Extension Store is a new admin of the VTEX platform that enables the shopkeepers to find and activate new features for their shops, adding functionalities with extension points. These extension points are a space on the platform pages that let the users add components. With that, the partner ecosystem will have a lot of opportunities to create extensions that meet the business needs of each shopkeeper and improve the shopping experience for the users.

I have been working on the Extension Store and Visa Checkout extension projects for 3 months and these screens are part of the MVP. In the present moment, I'm working with another designer, Rodrigo Muniz, who is focused on the new platform navigation that accompanies the Extension Store.

The first challenge was to think about which flow we wanted for the new interaction. For the MVP, we chose a simpler interaction, in which the user enters the Extension Store ---- accesses the extension detail ----- presses the install extension ---- accepts the permission terms to actually do the installation --- and then configures the extension, if necessary. However, this is the simplest scenario possible and it was also necessary to think about the authorization access and billing policies, to enable charging monthly, annually or a fixed amount.

The access authorization  was necessary because in some cases the employees only have access to a part of the admin. So if they want to add an extension that affects a part to which they don’t have access, they will need to notify someone with a stronger profile access in order to release the access or finish the installation flow.

The development of the Extension Store is of great relevance to the company, because we get to use the new platform we are building for VTEX. That means we are using the new "infra" and the "render", which is a set of solutions aimed at writing a front end application as simple as possible and that allows to go straight to the code. The development of the Extension Store was the company’s first chance to use and test this new tool, find bugs and make it more stable for our customers, which will eventually enable our ecosystem to to develop new extensions through our tools.