Composable Commerce: Understanding the Future of eCommerce

As the commerce industry moves around the clock and continuously evolves, there is a lot of pressure on businesses to not just increase their sales but also deliver an exceptional customer experience. Customer experiences (CX), an “inevitable battleground” of the era, demands eCommerce companies to include every CX-friendly element possible in their online and offline stores. The goal is now to do more than just keeping the customers engaged. It’s now focused on allowing shoppers to switch between selling platforms, real-time data updates on all touchpoints, and offering a connected shopping experience. A study by Salesforce says that 80% of customers give priority to experiences as much as they give to the product they are looking to buy.

Most traditional platforms fail to support this requirement since they provide a one-size-fits-all solution. While that might have worked in the past, the future says otherwise. Modern commerce operations need more complexity and uniqueness so that your brand can not only stand out but also give you more control over the backend and frontend of your eCommerce store. 

Imagine a scenario where you can choose what components are included within your commerce system architecture and what is excluded. This is composable eCommerce.

Now, this concept might feel a bit confusing to many of our readers. Hence, this blog will discuss everything about composable eCommerce and help you to understand why it is the future of digital commerce.

An Overview of Composable Commerce

Composable commerce, as the name suggests, is a modern commerce approach where each component of the eCommerce stack, like payments, checkout, catalog, order management, and inventory, are broken down into single modules that can be assembled as per the unique requirements of a business. Here, the focus is on modularity and extended flexibility to let businesses not only customize their storefront but also choose what elements they should connect to their system and what should be skipped. With composable eCommerce, you are not bound by a single monolithic platform; you are given a clean slate to create an eCommerce experience that stands apart. 

Case Study- Composable commerce can be tailored to suit different business models. Let’s take an example of composable commerce for direct-to-consumer. 

Composable commerce for D2C refers to a modular approach where eCommerce businesses can create unique shopping experiences by combining different technologies for particular D2C commerce operations, such as customer support, payment processing, shipping, etc. This provides them with a greater level of flexibility, agility, and scalability to modify their eCommerce store based on their business model and target customers– backed by the composable commerce architecture.

A composable commerce solution functions with the support of a MACH architecture (microservices, APIs, Cloud, and Headless). MACH architecture provides the technical backbone to a composable eCommerce experience where every component is possible to plug, unplug, scale, replace, and do continuous improvement through agile methods to meet constant change encompassing fast-moving customer expectations and market shifts.  

How Composable Commerce is Different from Headless eCommerce?

In many cases, composable commerce is often confused with headless commerce. But in reality, the composable approach of commerce is an extension of it. By taking the capabilities of headless eCommerce further, it utilizes the decoupled backend and frontend as the core while adding the modular element to it. In other words, the backend and frontend layers remain decoupled (same as in the case of headless), but in the case of composable commerce, you can further bifurcate the eCommerce stacks into small, best-of-breed components with the help of microservices. These eCommerce stacks can be product management systems, order management systems, content management systems, catalog management, payment gateways, and others. 

In a nutshell, the main difference between the two is the kind of approach used to build the eCommerce experience. While headless decouples both layers to offer more space for customization and flexibility. Composable eCommerce gives a makeover to it with the breakdown of the eCommerce stack that can be assembled as per business requirements, offering more agility, scalability, and control of their system. To understand more about the headless approach to eCommerce, you can read our ultimate Headless Commerce Guide.

Now, you must be thinking why businesses need composable commerce if it’s just an extension of headless commerce.  

Initially, headless commerce came as a disruption by breaking the barriers of traditional commerce, which was based on monolithic architecture. But as the industry started embracing headless more, traditional platforms themselves began providing headless capabilities—here, the architecture behind the scenes was monolithic but was claimed to be headless. (We all know how far this claim could be stable). It was still holding back business potential to leverage the capabilities of modern commerce. 

To counter this, the concept of composable commerce was birthed by Gartner in 2020. This approach of commerce allows you to compose your eCommerce experience just as you prefer with components you feel are fit for your business requirements. Remember that this type of commerce is tech-agnostic, module-based, and MACH-supported, which makes it highly flexible to be molded as required.

This image below will help you understand the architecture of composable commerce vs headless eCommerce:

Differentiation of Traditional, Headless, and Composable Commerce

Also read: 5 proven ways to grow your eCommerce business.

Why Choose Composable eCommerce?

