Composable commerce architecture: The future of e-commerce

Highlights

You’ll learn about composable commerce architecture and its impact on digital commerce.

• Modular approach: Integrate microservices, APIs, and PBCs to enhance user experience
• Flexibility: Customize and scale solutions to meet modern digital commerce needs
• Cost-effective: Implement only relevant digital commerce features, reducing expenses
• Future-proof: Stay relevant and plug into the latest technologies

Explore composable commerce architecture to transform your digital commerce strategy. 

As the business world evolves, retail brands must adapt to respond to customers' dynamic needs. A composable commerce architecture offers a cutting-edge approach that enables e-commerce brands to build flexible, scalable solutions.

What is composable commerce architecture?

Composable commerce architecture is an approach to using modular systems to design e-commerce platforms. It enables you to build and integrate different commerce solutions to manage inventory, catalogs, payment, etc.

You can assemble various software pieces, such as microservices, packaged business capabilities (PBCs), and APIs. That way, you can create a tailored, seamless e-commerce experience.

Core principles of composable commerce architecture

Certain core principles capture the essence of composable commerce. They are;

• Modularity: Composable commerce allows businesses to select and integrate best-of-breed solutions. You can adapt quickly to new market trends and customer needs.
• Business-centric: It is easy to use. Your business users can make changes as quickly and often as they want. That eliminates the need for excess technical work.
• Open: It operates within an open ecosystem. You can easily customize solutions or add extra features to the front and back end.

Importance in modern digital commerce

As customers adopt the latest technologies, retail brands can expand their interaction with them on multiple digital touch points. A composable approach empowers you to deliver a business vision that replaces the norm and taps into cutting-edge solutions. As your business needs become more complex, it offers tools you can tweak and adapt. 

Benefits of composable commerce architecture

A composable architecture transforms commerce and retail in several ways, as explained below.

• Reduced operational costs: You integrate only the features that your business needs. This avoids having a bloated platform with features that take up space but add no value, allowing you to reduce costs.
• Increased ROI: You focus on features that improve customer experience, which leads to higher ROI. For instance, you can integrate assets from existing payment solutions to add new payment options without recreating each option from scratch. This will enable customers to pay using the most convenient option.
• Faster time to market: Access to pre-built modules and APIs enables you to launch new features, products, and updates more quickly.
• Future-proofing: The architecture allows you to mix and match solutions. You can plug into the latest technologies, ensuring you stay in tune with the latest trends.

Key elements of composable commerce

Here are the building blocks of composable commerce:

• API-first design: Enables the integration of various software pieces tailored to specific business needs.
• Microservices and packaged business capabilities (PBCs): The PBC model informs how you compose microservices, allowing you to integrate microservices-based PBCs, from checkout to cart, etc. 
• Headless CMS: A headless CMS separates content storage from its front-end layer. This flexible approach allows you to surface content on any channel.

Implementing composable commerce

A composable commerce platform empowers you to deliver customer-centric experiences and is easy to set up. Here are the steps to follow.

Step-by-step guide to transition

As you prepare to exceed customer needs now and in the future, here are the basic steps to follow when transitioning to a composable commerce architecture.

1. Assess current infrastructure: Evaluate existing systems to identify areas for improvement. Also, consider your integration needs and ensure the new system is compatible with relevant old systems.
2. Select components: Focus on services that align with your needs, be it payment gateways, shipping providers, e-commerce platforms, etc. Ensure they have API support, customization tools, and smooth integration. Also, ensure that you choose units with robust security.
3. Plan your integration: Ensure your integration is gradual. That way, you can minimize any disruption or shock to your current operations. Also, design the features such that you can customize and extend them.
4. Implement your composable commerce platform: With your roadmap and components defined, you are ready to go live. 
5. Monitor and optimize: Going composable is not a one-off event. After setting up, monitor how the platform performs. Doing so allows you to optimize the system when required.

Case studies

1-800-Flowers

1-800-Flowers relied on a slow, inefficient legacy system that did not offer a unified approach for their multiple channels. They found it difficult to change layouts as it required them to update multiple HTML snippets every time.

By opting for a composable approach, they created a unified structure. Modular blocks also allowed them to create same-day deliveries by filtering zip codes. Thanks to the webhook feature, the platform has also become more stable.

