How Composable Commerce Can Help to Deliver a Best-in-Class Customer Experience

Originally posted on MMT Digital's blog

The global pandemic has accelerated long-term customer experience trends with consumers increasingly shifting from physical to digital channels and changing their shopping behaviors:

• The flight to digital and omnichannel is likely to continue, with an increase in intent to spend online of up to 40%*, even post-pandemic.
• Consumers have become less loyal, with 61%* trying a new brand or shopping method.
• Of consumers who tried a new digital shopping method, 83%* intend to continue to incorporate it into their routines long term. ​

*Source: McKinsey & Company - Survey: UK consumer sentiment during the coronavirus crisis (December 2020)

Brands need to rapidly adapt to changes in order to acquire new customers and retain their existing base. With such frequent changes in the environment and customer behaviors, we recommend that brands embrace these six principles:

• Cater to the needs of digitally native buyers supporting diverse traditional and digital touchpoints. This includes retail, web and mobile stores, social media, call centres, augmented and virtual reality, connected devices and more.
• Breakaway from the competition by creating differentiated customer experiences that convey the brand’s unique selling proposition.
• Maximize conversion rates with personalized, contextual experiences that target the right customers with the right content and offerings (proposition through to products and services), at the right time.
• Increase average order size with contextual cross-sell and up-sell offerings along with personalized promotions and loyalty programs.
• Ensure continuous journeys across all available touchpoints, with customers being able to hop between touchpoints during their buyer journey.
• Rapidly adapt to changing customer preferences by providing brands with full unlimited control over the customer experience.

By following these principles, brands will increase conversion rates across all stages of the customer journey, reinforce brand loyalty, improve customer lifetime value and outpace the competition - ultimately resulting in long-term revenue growth.

Build a commerce solution to support your business requirements and provide a better customer experience

There are several general considerations for brands on how to build a commerce solution ready to support all the business requirements mentioned above:

#1 Go for best of need

With one of the core business needs for a brand being differentiation, it is implausible that a single, all-encompassing solution will empower eCommerce teams to meet unique requirements. These solutions are suitable to quickly start a new store using prefabricated templates and out-of-the-box capabilities. However, they fall short when a brand needs to tailor their experiences as it is usually either impossible to do or takes too much time and effort. With the best of need approach, brands have the freedom to pick the right applications for their business and deliver a unique experience.

#2 Avoid “big-bang” projects

Most large-scale transformation projects are not delivered on time and on budget. And the larger the project, the higher the risk of this happening. These projects are subject to a lack of clarity on initial requirements, a disconnect from the overarching digital vision, and the inability to adapt to changing market demands. Therefore, brands must have the ability to start small alongside the existing implementation and evolve their solution iteratively, incorporating changes as they emerge. This provides businesses with full control over their digital initiative so that possible time and budget risks are mitigated.

#3 Rapidly optimize

One of the most common challenges for brands with traditional commerce platforms is the lack of business agility. Traditional commerce platforms are known for their rigidity, which results in customization being extremely expensive and taking a long time to implement. Brands should strive for a solution that provides superior extensibility and embraces a rapid, iterative approach to experimentation.

MMT Digital and Elastic Path

To help solve challenges that clients are currently facing with eCommerce, we have partnered with Elastic Path, leaders in headless commerce microservices and recognized as a visionary in Gartner’s Digital Commerce Magic Quadrant. We believe that whatever solution you are building, the customer always comes first. Technology is an enabler rather than the star of the show. By pushing technology behind the scenes and leveraging its power, we can deliver the exceptional experiences audiences expect and a greater return on investment for our clients.

Our strategic partnership with Elastic Path means we can combine our deep technical expertise with a leading Headless Commerce solution. With a Composable Commerce approach, we can integrate with a wide range of systems to deliver an integrated, high standard eCommerce experience quickly and efficiently.

To find out more or talk through an eCommerce challenge you are currently facing, drop MMT Digital an email at [email protected] or feel free to reach out to us, we'd be happy to help.