Composable Commerce in a Nutshell

The world of online shopping is constantly evolving.

In the past few years poor customer experience and sluggish page loads caused by monolithic platforms have accelerated the need for better flexibility and the ability to create a more personalized customer experience. For many, embracing Composable Commerce has filled this need.

In this blog I’ll break down the fundamentals of a Composable Commerce approach, the benefits it brings to modern eCommerce businesses, and what businesses it’s most suitable for.

Composable Commerce Explained

Composable Commerce enables digital teams to launch and continuously optimize digital commerce experiences by leveraging best-of-breed solutions composed together into a complete, business-ready solution.

With a Composable Commerce architecture, teams are enabled to build their tech stack with best-of-breed vendors based on the present needs of the business, and gives them the ability to scale in the future with additional integrations. This approach empowers marketing teams to work at the speed the business demands without heavy reliance on their IT department. 

How Does Composable Commerce Work? 

Composable Commerce requires a MACH architecture. MACH stands for Microservices, API-first, Cloud-native, and Headless. If you've been researching the concept of Composable Commerce, you've probably come across the term "headless commerce." So what's the difference? 

Headless commerce is a software architecture that separates the UI (frontend) from the business logic (backend).  This approach provides control and design freedom over the frontend not found with traditional monolithic commerce platforms.

Composable Commerce is a more comprehensive approach that encompasses headless commerce. It uses the flexibility of headless solutions to benefit your business. 

Composable Commerce is an API-first architecture. All the parts of the system work independently, which allows merchants to plug in or unplug separate solutions as needed. This gives them the freedom to build a tech stack tailored to their unique business needs. 

Is Composable Commerce Suitable for All Businesses?

Gartner forecasts that organizations that embrace a Composable Commerce approach will outperform their competitors by 80% by 2023. But is Composable Commerce suitable for all businesses?

With a composable approach you can start with small progressive steps, leveraging existing elements of your ecosystem, and slowly build out your tech stack to include new best-of-breed vendors based on your current needs. The beauty of this approach is the flexibility it brings. It gives brands the freedom to pivot and experiment with new functionality quickly and without risk.

That makes Composable Commerce a great option for complex use cases by allowing brands to pick and choose the capabilities they require. As a business grows, the system can easily support multi-channel, multi geography and multi-brand.

This means that Composable Commerce is suitable for any online business, be it B2B, B2C or D2C.

Business Benefits of Composable Commerce

Today brands still believe that migrating to a composable approach is difficult. However, the value of this approach is breaking down these barriers daily through:

• Lower TCO (Total Cost of Ownership). Investing in Composable Commerce is usually a larger investment at the start, the significant cost benefits are seen in the long run by reducing development time and cost, and increasing the efficiency across teams. That being said, there are business-ready options for brands looking to adopt a Composable Commerce approach like Pre-Composed Solutions™, which combine core commerce capabilities, partner integrations, and key customizations so you can launch fast and customize on demand
• ​​Ownership of frontend optimization. Composable solutions grant marketers flexibility and independence from the IT team to make changes on the frontend. They can add unlimited content on a highly customizable frontend layout and change it to match customer expectations, often in a no-code environment so merchandising teams have complete control to make quick and easy optimizations to provide a standout experience for their customers.
• Flexibility and agility. Today, the sales process happens across multiple channels, and companies that sell across the web, mobile devices, and different social media platforms, need a scalable and flexible commerce solution. Composable Commerce gives brands the flexibility to implement new experiences across multiple touchpoints fast and at scale.

How Composable Commerce Boosts Revenue 

The adoption of Composable Commerce gives brands the opportunity to focus on providing their customers with the best customer experience (CX). This approach lets brands create a unique CX that fits their customers' needs and directly translates into customer loyalty, increased conversion, and higher revenue.

According to a Gartner’s survey of CIOs and top managers, companies with high composability expect revenue growth of 7.7% in 2022. Businesses with low composability, by contrast, expect revenue growth of just 3.4%.

Composability is essential to any profitable digital commerce strategy, especially into the future. It gives businesses the freedom to innovate and add high-end services quickly.

The Bottom Line

Composable Commerce is all about giving brands the flexibility and means to rapidly transform their tech stack, operations, and growth based on their current business needs and digital commerce strategy. This frees your merchandisers from the headaches of waiting on IT teams, instead allowing them to focus on creating and optimizing revenue generating experiences for your customers. 

One of the most significant blocks to moving from monolithic systems to modern Composable Commerce is the belief that your only choice is to create a frontend stack from scratch. Luckily, this is no longer the case. 

Vue Storefront Frontend as a Service provides eCommerce businesses with a one-stop solution to build efficient build-to-launch storefronts in one place with one tool. Switch from a monolith legacy solution to a Pre-Composed Solution™ for Multi-Touchpoint Experiences made up of Vue Storefront, Bloomreach and Elastic Path to supercharge your customer experience, regain your flexibility, and boost the revenue. 

How to start? Watch the on-demand demo (no slides, no pitch) to see the solution for yourself:

Play Video