The key benefits of composable commerce

Highlights

You’ll learn about composable commerce benefits, like:

• Enables scalable online operations
• Expands global sales
• Lowers total cost of ownership
• Future-proofs businesses for upcoming trends
• Provides unmatched flexibility for tailored experiences
• Enhances engagement and customer experience
• Boosts revenue through personalized content and offers
• Ensures omnichannel experiences

Embrace the future of digital commerce with composable commerce and enhance your customer relationships, drive revenue growth and stay ahead of the competition.

Keep reading to learn more!

Imagine you’re creating a business strategy from scratch. Instead of using the best business strategies from Amazon, Tesla or Walmart, you handpick winning strategies to create a business that thrives through every ups and downs.

That’s what composable commerce is. Composable commerce combines different components to create a commerce platform having the best tech stack. You cherry-pick the best-of-breed solutions and join them to create a powerful commerce solution

Apart from helping you pick the best-of-breed solutions, going composable offers many other advantages you cannot overlook.

With 72% of retailers already using a composable approach and 21% planning to do so in the next 12 months, composable commerce architecture sets you apart. 

Read to explore the key benefits of composable commerce and understand how it differs from traditional and headless commerce. 

What is composable commerce?

Composable commerce enables you to select the best-in-class e-commerce modules from multiple vendors. It breaks down your e-commerce infrastructure into smaller components called LEGO blocks, which you arrange like a jigsaw puzzle. 

You assemble these components to create unique digital commerce experiences. These components are called microservices. Composable commerce creates a tailored IT architecture to meet your business needs. 

For instance, use microservices for payment processing, inventory, order and customer relationship management. Each microservice communicates with each other through an application programming interface or API. Modular commerce differs from others because it:

• Creates, deploys and scales microservices
• Makes your online shop flexible and scalable

Composable commerce vs headless commerce vs traditional commerce

Key benefits of composable commerce

Makes your online store scalable

Using a composable commerce approach, businesses can scale up or down their operations depending on traffic and growth. Each component can handle the load, ensuring you don’t encounter slow loading speed or performance issues. This feature comes in handy during the holiday season and high-peak traffic. 

Traditional e-commerce platforms require you to redevelop your entire system. Composable commerce adds new features and functionalities without overhauling your e-commerce system.

What’s more compelling is the scalable nature of composable commerce. It helps you expand in different regions and add thousands of products to your online store. 

Increases your global sales

Often, e-commerce stores operate in more than one region. Establishing your store in various markets is challenging in monolithic systems. Why?

You must customize your store for each market and offer different products and pricing. You may even adapt to local tax regulations. 

Because composable commerce separates your presentation layers and backend, you no longer customize your storefront from scratch. You can integrate global payment gateways and international shipping orders when expanding to newer markets. 

The modular approach provides personalized shopping experiences to customers across various regions. Going composable helps you adapt to various currencies, languages and cultural nuances.

You capitalize on global opportunities by testing market-specific strategies. This increases your international sales and brand presence. 

Lowers your total cost of ownership (TCO)

Traditional e-commerce platforms incur a higher TCO. They need complex upgrades, depend on a single vendor and have an inflexible infrastructure. The composable architecture of composable commerce optimizes operations and reduces expenses related to traditional e-commerce platforms. In a composable approach, you select the components that suit your needs. 

You reduce unnecessary spending on unused features or licensing fees for components you don’t use. Also, the ease of integrating and updating components in a composable architecture saves the maintenance and commerce development costs. 

Case study: How did Contentstack help BISSELL lower its total cost?

BISSELL wanted to improve its digital presence and customer experience through a new mobile app and web optimization. By transitioning to Contentstack's headless CMS, they streamlined localization and content management, launching a redesigned app in weeks. This move increased efficient support and reduced costs.

BISSELL achieved 100% uptime and could instantly localize across multiple languages and markets. With these improvements, Bissell now engages 100,000 monthly users, enhancing the post-purchase journey and global customer engagement.

After using Contentstack, Aaron Pittenger, Sr. Manager at BISSELL, said:

“With Contentstack, we’re moving towards consolidation of content across all digital touchpoints, so that we can truly meet customers where they are. There are hundreds more BISSELL products that we can bring into the app. By doing that, we can bridge the two sides of the consumer experience, product support and e-commerce, in whatever format customers want, so that anyone who uses any BISSELL product can get the support they need.”

Read the complete case study here.

Future-proofs your business

E-commerce stores need to consider the future while staying abreast of upcoming trends. The modular approach makes your store flexible, helping you adapt to:

• New technologies
• Market trends
• Customer needs

You achieve this without overhauling your entire system. 

With composable commerce, you add exciting features and integrations, keeping your e-commerce platform at the forefront of innovation. Plus, its business agility and scalability help you respond to future demands.

