eCommerce Websites - Why eCommerce Websites Should Adopt Continuous Delivery

Streamlined, automated release processes help keep teams focused on the product and on improving it with each new update. This helps you quickly respond to market conditions and stay ahead of competitors.

Continuous delivery builds on agile and DevOps best practices to create a fast feedback loop with the end user. It includes a well-constructed pipeline, test automation, and a robust CI/CD process.

What is Continuous Delivery?

Continuous deployment is a software development practice that allows teams to quickly and reliably deploy updates to production environments. It is a set of workflows and activities that guide new functionality from ideation to on-demand release. A CD pipeline automates the build, testing, and configuration process so that when developers are ready to release, they can simply click a button.

The first step of continuous delivery is Continuous Integration (CI), which focuses on merging all developers’ changes into a code base frequently and running code tests to ensure the integrity of the overall application. When the code passes all tests, it can be deployed to a production environment. Continuous delivery takes this one step further so that any changes that pass all steps of the pipeline are automatically released to production.

Unlike manual processes that often produce delays and errors, continuous integration and continuous delivery streamline the entire software release cycle to enable fast, reliable releases. This eliminates the need to wait for a "release day" and gives developers more time to focus on building applications. It also allows businesses to take advantage of the benefits of faster feedback with customers, increasing customer satisfaction and retention.

A typical CI/CD pipeline includes multiple testing or staging environments to automate infrastructure creation and deploy builds, as well as support various stages of integration, load, and user acceptance tests. It may also incorporate canary deployments that automatically shift a percentage of traffic usage to the new software version before it is fully deployed, reducing risk and minimizing downtime.

All aspects of the build and deployment process should be automated, as far as possible, to reduce the number of manual steps and the potential for human error. The goal is to provide a predictable and repeatable flow of work for all team members so that they can be confident in the quality of their code and know what to expect in terms of the speed and reliability of the release process. The whole pipeline should be visible to everyone so that any problems or bottlenecks can be identified and fixed early on.

How Does Continuous Delivery Work?

Continuous delivery is a process in which engineering teams automatically deploy code to production environments after it passes automated tests. This approach reduces risk and allows IT teams to respond faster to new software updates, making them more reliable.

The goal is to get small changes out of the door as soon as possible so that teams can get product feedback and make improvements. This makes life a lot saner for IT operations, development, and quality testing teams, who don't have to wait for a few months between major releases or deal with panicked remediation after an unexpected problem.

In the best cases, a continuous delivery workflow is fully automated, meaning that every change goes through a build, test, and deployment pipeline in exactly the same way each time, so that the results are consistent. This means that engineers can focus on their work, rather than worrying about how they'll be able to keep up with all the manual steps.

This approach also improves the quality of the code that's pushed to production. By making it easier to detect errors in development, testing, and deployment, the number of bugs that make it all the way to live products should decrease over time. The process is designed to be as scalable as possible, with automation taking on more and more steps as the organization grows and its processes are refined.

The process itself is based on a DevOps philosophy, with the idea that all aspects of development and release should be visible to everyone in order to promote collaboration and accountability. This includes the build, test, and deployment stages of a pipeline, and it can involve anything from user documentation to operational runbooks to logging and monitoring capabilities. Continuous delivery is typically paired with continuous integration, which ensures that code being worked on by different developers from multiple locations can be automatically integrated into a shared repository and then tested in both local environments and production to ensure that the results are consistent.

How Does Continuous Delivery Help eCommerce Businesses?

Continuous delivery is a smart strategy that helps eCommerce businesses increase their efficiency and keep their customers happy. It automates the process of releasing code to production, and it allows development teams to work faster by eliminating manual steps in the pipeline. It also reduces the time between when a new feature is built and when it gets deployed to a live website, allowing organizations to deploy changes in a matter of days or weeks rather than years.

In addition, continuous delivery makes it easier to incorporate feedback from end users and implement changes that will improve their user experience. By delivering frequent improvements, companies can create a more customer-centric experience and keep up with the competition. A recent study found that more than 77% of respondents reported either company-wide or business-unit implementation of continuous deployment, with a majority citing improved customer value and achieving business goals as top reasons for adopting continuous deployment.

To maximize the benefits of continuous delivery, you should develop a culture that supports it. This is not an easy feat, but it’s vital to the success of your business. Ensure that all of your teams, including non-development teams, are aware of the continuous build and deployment processes, and allow them to contribute to development by testing new features and providing feedback. This will help your team become more productive and promote collaboration across departments.

Another way to promote continuous delivery is to encourage your team members to take responsibility for their own work. This is important for improving productivity and reducing errors in the development process. When an error occurs, the entire team can collaborate to identify and fix it before it becomes a larger problem. By empowering your teams, you can avoid costly mistakes and achieve more efficient development cycles.

Continuous delivery is a key component of DevOps, which is a collection of best practices that enable developers to release software in small increments and test each one before it goes live. Continuous delivery is an effective tool for boosting digital transformation efforts and increasing the speed of releases, which in turn leads to a more efficient process and better product quality.

How Does Continuous Delivery Help Your Customers?

When a team adopts continuous delivery, it makes life a lot easier for everyone involved. Instead of long periods punctuated by looming deadlines, dramatic production releases, and panicked remediation of serious bugs, software updates are smaller, less risky, and much more manageable. Releases are made at a steady, predictable pace that allows developers to adapt to a more comfortable development cycle and enjoy their work again. The process also makes it far more difficult to introduce new bugs, as they are quickly identified and fixed during a minor release. If a problem does occur, version control allows teams to roll back to earlier code changes and fix the error without having to recreate an entire release.

A major benefit of continuous delivery is that it enables development teams to respond quickly and effectively to customer feedback. As a result, customers get the functionality they want faster, and businesses can maintain a competitive edge by providing an ever-evolving customer experience that addresses customer needs.

To achieve the benefits of continuous delivery, teams must follow a set of best practices. This includes a focus on automation, collaboration, and frequent testing. The goal is to create a seamless flow of work that moves code through integration and automated testing phases, and then to production. At each step, the quality of the build is carefully assessed to ensure that it is ready for deployment.

Continuous delivery is a key element of DevOps, and it is often implemented alongside the closely related continuous integration (CI) and continuous deployment (CD) processes. CI/CD pipelines automate all aspects of the software development workflow, from merging developer changes to delivering a production-ready build to the operation team.

The key to success with continuous delivery is to ensure that the pipeline is built with high-quality tools and that every stage is automated, from testing to deployment. This requires the right people and an investment in a modern tool suite. In addition, it is important to set clear expectations about the desired outcomes of the pipeline and ensure that all team members understand their responsibilities.

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