What is composable commerce?

The continental drift of commerce

Much of the talk surrounding modern commerce technology speaks of an imminent commerce revolution. The reality, however, is that we have already experienced a continental drift of sorts— one in which the traditional all-in-one commerce solution has splintered into distinct commerce components. 

Driven in part by increased digital maturity and complex business needs, this new paradigm—often referred to as composable commerce—transcends the one-size-fits-all approach of monolithic commerce platforms, enabling brands to create meaningful customer and business experiences using a best-for-me approach. 

So how do you get there? How do you shrug off your legacy commerce system and compose a seamless, data-driven commerce experience? Part of the journey is learning how to navigate this new commerce landscape, which means learning to speak the language. And in a sea of buzzwords and jargon, it can be a formidable challenge. 

Take headless commerce and composable commerce, for example. The terms are often used interchangeably in discussions about alternatives to traditional commerce, but they’re quite different. Familiarizing yourself with concepts like these will better equip you to join the conversations and make the strategic decisions needed to advance your brand. 

Breaking down old systems

The simplicity and convenience that characterized traditional commerce solutions was often at the expense of customizability and scalability. Whereas brands used to only worry about two touchpoints (in-store and website), over the last decade they’ve increasingly had to contend with a splintering of experience spaces to things like smartphones, wearables, in-store kiosks, and voice-operated smart home devices.

With these additional commerce channels came a number of challenges where commerce engines struggled to keep up with the increased scale and change in customer needs. 

Headless commerce presented a workable solution to the limitations of these monolithic solutions. By separating the back-end from the “head” or front-end, developers have the ability to create a robust and efficient solution that can deliver a seamless and data-driven customer experience, regardless of the touchpoint. 

In “The Future of Commerce Technology”, Emily Pfeiffer, Senior Analyst at Forrester writes, “Experience and operations are the new dual cores of commerce technology ecosystems”. And a headless system enables brands to optimize and reinforce one core or another depending on their needs. 

Composing a better commerce system

But developments in digital commerce didn’t stop at headless. Headless architectures made it possible to further break down front- and back-ends into more specialized commerce components—or microservices—enabling brands to custom choose solutions for order management, customer data management, shopping carts, CMSs, and more. “As the new cores these areas support increasingly complex and ever-evolving customer expectations,” states Pfeiffer.

“Composing” something, by the very nature of the word, implies a hand-selection and assembly of pieces to create a whole that’s greater than the sum of its parts. You’re not simply separating the commerce engine and customer interface of your business (à la headless) and calling it a day. You’re building something better. 

Composable commerce is often likened to the use of LEGO bricks. With LEGO, you’re able to join pieces together in any configuration or pattern you’d like. Whether you want to build your own version of a diner, a dinosaur, or the Death Star, you can use a virtually infinite combination of pieces to create your vision. The only caveat is that it’s up to you to craft the most structurally-sound and efficient build. Similarly, the essence of composable commerce is the idea of optimizing your commerce ecosystem through the use of discrete, API-connected modules, each targeting a specific business need.

In contrast to headless commerce, which simply denotes the severing of the front-end from the back, composable commerce operates under three guiding principles:

1. Business-centric solutions, which empower you with tools to address your specific business needs;
2. Modular architecture, which creates flexibility through the use of microservices;
3. Open ecosystem, which provides you with useful support, guidance, and integrations for crafting your solution.

Composable commerce ultimately serves to address the challenges of the modern brand, whether that means scaling in new markets, providing a more seamless customer journey across touchpoints, becoming more responsive to market changes, or improving performance. It leverages a number of powerful technologies like MACH—microservices, API-first, cloud native, and headless—to provide a truly best-for-me architecture.

The emergence of composable commerce was also observed by Pfeiffer: “Following a period of ‘continental drift’ as modern architecture splintered individual services, merchants now assemble their own suites of solutions from a variety of vendors (i.e. individual continents) as they seek out the ‘best for me’ solution in each area, rather than best-of-breed suites.”

At this stage, you might think that composable architectures sound like effective commerce solutions. You also might think being responsible for crafting an entirely customized infrastructure is overwhelming and intimidating. Where to begin?

This is why a number of companies decide to collaborate with firms like Myplanet to compose the best solution for them. We work closely with our customers to orchestrate best-in-breed commerce solutions and customer experiences through our Composable.com^TM Solution Accelerator. We do this by operating within an ecosystem of partners to provide the best technologies to address your specific business and customer experience needs. Composable commerce isn’t as inaccessible as you might think. 

To learn more about composable commerce or learn how Myplanet can help you optimize and future-proof your brand, visit us at myplanet.com.