Provides unmatched flexibility

With a composable approach, it becomes easier to customize your systems and processes to meet the changing market demands. Composable commerce provides unmatched flexibility, ensuring you no longer rely on external support or face excessive downtime. 

What makes a modular approach different is that it customizes components to your liking. This means your tech stack has the components you need. When you go composable, you create unique customer experiences. 

Enhance your relationship with customers

Who said composable commerce is only helpful for businesses? It benefits your customers as well. In addition to making your business flexible, agile and scalable, it improves your engagement and customer experience. 

Implementing a modular approach opens doors to personalized and relevant content, offers and even products. You send personalized offers depending on your customer’s behavior, context and preferences. 

With personalization driving a 10-15% revenue lift, a composable approach results in happier customers who return for more. 

What do you achieve when your customers are happy?

• Higher customer lifetime value
• Community of loyal customers
• Lower churn rate

Increases agility and time-to-market

Composable commerce improves customer experiences. With changing customer demands, you can add new features and updates.

Whether you want to add new search features, personalize your shopping experiences or introduce the latest payment methods, composable commerce helps meet your customers' expectations.

When customers are happy, your sales increase and you build loyalty. Your customers feel encouraged to return for more top-notch experiences.

Case study: How did Dawn Foods achieve faster time to market with Contentstack?

Dawn Foods selected Contentstack for its MACH architecture. Contentstack was easy to use, helping content managers to update and publish content. Previously relying on in-person and telephone orders, Dawn Foods sought to modernize with an online ordering system.

They chose a composable, API-first platform for its scalable nature and user-friendliness. Contentstack significantly improved Dawn Foods' digital presence, allowing for rapid content updates, enhanced publishing speed and offered personalized customer experiences without requiring developer intervention. 

After using Contentstack, Gireesh Sahukar, Vice President of Digital at Dawn Foods, said:

“Content updates in our site run 80% faster compared to a monolith CMS. In some cases, the content that could take up to a week to publish using a monolith CMS, we can publish in less than an hour with Contentstack.”

Read the complete case study here.

Ensures omnichannel experiences

Composable commerce makes omnichannel experiences feel effortless. With a modular online store, you offer smooth and personalized shopping moments everywhere — online, on mobile, through social media or in-store. 

This omnichannel presence creates a shopping journey that meets customers wherever they are. Thanks to the flexibility of composable commerce, your platform adjusts to new trends and customer preferences.

With a composable commerce system, you improve the entire omnichannel customer experience.

Implementing composable commerce in your retail business

Here are the key steps to implement composable commerce:

Assess your current infrastructure

Before transitioning your e-commerce solution to composable commerce, assess your existing e-commerce platform. Identify its limitations, assess its flexibility and determine the areas where you need more flexibility.

Define business requirements

Outline your business goals, customer journey, the customer experience you aim to deliver and the specific functionalities you want. This step helps you choose the right modular components.

Research and select vendors

Research and select the vendors that offer the best services and technologies based on your needs. Look for vendors with a strong track record, robust integration capabilities and excellent support.

Design your architecture

With the help of technical experts, design an architecture that integrates your selected components. This architecture should be scalable, resilient and accommodating of future technologies or services.

Implement in phases

Roll out the new composable commerce solution in phases to reduce potential disruptions. Begin with the most critical components that deliver immediate benefits and integrate functionalities over time.

Test and optimize

Test each component and the system to ensure everything works together. After launch, monitor performance, gather customer feedback and optimize the platform.

Train your team

Ensure your team can use the new system. As you add new features and components, encourage continuous learning.

Track, analyze and iterate

Finally, analyze and track the performance of your composable commerce platform. Use the insights to make informed decisions and iterative improvements. Ensure your platform responds to customer expectations.

FAQs

Why is composable commerce important?

Composable commerce makes your business flexible, scalable and adjustable. If you adopt a composable approach, you can adjust to market shifts, incorporate innovations and give your clients a personalized experience.

What is composable commerce?

Composable commerce uses a modular architecture, allowing companies to select and pick different components based on their requirements. With a composable approach, you transform the purchasing process into a personalized shopping experience.

Why is composable commerce a better solution than monolithic platforms?

Composable commerce makes your online store more scalable and flexible than other monolithic platforms. Using a modular approach, you can add new features, integrate third-party services and adjust to market demands.

What are the challenges of composable architecture?

Coordinating with various systems requires technical expertise and may lead to integration issues. This is often the biggest challenge of composable commerce. In addition, you may face higher costs because of the investment in various components from different vendors and the need to hire and train staff about the new architecture.

Learn more

Composable commerce has profound effects on the e-commerce industry. It's the future of digital commerce because it enables businesses to be more agile, efficient and customer-centric. 

Do you want to explore how these benefits can help you change your e-commerce strategy and stay ahead? Request a free demo to learn more.