Customer expectations in ecommerce are evolving faster than traditional platforms can adapt. Composable commerce offers a solution: an approach that enables you to customize your store architecture and respond with flexibility. But what exactly is behind this concept, and why is it becoming increasingly important?
Composable commerce keeps you in tune with your customers, no matter where they want to go. When executed well, composability gives merchants the flexibility to bounce back during downturns and build on their strengths when the economy booms.
Sounds great, right? But let’s get real: Composability also is the latest in a long line of bright, shiny buzzwords. How do you separate the marketing pitches from the practical value of composable commerce?
Table of contents:
What is composable commerce?
Composable commerce is an approach to ecommerce that uses a modular architecture. This means that the system is made up of various independent components, which can be flexibly combined and adapted. To fully understand this concept, it’s helpful to first know how traditional stores and headless models work.
Comparison with traditional and headless commerce models
Traditional commerce typically relies on monolithic systems, where the front end and back end are tightly connected within a single structure. Any changes to one part of the system inevitably impact other areas, making adjustments and updates complex and time-consuming – a challenge many businesses find limiting.
Headless commerce represents an evolution of this model, decoupling the front end from the back end. This separation allows for greater flexibility, such as updating the front end with a new design, without compromising the stability of the back end.
Composable commerce takes it a step further: not only are the front end and back end decoupled, but all other components – such as payment, search, or logistics solutions – are modular as well. Each element can be developed, replaced, or optimized independently, giving businesses maximum flexibility and control.
Composable Commerce & Best of Breed
The modular architecture of composable commerce allows businesses to integrate the best solutions from various providers – a concept commonly known as “best of breed.” The individual components communicate via APIs and can be easily adapted to meet changing requirements. This approach not only reduces dependency on a single vendor but also enhances the ability to quickly respond to shifting market demands.
The philosophy of composable commerce
The principle here is that you should compose your business the way creators compose works of art.
Imagine somebody telling the composer of your favorite piece of music, “sorry, you can’t use any drums. Our technology won’t allow it.” Something like this happens every day to merchants whose software locks them out of tools they need to keep customers happy and outflank competitors.
Pros and cons of composable commerce
The pros: Composability delivers speed and flexibility. Merchants can have great ideas for personalizing their offers and optimizing their buying processes, but inflexible software often stands in their way. Creating a custom solution can take months at considerable cost – if it’s even possible.
Composable solutions can accelerate time-to-value and enable merchants to fine-tune their commerce processes and customize offers for distinct market segments, typically in a fraction of the time imposed by legacy software platforms. Because time is money, speed can be especially helpful in a market downturn.
The cons: While composable commerce is fast, it’s not necessarily a quick fix. Composability can get complex because you’re orchestrating multiple technologies from a range of vendors. Success requires smart strategy, robust software and trustworthy technology partners.
If you have a simple business with predictable products, customers and spending habits, then you may not need the speed and agility of composable commerce. However, if the competition switches to composable commerce and serves customer needs better, you should definitely consider it.
Why composability is tailor-made for today’s merchants
You’ll hear terms like “headless commerce,” “API-first architecture” and “best-of-breed solutions” in conversations about composable commerce. Indeed, these are among the building blocks of composability.
But there’s more to this story because your customers are buying on all sorts of platforms. They’re not just coming to your web store on desktop PCs. They’re using phones, tablets and smartwatches.
Composable commerce acknowledges that people buy and sell on Instagram, Amazon and countless other venues. “It's about being where the customer is, so to speak,” Dzösch adds.
What composable commerce looks like in action
How do the nimblest merchants take advantage of composability? Shopware’s ecommerce platform offers a practical example.
Shopware’s core commerce solution uses APIs (application programming interfaces) that let apps share data and functionality. This API-first architecture helps Shopware users connect to frontend user interfaces and backend systems for functions like CRM (customer relationship management) and ERP (enterprise resource planning). Shopware also has vast extensibility, enabling merchants to plug in specific solutions that best serve their markets.
These capabilities help merchants get composable in three ways:
No-code automation
Shopware’s platform has built-in no-code automation, allowing merchants to quickly tweak some commerce options even if they have no software programming training. Store staff can create customized offers on their own, avoiding intermediaries like an IT department or a development partner that imposes weeks or months of delays. (Bonus: The merchant doesn’t have to pay expensive experts to do this work). Two Shopware tools (called Rule Builder and Flow Builder) use a no-code interface and simple, intuitive logic to customize a shopping experience. Rule Builder creates categories of customers, transactions, currencies and other variables. “It asks if something is true or false, like whether the customer is from Switzerland or the sale price is over 1,000 euros,” Dzösch says.
Flow Builder offers a deeper level of logic, pulling together a series of rules to provide sophisticated personalized transactions. For instance, a flow could grant free shipping to Swiss customers whose orders exceeds 1,000 euros.