Hear from Matt McHale, Senior Vice President, Application Development. "Contentstack helps provide the foundation we need to scale efficiently, enabling us to manage multiple brands effectively and continue delivering high-quality experiences to our customers as we grow. It was a big shift for everyone, but we haven’t looked back."

Read more about 1-800-Flowers e-commerce success with Contentstack.

Emma

Emma runs a large operation with sales via its websites, third-party online stores, and over 3,500 physical stores. They also partner with over 200 retailers. However, as the business grew, software development and ticket issues increased, and the process became a bottleneck. They could not isolate changes by country, and it was costly to develop new features.

Emma switched to a composable architecture with Contentstack’s DXP and headless CMS. With MACH, they improved back-end efficiency and content reuse, giving them a flexible and faster e-commerce solution. The headless CMS also enabled them to publish new campaigns eight times faster. 

Hear from Andreas Westendörpf, the Chief Technology Officer. "The beauty of headless commerce is that it not only delivers short-term results but also that it opens an elegant, logical long-term set of options for the future. This is what we have found with Contentstack and MACH-based technologies."

Read more about how Emma improved its e-commerce strategy with a composable commerce architecture.

Technology and tools in composable commerce architecture

Adopting the right technologies is vital for optimizing composable commerce:

• Cloud-native solutions: Traditional platforms rely on physical servers that may struggle to handle increased demands. Composable commerce fixes that, giving you access to cloud benefits like limitless storage, auto-scaling, etc.
• Frontend and backend decoupling: With separate back-end and front-end, your teams can work on different system parts simultaneously. You also get to design a user interface of your choice. This allows you to save time and cost on updates and maintenance.
• Scalable e-commerce platforms: You can choose platforms that support rapid growth and accommodate increasing customer demands.

Business-centric solutions with composable commerce

Composable commerce empowers business users to control how they configure the e-commerce solution. This shifts from the monolithic approach, where developers configure and control changes.

In the old-school system, your design and content team may struggle to make changes as quickly as they should. A composable system changes that. Your content, design, or product team can make direct changes when required. This increases productivity, saves time, and leads to ROI gains over time.

Challenges and solutions in composable commerce

Despite its numerous benefits, implementing a composable commerce solution may present minor challenges. Here are common pitfalls and how to overcome them.

• Integration issues: When implementing composable commerce, you may find that systems are incompatible. However, using APIs and middleware will address that. It is also essential to create robust API documentation for reference. 
• Issues with technical expertise: Going from a monolithic system to a composable architecture requires extra technical expertise that organizations may lack currently. To manage that, you may hire specialized talent or train the team to get them up to speed.

Future trends in composable commerce architecture

 As technologies like AI, IoT, and AR/VR become mainstream, you can expect composable commerce solutions to integrate them for better customer experience delivery. Here are trends to look forward to.

• AR-powered shopping experiences: AR technology is gaining traction at a growth rate of 8.9%. E-commerce businesses may start implementing AR/VR-driven solutions such as virtual try-ons, interactive user manuals, preview placements, etc. These solutions will improve customer experience, reduce returns, and increase ROI.
• AI-driven retail support: AI is already playing a key role in digital retail, and that should deepen. It is already being used to optimize pricing and recommend offers and products. More retail brands will build on their existing infrastructure to develop AI-powered chatbots to provide personalized customer support.

FAQ section

What is composable commerce architecture?

Composable commerce architecture is an approach to designing modular and flexible e-commerce systems. It breaks down e-commerce backends into small, independent services, allowing retail brands to customize their digital solutions.

What are the differences between modular and composable commerce architectures?

Composable commerce is modular. It uses a decoupled approach that treats different e-commerce stacks as independent services.

What is an example of a composable architecture?

Contentstack’s DXP is an example of a leading composable architecture for enterprises. It is API-driven and cloud-native, comes with a headless CMS, and supports microservices. 

What is the difference between composable commerce and headless commerce?

Headless commerce separates a retail website or app from the back-end e-commerce platform. In contrast, composable commerce breaks down the e-commerce back end into smaller, independent and specialized services.

Learn more

Composable commerce architecture offers a new dynamic in how businesses approach digital commerce. It offers a modular and flexible approach that allows you to streamline e-commerce operations and enhance customer experiences. 

Contentstack’s MACH-enabled composable DXP offers you the platform to build the e-commerce solution of your dreams. You replace generic traditional features with best-of-breed digital commerce solutions that are in tune with modern business needs. Talk to us to learn more today.