Composable commerce: customized e-commerce experiences based on the modular principle

Demanding customers and agile competition require companies to provide flexible and powerful solutions to create customized customer journeys. Where headless CMS has already broken down the boundaries between user interfaces and backends, Composable Commerce takes the next logical step. In this article, we explain how composable commerce breaks down the traditional boundaries between frontend and backend and prepares your company for the requirements of the future.
 

From headless CMS to composable commerce

Before the advent of headless commerce, e-commerce platforms often had a monolithic structure. A classic CMS connected the user interface (frontend) directly with the backend data and logic. For example, a CMS was installed on a server and was responsible for both the frontend and the backend. Classic e-commerce systems are therefore best-of-suite solutions that cover a wide range of functions for a broad target group.

In headless commerce, on the other hand, the decoupling of the frontend and backend offers the flexibility to create different interfaces for different channels and target groups and to connect these flexibly to the backend via APIs. With a headless CMS, companies can react more agilely to changing requirements and are no longer tied to a rigid system in order to create new digital experiences for customers.

Composable Commerce takes the principle of separating individual functions to the extreme. Instead of a rigid system in which the front end and back end are separated but still bundled in a single system, Composable Commerce allows the selection and integration of specialized services for all elements of the e-commerce platform. This creates an architecture that is precisely tailored to the respective requirements of the environment and is therefore efficient, flexible and scalable.

Composable commerce: online trading according to the MACH principle

Composable commerce systems can be characterized by the MACH principle, which combines lean cloud-based micro-applications with an API-first and headless approach to create a maximally flexible and scalable system.

• Microservice: Microservices are small applications that each fulfill a specific function within the e-commerce solution - for example logistics, purchasing or product configurator. These are combined as required in so-called Packaged Business Capabilities and form a modular architecture within which different services can be combined with each other.
• API-first: The API-first approach enables efficient connection and communication between microservices. This means that interfaces are defined before the actual implementation of individual services.
• Cloud-Hosting: By hosting in the company's private cloud or a provider's public cloud, microservices can be flexibly integrated without the need to set up additional physical infrastructure.
• Headless: The headless approach is part of the composable commerce strategy because the decoupling of front-end and back-end enables maximum flexibility in the design of digital experiences.
   

Composable commerce: advantages of the best-of-breed approach

The headless approach has freed traditional e-commerce from many technical limitations and significantly increased flexibility and the ability of companies to act. Composable commerce also offers a number of other advantages:

• Reduced dependency on third-party providers: In contrast to headless commerce, composable commerce minimizes dependency on the platform used, as companies have the flexibility to select and integrate specific microservices as required.
• Less complexity: The integration of microservices in Composable Commerce simplifies the overall architecture by using modular and independently functioning services.
• High scalability: Composable commerce systems are easily scalable thanks to their microservices architecture. Each microservice fulfills specific tasks and can be operated, exchanged or expanded independently of other services. The ability to scale individual microservices as required allows companies to adapt their systems efficiently and cost-effectively to increasing user numbers or growing requirements.
• Best-of-breed instead of a compromise solution: In a composite architecture, companies have to make fewer compromises as they can select and integrate the best solutions for different sub-functions according to the best-of-breed principle.
• Greater flexibility and innovative capacity: The user interface and e-commerce functionalities are independent of each other in a composable commerce architecture, which makes it easy to integrate new features without downtime. This allows companies to react more quickly to market changes or customer needs.
• Agility: In contrast to platform-dependent approaches, companies can replace individual microservices in a composite e-commerce architecture at any time in order to always use the best possible solution.
• Lower costs: Composable Commerce allows companies to select and pay for exactly the features and providers they need, rather than buying a complete package with unnecessary extras.

Composable commerce: the future of digital commerce?

E-commerce is highly competitive across all sectors. On the one hand, companies have to hold their own against the large digital platforms, which are generally unrivaled in terms of price, range and availability. In addition, modern start-ups are entering the markets with innovative solutions and gaining market share by offering the personalization of interaction expected by more and more customers through the use of modern technologies.

Looking at the market, the composable commerce approach will prevail in the long term. However, implementation is not completed with the introduction of new software, but requires a fundamentally new development approach. To find out what the composable commerce architecture could look like for your company, you should therefore consider the following questions:

• Infrastructure complexity: How complex is the current IT infrastructure, and what problems arise from testing and rolling out new features and patches?
• Dependence on IT: To what extent is the marketing department dependent on the IT department, and who controls the front-end experience?
• Flexibility of the architecture: How flexibly can the existing architecture be scaled as required, and does it offer sufficient scope for innovation?
• Technical limitations: Where do you come up against limits with the existing architecture that can be solved by the composable approach? Traditional e-commerce solutions and services often also offer sufficient flexibility. For example, a Combeenation product configurator can be easily and efficiently integrated into various systems without the architecture limiting the configurator.
• Managing the technical effort: Is the IT department able to manage the technical effort involved in connecting and maintaining different tools?
   

E-commerce: the future is composable

Composable commerce enables faster, more agile and more efficient development and delivery of personalized shopping experiences across all digital channels. According to the Gartner Trend Insight Report "Becoming Composable", around 80 percent of companies with a composable architecture will already be ahead of the competition by 2024. In the future, companies will create very specific e-commerce worlds that are precisely tailored to the respective channel and the needs of the target group and integrate solutions such as a Combeenation product configurator as required with minimal effort.

At Combeenation, composable commerce means maximum flexibility. You are not tied to any system. For example, if your configurator is connected to Shopify and you then want to switch to another store system, you do not have to recreate the configurator. This can be visualized as pulling a plug out of one store system and plugging the same plug into another store system without having to make any major adjustments.

Would you like to talk in detail? We look forward to hearing from you.