Prerender.io x Virto Commerce
Virto Commerce storefronts deliver fast, interactive buyer experiences as Single Page Applications. Prerender.io ensures those storefronts are fully visible to search engines and AI crawlers, serving pre-rendered HTML to bots while real buyers continue to get the standard experience, with no changes to how the storefront looks or performs.
About Prerender.io
Prerender is a technical SEO solution that ensures businesses’ JavaScript content is fully visible to search engines and generative AI tools. Trusted by 100,000+ businesses globally, Prerender intercepts crawler requests and serves a fully rendered, static HTML version of the page. No costly custom-built server-side rendering solution is required, and no changes to the existing codebase are needed.
How Virto Integrates with Prerender.io
Prerender.io sits in front of the Virto storefront as a dynamic rendering layer. When a search engine or AI crawler visits a storefront page, it is automatically routed to Prerender.io, which returns a fully rendered HTML version of that page. Real buyers are never affected; they continue to receive the standard fast storefront experience.
The routing is handled through Azure Application Gateway, which inspects each incoming request and directs crawler traffic to Prerender.io based on the user-agent header. No changes to Virto’s frontend codebase are required.
The integration covers:
- Automatic routing of crawler requests to Prerender.io through Azure Application Gateway
- Pre-rendered HTML snapshots served to search engines and AI crawlers for every storefront page
- Standard SPA experience preserved for real buyers with no performance impact
- No changes to Virto’s frontend architecture or codebase required
Setup is documented in a step-by-step guide on Virto’s developer documentation.
Implementation Approach
Virto Commerce integrates with enterprise systems through a combination of APIs, middleware, and integration accelerators — designed to reduce implementation effort while preserving the flexibility that enterprise-specific workflows require.
Key considerations: existing Azure Application Gateway setup, Prerender.io account and token, which storefronts need prerendering coverage, and whether additional URL rewrite rules are needed for specific page types or dynamic content.
Use Cases
Making product catalog pages fully indexable by search engines
Virto-powered storefronts with large, dynamic product catalogs need every product page visible to search engines. When Prerender.io intercepts crawler requests and returns pre-rendered HTML, search engines receive complete page content including product titles, descriptions, meta tags, and structured data, rather than a JavaScript shell that renders nothing useful for indexing.
Product catalog pages are fully indexed by search engines, increasing organic search visibility across the entire catalog without rebuilding the storefront as a server-side rendered application.
Improving page performance scores alongside search visibility
Better PageSpeed and Core Web Vitals scores directly affect search rankings and buyer experience. Prerender.io’s pre-rendered HTML removes the JavaScript processing delays that slow down measured performance for crawlers, improving scores without any changes to how the storefront is built or delivered to buyers.
Virto Commerce clients have seen a 90% improvement in PageSpeed Insights scores after integrating Prerender.io, alongside the indexability gains.
Staying visible as AI-powered search changes how buyers discover products
Buyers increasingly find suppliers through AI-powered search tools and discovery platforms beyond traditional search engines. Prerender.io serves pre-rendered HTML to AI crawlers the same way it does to Google and Bing, so Virto-powered storefronts show up in those environments without any additional setup as new AI search channels emerge.
Storefront content remains discoverable across both traditional and AI-powered search, from a single Prerender.io configuration.