Now that you understand the difference between traditional, headless, and composable eCommerce, the next question you might have is why one must adopt the composable approach to commerce even when it’s process is more complex than others. There are various benefits of Composable commerce for modern businesses, which we will discuss in the section below:

1. Meet Customer Demands 

We all know that the foremost goal of any eCommerce business is the ability to meet customer demands. In earlier times, doing so was easy as the demands were the bare minimum with a static experience. But today, things are more complicated, with customers expecting hyper-personalized shopping experiences. Thanks to the modularity of the composable commerce ecosystem, businesses can now plug in or out an element seamlessly without having to change the entire system. This is one of the major composable commerce advantages a business receives. They can customize and personalize the customer journey for both online and offline modes so that customers receive the experience they just wished for. With composable eCommerce, delivering an exceptional customer experience becomes an inherent advantage, creating a win-win scenario for both the business and its valued customers.

2. Tailored Technology Stack

Apart from meeting customer demands, composable commerce also lets you build a tailored technology stack for your store. This is another one of the significant benefits of composable commerce. Since the functionality in this architecture is microservices-based, you can choose specific eCommerce modules and elements based on your unique requirements and need for performance optimization. In other words, unlike the traditional commerce approach, where your technology stack is predefined and pre-packaged, the composable commerce approach lets you build the stack from scratch on your terms. Hence, there is no pre-defined stack, which means you will choose the technology frameworks, tools, and third-party software to be integrated and build a custom tech stack of your choice.

3. Omnichannel Experiences Like Never Before

With a customized technology stack, composable commerce also allows businesses to deliver omnichannel selling experiences. This type of architecture not only lets you combine and connect independent eCommerce modules but also the number of channels you wish to sell your products over. Whether online or offline, you can add up all the channels and make it one unified platform so that customers can swap between channels, use multiple channels together to browse, review, and purchase, and leave in between to shop later. Amongst all these practices, the experience remains consistent, and so does the customer data, with stock information (out of stock or back in stock) changing in real-time.

Composable Commerce makes your eCommerce ecosystem more adaptable so that you can quickly respond to changing market demands, incorporate new sales channels, and provide features like unified shopping carts and flexible fulfillment options.

Composable Commece and MACH Architecture

By now, you will have an understanding of why adopting composable commerce is the ideal solution to stay competitive in the modern eCommerce space. But putting the composable commerce architecture together are the four pillars of MACH architecture. This section will detail these pillars to give you an understanding of how composable commerce works.

1. Microservices 

At the core of a composable commerce engine lies microservices architecture. This architecture helps in breaking the eCommerce functionalities into smaller independent services that communicate via defined APIs and enables smooth functioning as well as real-time updates of each commerce operation. Each microservice handles a specific function without disrupting others in order to maintain performance and help the system upscale and downscale seamlessly as per requirements.

2. API-first Approach

The APIs work as a binding spell between the components and the external system, allowing them to communicate seamlessly and provide updates quickly. An API-first design is implemented within the composable eCommerce architecture to facilitate smooth API calls by the backend and simultaneous updates upon the storefront without causing any chaos. 

3. Cloud-native Infrastructure

When microservices and APIs are involved, the cloud-native infrastructure will be automatically combined with it. In the case of composable commerce architecture too, the foundation is cloud-native, which allows for more resilience and scalable development and deployment. Cloud-native technologies like containers and orchestration systems are used for faster deployment, scaling, and easier management of commerce operations across multiple arrangements.

Also read- How Cloud integration empowers eCommerce applications with scalability.

4. Headless Commerce

The last pillar is headless commerce, which serves as the key enabler of composable commerce. It decouples the backend and frontend of the application, enabling flexibility, scalability, and customization. With the decoupled mode, it lets businesses build unique, customized storefronts and leverage APIs in the backend to integrate third-party tools like content management systems, Google Analytics, payment gateways, etc. 

Core Components of a Composable Commerce Ecosystem

Apart from the MACH architecture, there are various other components that make up a full-fledged composable eCommerce solution. Let us understand these components in detail below:

• Frontend Framework

The next important component is choosing a modern, composable commerce frontend framework that can easily support the architecture of your eCommerce store. Frameworks such as Next.js and Vue.js are ideal for this requirement as they are super-fast and flexible to work with and can be easily customized to build a unique digital storefront of your eCommerce websites and apps.

• Commerce Engine

This serves as the backbone of the composable commerce architecture. It is required to handle the core functionalities of an eCommerce store, such as cart management, promotions, and product catalog management. The eCommerce platforms like Shopify, BigCommerce, or Adobe Commerce can be utilized for adding the commerce engine within the architecture of your composable commerce platform.

