How composable commerce delivers the modern e-commerce experience brands and retailers need

Unpacking the differences between composable, headless and monolithic setups

Monolithic or legacy platforms are all-in-one setups with inflexible, pre-packaged software stacks. These setups typically provide standardized e-commerce services and were most popular when the e-commerce landscape was largely desktop-only. 

This structure, however, has not been compatible with modern shopping behaviors for some time. Making changes or adding customizations is hard (and expensive) to accomplish with these legacy systems, as nothing can be done quickly. These systems weren’t built for change, so if a team wants to update anything, the change needs to run through the entire tech stack, which could result in other portions breaking — on top of the system being down during the updates. 

This led to the headless commerce movement, which decoupled the front and back ends of e-commerce systems so each operated independently and could be changed, updated and customized without affecting the other. This also meant easier updates and less downtime. 

Composable commerce goes even further and breaks down the entire commerce stack (rather than just the front and back ends) into modular components. This approach takes all the benefits of headless technology and adds greater agility, stability and scalability for tailored, e-commerce operations. 

When businesses empower their teams with the right tools to accelerate innovation and work faster and smarter, they reduce the risk of missed revenue opportunities.

Flexibility unlocks true customization, minimizes risk and increases sales

While composable commerce offers brands and retailers flexibility to construct unique customer experiences by plugging in best-in-class building blocks, like cart, checkout and payments into their commerce stack, the customizability might sound like a difficult transition barrier. 

“Leaders are more aware than ever that e-commerce is broken within many organizations,” said Dirk Hoerig, founder at commercetools. “But, feelings of uncertainty often overwhelm them and leave them unsure how to transform their systems and evolve with the industry. However, allowing uncertainty to get in the way of adoption will only hinder the ability of a business to maintain a competitive edge. Composability is essential to outpacing the competition and migrating to a composable commerce approach is much simpler than many think.” 

Because this architecture is component-based, tech-agnostic and cloud-native, the opportunities and customizability are endless. However, this can also be daunting. By adopting this approach in phases, such as assessing digital maturity, tackling data hygiene and establishing a team unification plan before focusing on incremental rollouts, brands and retailers can fully take advantage of composable commerce’s flexibility and future-proof their organizations. 

Composable commerce is not to be confused with the e-commerce site solutions that promote themselves as one-size-fits-all or one-size-fits-most — these are usually quite the opposite, and many brands and retailers are realizing these aren’t long-term solutions. 

Additionally, this type of setup used to be very expensive, requiring everything to be custom-built; however, a composable commerce approach now provides brands and retailers with that custom build without the resource-intensive expense. 

Separating each element so they can be replaced or upgraded without disrupting the rest of the infrastructure means the modular approach inherently minimizes risk. When businesses integrate with external systems, platforms and third-party services for seamless data exchanges, they streamline workflows, facilitate collaboration and eliminate silos for more efficiency.

Decoupling all components results in improved site performance, faster page rendering and higher conversion rates, as well as more frequent product releases to better keep up with consumer demand. Releasing products that align with consumer demand and a well-performing website (that loads quickly and can quickly process orders) equates to increased sales — a win for brands, retailers and consumers. 

Identifying the right composable commerce partner

Understanding composable commerce and its customizability is the first step in determining whether this is the right setup. Between monolithic, headless and composable commerce options, teams must substantiate that the partners or vendors they’re thinking of working with are, in fact, composable. 

“Many vendors claim to be composable, but unlike commercetools, those vendors’ infrastructures aren’t built on the three core traits required for a platform to be truly composable: cloud-native, component-based and tech-agnostic,” Hoerig said. “With this in mind, as an organization looks for an ideal composable commerce partner or vendor, they should consider their potential partner or vendor’s in-house architecture, technology management function, network size and customer/partner success team.” 

In addition to evaluating whether a vendor has the right technology, brands and retailers should ask the right questions to determine the feasibility of a long-term partnership. 

“Before locking in with a vendor, leadership teams should consider the health of the potential vendor’s business, including recent growth and momentum, and their future product roadmap,” said Hoerig. “They should ask themselves if this vendor will be the right partner for their business in the next five to seven years. There should be a clear understanding of the innovation pipeline and delivery pace over the last three years, and trust in their ability to work with the team long-term.”

As consumers demand more seamless shopping experiences, brands and retailers are reevaluating their tech setups to provide modern e-commerce experiences that are flexible enough to cater to evolving needs. With composable commerce, teams can update or replace tech stack components individually as needed without disrupting the rest of the experience, leading to more agility, faster product and service releases and increased revenue generation.

Sponsored by commercetools