Cloud
Shopware provides a cloud-hosted, software-as-a-service (SaaS) version of its ecommerce platform. Dzösch notes that this version has less functionality than the full Shopware platform because it’s difficult to make cloud software extensible enough to suit every customer.
But merchants don’t have to commit to the entire SaaS solution. They can use an API to access a specific component of Shopware (like the online storefront) and plug it into their overall ecommerce ecosystem if that helps them succeed in the marketplace.
Ecosystem
Shopware’s core commerce platform is an open-source web store built by a global community of developers. Third-party developers also build extensions to the system and sell them on Shopware’s web store.
With access to an immense catalog of third-party apps and extensions, Shopware ecosystem users can enjoy all the fruits of composable commerce. They can choose the search engine, payments processor, customer-facing frontend, and perhaps dozens more options to find the optimum technology mix for their needs.
All this flexibility frees merchants to sprint toward solutions to economic ups and downs. Of course, freedom isn’t free, as the adage goes. You pay a cost in complexity.
Dzösch notes, for example, that merchants often plug in a specific search engine for their online store. The search app looks great at first, but soon the honeymoon is over. Flaws pile up, so the merchant tries a new search provider. The new app has to work while reconciling all the problems of its predecessor.
Multiply this across a dozen apps or system extensions and you can imagine the potential of your tidy commerce ecosystem morphing into a shantytown. Sound planning is the best way to manage this kind of complexity.
Keys to a winning composable commerce strategy
Composability never reaches a destination. It’s always iterating for an evolving market landscape. You may want to add composability for a certain market segment while keeping some legacy apps that are too difficult or costly to replace.
“Very few projects go all-in on the composable commerce approach," explains Dzösch. After all, composable commerce might weave together 20 software solutions, each with distinct configuration quirks, update cycles, and security requirements.
Ideally, composability gives merchants “best-of-breed” tools for specific challenges in their markets. But the ground truth is tricky: “You can have the best tool for every possible problem, but now you have a new problem: making them all sync up,” Dzösch adds.
Thus, merchants need to strike a delicate balance that keeps all their apps playing nice with each other. You may end up choosing a preconfigured tool that’s not the “best” one for your needs, but it’s the right choice because it dovetails best with other applications.
A winning composable commerce strategy to address these kinds of challenges includes:
Goals and priorities
Start by identifying the outcomes you hope to achieve. The next step is to establish priorities for what must be done as soon as possible and what can be pushed into the future.
Every software solution has a default configuration that can be customized for your unique needs. High-priority items should make the wisest use of these custom settings, while low-priority items can stick with defaults; you can customize later if needed.
Trustworthy partners
Most merchants don’t have the in-house talent to build an ecosystem on their own, so they team up with development agencies, system integrators, or solution providers. You need partners with a deep track record who understand the nuances of your market and customers.
Cost considerations
In addition to hiring development talent, you’ll be purchasing licenses for applications, plugins, and extensions either up-front or by a recurring subscription. Make sure you’ve accounted for everything that generates fees – including support activities of your developers and software providers.
Must-have qualities of composable commerce technologies
The strongest composable commerce tools:
Support openness and standards: Open-source software using common programming languages and accepted best practices usually provide the most flexibility for composable commerce. Shopware, for instance, makes all of its code available, while its developer community keeps working on updates and bug fixes.
Evolve with future needs: Dzösch encourages looking for platforms that do not require highly specific skills that might be obsolete in a few years. “The more generic the skills you need for this kind of tool, the better, because you can adapt it to other systems in the future.”
Help automate manual tasks: Every time you hand off repetitive, manual tasks to software, you give your people more time for your customers and your business.
Keep you moving forward: No matter what the marketplace does, you cannot expect it to stand in place. “The worst shop is the one that is not changing,” Dzösch says. Everything about your composable commerce ecosystem should support your ability to not just keep pace with your customers, but to get out ahead of them.
Composable Commerce – Frequently asked questions and answers
What is composable commerce?
Composable commerce is a business strategy that puts the business and customer first: You first identify the needs of your market and your company, and then you compose the best technology solution to meet these needs. This helps you avoid getting locked into technologies that limit your freedom to serve your market.
How does composable commerce help companies thrive amid economic uncertainty?
Merchants can keep the parts of their technology ecosystem that still work while plugging in agile solutions to specific market challenges. This holds costs down at a time when staying cashflow-positive is essential and frees merchants to adapt quickly to changing market conditions.
What must merchants do to ensure success with composable commerce?
Start with a strong strategy based on a thorough understanding of your markets across the short, medium and long terms. Partner with trusted experts to help implement a flexible technology solution. Avoid lock-in that will limit your freedom when markets pivot and customer habits evolve.
How does Shopware support the composable commerce approach?
Shopware is built on an API-first architecture, allowing for seamless integration of third-party modules. Its modular platform makes it easy to create highly customized storefronts while ensuring scalability and future readiness.
