New Composable Frontend Capabilities from Elastic Path: Solving for the Paradox of Choice

One of the biggest critiques of composable architectures is the fact that there are too many options. While people choose composable commerce for its flexibility, all too often, the choices involved in launching a storefront can seem to be a death by a thousand cuts.

That’s why Elastic Path has introduced our quick-to-configure Composable Frontend, built on our extensive experience working with leading merchants. It includes many of the features retail leaders have implemented in their storefronts. From native support for bundling and product configurators, to variations in order presentation, to strikethrough on sale price — building a full-featured, composable storefront is easier than ever before. For those who want the flexibility to add even more features, this fast-to-launch composable storefront is open source and fully extensible.

A happy medium between monolith and MACH

Retailers on monolithic commerce platforms are essentially stuck with whatever comes out of the box, or they have to hire developers who are knowledgeable about their vendor’s proprietary codebase to make changes to the presentation layer. These issues caused the market to swing fully in the other direction, to MACH architectures that enabled frontend developers to pick any codebase they wanted (e.g. Vue, React, Next.js, etc.).

However, we’ve spoken with many customers who have chosen their own frontend and become involved in hundreds of micro-decisions to get a storefront up and running. This leads to months of seemingly wasted development hours, which only further delays the launch of new commerce experiences. A slower time-to-market adds up to not only higher development costs, but also potential revenue loss from launch delays.

Understanding these challenges, we wanted to create a composable frontend solution with a full set of features out of the box, proven by industry-leading retailers to optimize conversions. At the same time, our Composable Frontend gives developers the flexibility to build and customize the features they need using the Next.js framework. Think of it as a happy medium between full-featured monoliths with no flexibility and the paradox of choice of a MACH architecture.

While I won’t list every feature, here are some of the highlights of the composable frontend capabilities that are included “out of the box:”

• Homepage: Drive conversions with personalization features like “trending now” and “recommended for you”
• PLP: Everything you need to set up a product listing page, including bundled pricing and strikethrough sale pricing
• PDP: Launch product detail pages with images, descriptions, attributes, and more — including native support for bundling and product configurators
• Cart and checkout: Take advantage of complete cart and checkout options designed to reduce friction and increase conversions
• Account and order management: Empower users to take control of their account details, view purchase history, and more.

Launching with what’s included in the Elastic Path Composable Frontend will get you up and running faster, while giving you the flexibility to add and change features over time. If you’re in the market for a composable, complete solution for your digital storefront, check out our latest capabilities with a free Elastic Path trial.