• Content Management System (CMS)

In the composable eCommerce setting, connecting a content management system (CMS) is very important. A CMS will help in creating, managing, and effective distribution of your product content across all your sales channels. It will also help in maintaining brand consistency and deliver personalized content to customers in order to keep them engaged and enhance their shopping experience. CMS platforms like Strapi, Storyblok, and Contentful can be leveraged to plug in the content management component within the architecture of your composable commerce platform. 

• Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

CRMs are required to manage customer interactions and data throughout the customer shopping journey. Based on the data compiled within the CRM, you can gather insights into customer behavior and modify your product offerings accordingly. This will also help you boost customer loyalty and deliver tailored shopping experiences. CRM platforms like Hubspot, Zoho, or Salesforce can be used to connect a CRM within your system.

• Order Management System (OMS)

An order management system is essential to manage the order lifecycle, starting from its purchase until its delivery to the customer. An OMS allows you to keep track of orders that are under processing, are processed, ready for shipping, out for delivery, and are successfully delivered. It also enables you to provide timely updates to the customers so that they are rest assured of their orders. OMS platforms like NetSuite and Microsoft Dynamics 365 can be used for the order management component.

• Product Information Management (PIM)

This component is important to manage and showcase the product information for all your products across all sales channels. It allows you to display accurate information and make updates as required so that customers can make informed purchase decisions. Tools like Bluestone PIM, Propel PIM, Salsify PIM, etc, can be used for product information management operations for your store.

• Search and Personalization

This is one of the important components as product search and personalization will determine whether the customer will move to the next phase (adding the product to the shopping cart) or abandon your store. Hence, a separate AI-powered search and personalization engine is added in the architecture. This helps in refining the search and providing tailored product recommendations to each customer based on their past purchasing and browsing behavior. Tools like Algolia and Elasticsearch can be used for adding a search engine within your store.

You can also read- How AI transforms eCommerce into intelligent solutions.

• Payments Management

Once all commerce functionalities are connected, there comes the payment processing and tax management component. This element is required to facilitate smooth, secure transaction processing and tax calculation for each customer based on their region and the product they are looking to purchase. Third-party payment service providers like Paypal, Stripe, and Vertex can be utilized for payment management.

• Integration and API Management

This involves the tools used for seamless collaboration and communication of the system with third-party software. They help your system to work seamlessly with external systems, interchange information, and connect your legacy applications. Such tools include Zapier, Mulesoft, etc.

• Analytics and Reporting

This component is required to gather timely reports of customer behavior, site traffic, and store performance in order to make iterations wherever required, plug in or plug out components that are no longer required, and optimize business strategy for future operations. Tools like Google Analytics and Algopix can help with store analytics.

Composable Commerce is the Future: Build Yours with Successive Digital

Composable Commerce brings an innovative architectural approach to the table. Breaking down the barriers of traditional commerce and even headless commerce to some extent, this commerce approach enables businesses to deliver customer experiences that were never imagined before. But to put these promises into action, businesses need a few more things than just a digital transformation mindset. You will need a flexible infrastructure that can support composable architecture, modern technologies, and assistance from a professional firm offering composable eCommerce solutions. On that note, Successive Digital is one such eCommerce development company that can help you implement a composable commerce architecture. 

With a decade of experience in building bespoke eCommerce solutions, our team understands the challenges of monolithic-based commerce and also knows the ongoing trends of modern commerce, including the composable approach. 

We build customized composable commerce solutions to help our clients improve their operations, enhance customer experience, boost conversions, and scale their systems simultaneously as their business grows.

Conclusion

We are living in a world where customer experience leads the charge. Today, the product comes secondary to how you make them feel when they visit your website. This is why monolithic-based commerce is no longer viable in the modern-day digital shopping era. To stay competitive and have a unique brand positioning, you need to offer something your customers are immediately attracted to. But with the commerce world becoming more complex and demanding, it becomes important to choose advanced solutions that can cater to these needs. Composable commerce serves as an advanced solution that challenges traditional commerce practices and brings a distinctive approach to how eCommerce experiences are built and delivered. 

Composable commerce is indeed the future of commerce as it gives businesses a more granular level of control over their commerce operations as well as the storefront. With a composable architecture, businesses can customize every module of their eCommerce application–from inventory and order management to payment, CMS, and customer support. This high-end level of customization will allow them to be in the driving seat, modify components as and when required, make changes without disrupting the entire system, and bring new modules to scale the system simultaneously as their business grows.

So, don’t let the traditional commerce practices hinder the growth and potential of your business. Switch to composable commerce with Successive Digital and deliver unparalleled digital shopping experiences to your customers.

Want to discuss this further? Get in touch with us.