Online Storefront and Platform Management
Platform anatomy
Distinguish the commerce engine (catalog, cart, checkout, orders, pricing) from the content layer (CMS), the experience layer (theme or front end), and integrations (ERP, OMS, PIM, payments, tax). Deployment styles: licensed or self-hosted (maximum control, you own patching and a larger compliance footprint), hosted SaaS (fast to launch, constrained customization), and headless or composable (API-first front end, strong for multi-channel, higher build and operational cost).
Storefront mechanics a candidate must know: catalog taxonomy and attributes drive both navigation and filters; the PLP (category page) trades assortment against findability; the PDP carries the buy box, variants, inventory signal, and trust content; cart and checkout minimize steps and offer guest checkout. Payment architecture drives compliance scope - a fully hosted checkout page or tokenized fields can shrink PCI scope, but never removes responsibility for the rest of the site.
Traps: assuming headless automatically improves speed or removes PCI obligations; confusing CMS editing rights with merchandising rules; forgetting multi-store, multi-currency, and locale implications for tax, pricing, and content; treating page speed as cosmetic when largest contentful paint and mobile performance directly hit conversion.
Rule of thumb: for any platform change, ask what breaks in the order path - pricing, tax, inventory, payment, order export - before asking what looks better.
Worked example: a move to headless still requires catalog sync, inventory feeds, a tax engine, fraud rules, and analytics purchase events. If any of those five has no named owner, the launch is not ready regardless of front-end polish.