Changes in the eCommerce industry are inevitable, but probably not many companies starting the adventure of selling online a decade ago imagined that there will be so many changes and they will turn many aspects, especially technical, completely upside down.
For many years, eCommerce platforms were based on a monolithic design. This way of designing applications seemed appropriate. After all, a monolith is an all-in-one solution, plus - it can grow. Problems began when the increased growth caused by the development of eCommerce caused significant complexity of the platform structure. Recognizing this fact led to thoughts of creating such eCommerce platforms, which instead of a monolithic structure adopt the structure of individual components. Each of them was responsible for a different task.
From headless to composable commerce
Every once in a while another buzz word pops up in the eCommerce world, usually a bit tongue-in-cheek because it describes a phenomenon or technical aspect that has been around for a long time. Buzz words make a lot of marketing noise, an example of which was MACH. But what's different is concepts like headless or microservices - which describe technical aspects and allow you to understand what composable commerce is.
Headless is a technology that allows us to disconnect the eCommerce frontend from its backend. This solution has changed a lot not only for people designing eCommerce platforms, but also for owners, employees and users of online stores. Adopting headless architecture allows for more effective platform optimization, better UX, easier personalization and flexibility of the site. On the other hand, microservices are another modern technological solution. Their architecture allows to connect internal and external services via API. Both headless and microservices are milestones towards independence of individual components of eCommerce platforms. The next step is composable commerce.
Composable commerce - turning to the future
Composable commerce combines the advances of headless, microservices and APIs. It is an approach tailored to the new reality, enabling a fully agile approach, focused on building a positive user experience at every moment of its contact with the platform, experimenting and immediately introducing novelties to the eCommerce industry.
Companies that have adopted the composable commerce approach point to such advantages as:
- responding and making changes faster,
- taking care of the customer at every point of contact with the company,
- reducing costs associated with maintaining and optimizing the eCommerce platform,
- increased and faster scalability,
- higher productivity.
Composable commerce brings together not only tech innovations, but also embraces a shift in thinking about eCommerce. Its definition includes taking care of consumers in every place they interact with a company - on the eCommerce platform, social media channels, mobile app, marketplace, and even in a stationary store. Composable commerce finally closes the era of monolithic platforms. It focuses on speed and flexibility of changes.
