Overview
Kogan Page, a leading global business publisher, serves professionals, students and academics in over 90 countries. With a rapidly growing catalogue and a digital-first mission, Kogan Page set out to modernise their ecommerce infrastructure to better support rich, personalised, content-led user journeys.
Already running a hybrid headless setup using Blaze, with a legacy ecommerce platform, Kogan Page recognised the need for a more flexible, high-performance commerce engine. The solution was to migrate to Shopware, a scalable, open-source ecommerce backend, while retaining Blaze as the no-code, Single Page Application (SPA) front-end.
The result is a modern ecommerce architecture that enhances editorial control, accelerates marketing execution, supports deep personalisation, and captures actionable first-party data to power cross-channel engagement and long-term growth.
Challenges with Legacy Ecommerce Architecture
While advanced for its time, the previous setup presented several limitations typical of monolithic ecommerce platforms like Magento:
- Delays in adapting product data and promotions were limiting marketing potential
- Complex, custom product and user data workflows increased the cost and risk of integrations
- The catalogue was a simple, linear faceted ecommerce experience, lacking editorial and media depth
- Performance constraints became more evident as the catalogue and audience grew
- Marketing initiatives were often delayed due to development dependencies
- SEO performance was hampered by inflexible tooling
- Personalisation capabilities remained basic
- Only rudimentary, page-level Google Analytics data was available for marketers
The Blaze & Shopware Solution
Architecture Overview
- Blaze remains the SPA front-end, delivering rich, personalised content experiences, increased engagement and conversions
- Blaze acts as an integration layer for bibliographic and book-related media data
- Shopware powers catalogue, cart, checkout, order management and fulfilment
Together, Blaze and Shopware provide a seamless orchestration of content and commerce.
Blended, Editorially-Controlled Experiences
Blaze Page Builder Capabilities
With Blaze’s no-code interface, content and marketing teams:
- Combine product and editorial content to improve user journeys and boost conversion
- Launch campaign landing pages quickly to support real-time marketing
- Tailor journeys by genre, topic or audience to increase relevance and engagement
This reduces time-to-market and operational cost while enabling campaign testing and optimisation.
Personalisation & Performance at Scale
Blaze Front-End, Powered by React
Blaze’s SPA structure delivers:
- Improved SEO and traffic through high performance, structured content and programmatic optimisation
- Fast, fluid navigation without full legacy page loads, enhancing user experience
- Real-time personalisation to boost engagement and conversion
These benefits reduce infrastructure overhead while driving greater performance.ads.
Seamless Shopware Integration
Ecommerce Interoperability via Blaze Plugins
Blaze connects with Shopware in real-time, allowing teams to:
- Eliminate reliance on developer-maintained static front-end templates
- Build dynamic product listings with flexible merchandising options
- Display real-time pricing, stock and availability within dynamic, multimedia content to drive engagement
- Provide streamlined, flexible checkout experiences that reduce cart abandonment
This gives marketing and ecommerce teams full control without sacrificing transactional integrity.
Marketing, Segmentation & Data Intelligence
MarTech Stack Integration
Blaze integrates seamlessly with Kogan Page’s marketing platforms to:
- Capture actionable first-party data to inform campaigns and strategies
- Automate segmentation with Mapp to increase relevance and ROI
- Deliver on-page personalisation to improve user journeys and performance
- Integrate CRM and email tools for coordinated cross-channel activity
- Enrich marketing insights with granular engagement data across site components
This unified approach empowers marketers to execute data-led decisions with speed and confidence.
Publishing System Integration
Virtusales Biblio Live + ONIX Support
Blaze supports publishing-specific workflows to:
- Import ONIX metadata for accuracy and reduced manual entry
- Synchronise data between Virtusales, Blaze and Shopware for efficiency
- Populate ecommerce listings with validated, real-time bibliographic content
- Enrich editorial, listing and product pages to increase discoverability and engagement
This integration streamlines operations and supports consistent multi-platform presentation.
Accessibility & Inclusivity
As a recognised leader in accessible digital experiences, Kogan Page required the highest accessibility standards. Blaze ensures:
- Full compliance with WCAG 2.1 AA guidelines
- Semantic HTML and ARIA roles for screen reader support
- Editorial control over alt text, structure and navigation
- Accessible-by-default templates to reduce dev overhead and support inclusivity
This commitment aligns with Kogan Page’s mission to make business knowledge universally accessible.
Commercial Outcomes
Migration to Shopware and Blaze delivered clear business impact:
- Faster campaign delivery supporting real-time commercial strategy
- Improved organic visibility driven by SEO-led content optimisation
- Higher user engagement through better performance and personalisation
- Better conversion rates through immersive content and personalised marketing and ecommerce experiences
- Lower development costs with reduced dependency on technical resources
- Greater commercial agility through marketing-led content control
Blaze: the Ideal Front-End for 'headless' Shopware
The Kogan Page project demonstrates how Blaze and Shopware deliver best-practice headless ecommerce. Together, they enable:
- Marketing and editorial teams to launch and manage high-impact content and campaigns without developer reliance
- A scalable, high-performance commerce infrastructure with Shopware to support catalogue growth and transactional stability
- Integrated, content-rich customer experiences that drive engagement, loyalty and conversions
For content-led ecommerce businesses and publishers, Blaze with Shopware offers a future-ready, commercially effective solution—unifying content, commerce and conversion in one powerful, user-friendly stack.