the range of options for store owners can be confusing and raise many questions.

The e-commerce agency 7thSENSE has specialised in the creation and implementation of e-commerce solutions for over ten years. Its clients include well-known companies such as [Kärcher](https://www.7thsense.de/case-study/detail/kaercher-haendlershops.html), [WMF](https://www.7thsense.de/case-study/detail/wmf-relaunch.html) and [VAUDE](https://www.7thsense.de/case-study/detail/vaude-b2b-und-b2c-onlineshop.html).

2020 - what a year. The last few months have held special challenges in store for everyone. Managing directors Sebastian Ringel and Alexander Wilhelm report on what these were for maxcluster in an interview.

Just in time for the release of PHP 8.0, the SaaS provider Tideways has launched its latest version. This means that customers can also rely on Tideways' proven performance management, exception tracking and profiling with the new major release of PHP.

The 26.11.2020 was circled in red in the calendars of many developers, because then the long-awaited version PHP 8.0 was released. What new features and improvements does the new version contain and how and when should you switch to PHP 8.0?

It is now a few weeks after the official end of support for Magento 1 and for most online shop operators little or nothing has changed since then. Nevertheless, many people are pointing out that there are many risks associated with the Magento 1 EOL.

For online shop operators, the topic of "Progressive Web App" is increasingly coming to the fore. The symbiosis of responsive website and app offers consumers a high user experience and thus a strong tool for customer loyalty for online shop operators.

PHP 7.4 was released at the end of November 2019 and is the last minor version before the release of PHP 8. What new features does PHP 7.4 bring? What are the advantages and when does it make sense to switch to PHP 7.4? We explore these questions in our article.

As with the millennium change on 31 December 1999, many horror scenarios were painted for the Magento 1 EOL on 30 June 2020 - which then came to pass just as little as the information technology super-GAU on the aforementioned New Year's Eve twenty years ago.

A functioning shop system is the basis for every online shop. And the choice of solutions is constantly increasing. So how should one make the right choice? This question is not only asked by new shop operators, but also by those whose shop has been on the market for some time in view of the EOL of Magento 1 at the end of June.

Buying a new laptop on the bus, finding inspiration for the living room design on social media channels on the train and quickly ordering the ingredients for dinner from the supermarket in the café. According to [Statista](https://www.statista.com/topics/779/mobile-internet/), around 74 % of Germans use their smartphones to access the internet for these activities.

We are constantly working to not only provide our customers with high-performance eCommerce hosting, but also to make the user experience as straightforward as possible. In our specially developed [Managed Center](https://demo.maxcluster.de/?_locale=en), our customers can not only install their tools and features with a few clicks, but also make extensive changes to the configuration of their cluster, their servers and services.

If you type "sustainable hosting" into Google, the search engine throws up 940,000 entries within 0.55 seconds. Whether it is due to the "Fridays for Future" movement or the general increase in awareness of ecological issues - sustainable hosting is increasingly coming into focus. But what is actually meant by this and what measures are we taking at maxcluster to give our customers a clear green conscience? We explore these questions in our blog post.

June is approaching in leaps and bounds, and with it the date that Magento fans have long refused to believe: Magento 1 EOL. But what does this date actually mean for all online shop operators whose shops run with Magento 1? And how should they prepare for this date? We explore these questions in an interview with Rico Neitzel, managing director of the advertising agency "Büro 71a" and co-founder of "Mage One".

In April 2020, we conducted the first interview with Nils Preuß. At the time of the interview, GastroHero's PWA store was already live, except for a few storeviews. Since October 2020, the live walk has now been completed - time for us to ask again if there are any new insights and experiences.

The security of their online shops should be a high priority for operators, in addition to customer orientation and usability. We have the vision to support our customers in this and to offer them the best performing and most secure eCommerce hosting in Germany.

What is managed hosting and what are the advantages of this model for users? We explore these and other questions in the blog and explain the different models to you.

The e-commerce agency Mothership has launched its first Magento2 PWA shop, which we host. In the interview, you can find out what experiences the Mothership team has had with Magento's "PWA Studio", what pitfalls there were and how well the shop is performing now.

Online shops that have many visitors generate many shopping baskets, from which sessions are generated. The sessions can be stored in different ways. In the first part of the blog series on Redis, we summarised the advantages that the NoSQL database Redis offers in the area of sessions and application cache for the performance of Shopware and Magento.

Our e-commerce stack consists of many web services, tools, functions and an optimised hosting architecture for online shops. Our experience with over 500 e-commerce customers is constantly flowing into the expansion and improvement of the stack. Online shops can be customised, configuration errors are avoided and configuration time is significantly reduced. Learn more about why maxcluster's e-commerce stack is like no other stack.

Nowadays, data centres have to meet the highest German security standards so that the customer can be guaranteed the best possible quality and reliability at all times. maxcluster goes one step further: we guarantee that the data is located exclusively in Germany and that you can access it at any time. The multi-level security concept is even used by banks with very high requirements.

New Relic APM is the most comprehensive tool we present in this [blog series](https://maxcluster.de/en/blog/2017/04/identifying-bottlenecks-profiler-blogseries). The article describes how bottlenecks can be detected with New Relic APM and how online shops can be monitored efficiently.

Tideways is a tool for profiling, monitoring and tracking in PHP. Using examples and screenshots, the second part of the [blog series](https://maxcluster.de/en/blog/2017/04/identifying-bottlenecks-profiler-blogseries) explains the functions and areas of application of this profiler. [Update: 23.8.2018]

In the first part of our [blog series](https://maxcluster.de/en/blog/2017/04/identifying-bottlenecks-profiler-blogseries) "Identifying bottlenecks with 3 efficient profiling tools", we present the application possibilities of Blackfire IO for online shops in detail.

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