About this e-commerce website reference
Use Rakuten as a reference when planning a shopping discovery experience connecting shoppers and merchants. This direction is especially useful when the website must explain a specific offering before a visitor can act. Review the original experience with your own customer journey in mind, then decide which patterns belong in your first release. The project notes below describe a proposed build, rather than the reference website's internal implementation.
Use Rakuten's official website to explore the reference. The notes below are planning guidance for your own product, not a specification of the reference site's internal systems.
Who this approach can suit
- Multi-category retailers
- Homeware brands
- Specialist online stores
Design and user experience to consider
For a shopping discovery experience connecting shoppers and merchants, structure the experience around merchant discovery, offer context and partner handoffs. Keep these steps visually distinct, explain what happens after the main action and test the journey with realistic content on mobile. When visitors return to an earlier step, preserve the information they have already selected where it is useful.
Key journeys to review
Merchant discovery
Offer context
Partner handoffs
Planning your first release
Explain the commercial model and which partner completes a purchase. Track referral status only through permitted integrations and define how changing offers are updated.
Technology and integrations
A project focused on a shopping discovery experience connecting shoppers and merchants needs an agreed source for the information used in merchant discovery. Confirm how partner handoffs connects to your existing operations, including ownership of updates and handling of failed requests. The suggested stack is a scoping option; final integrations depend on available APIs, data permissions and the workflow your team can maintain.
The suggested stack of React, Node.js, Stripe is a starting point. We would confirm it against your existing tools, data, expected traffic and maintenance needs before implementation.
What to bring to a scoping call
- Identify the customer journey you want to support and the action a visitor should complete.
- Bring your content, brand assets and details of any systems that must connect to the website.
- Separate launch essentials from later features, and agree how each essential workflow will be tested.
Scope, content readiness and integrations determine the estimate. Explore our MVP development process or discuss this reference with our team.
Questions about a similar build
What should a first release inspired by Rakuten prioritize?
Prioritize a complete journey from merchant discovery to partner handoffs, with clear content and an operational owner for the final handoff. Validate that flow with your audience before adding optional personalization, extra account roles or broad automation.
Can you adapt the idea to my brand?
We can scope an original design and workflow for your business. This reference is inspiration; it does not include permission to reuse the original site's branding, content or code.