With rapid advancements in consumer demands and eCommerce trends, businesses need to develop innovative and adaptable approaches to identify and solve use cases.
One effective solution companies can leverage to deploy digital transformation initiatives is composable commerce. This strategy enables organizations to select and integrate industry-leading technology into a custom application designed to optimize digital experiences.
So, what do you need to know about composable commerce, and how can you devise and implement a composable system to remain agile in today’s volatile digital landscape?
When selecting technology and software components to build composable architecture, it’s essential to outline your organization’s digital transformation journey. This requires formulating key business criteria to establish initial needs, deliver value, maximize ROI, and achieve your end goals.
Once you’ve determined a framework for your company’s transformational efforts, you can execute a phased integration approach that involves testing various components in increments to assess potential value, attain short-term ROI goals, and obtain crucial feedback, allowing you to refine and hone your strategy. As Michael Scholz says, by “starting with a holistic and comprehensive approach,” you can “start small and grow into a new platform.”
According to Jozef Stawarz, International Engineering Head at Alcon, companies must consider the constraints around platform integration. Composable commerce solutions involve multiple components, platforms, and technologies, so Jozef maintains that, unlike traditional systems where “you build an eCommerce system, pick a platform, and build within it,” companies need to “build around” their chosen platform to accommodate a multi-phased approach and complex systems.
Integrating designated technology and software into a comprehensive architecture requires modern approaches to enhance performance.
According to Brian Gilmore, Director of Digital Engagement at EPAM, MACH (microservices-based, API-first, cloud-native, and headless) enables businesses “to create a modern distributed architecture in the cloud that’s best-of-breed.” The infrastructure incorporates platforms and consolidates organizational capabilities seamlessly, allowing you to customize solutions to solve company requirements and individual use cases.
Additionally, each MACH platform is programmed to manage specific operational features, including product pricing and categories, order placement, user login and profile creation, and shopping cart optimization. MACH’s flexibility gives you the opportunity to exchange components, maximizing business adaptability and time-to-market.
A necessary requirement of composable commerce is enhancing customers’ shopping and purchase experiences. When optimizing composable systems for the consumer, Jake Athey, VP of Marketing and Sales at Acquia, notes that “ the eCommerce experience needs to be richer, more complete with that balance of objective and subjective information, and come across as a seamless, simple, and fast experience on any device.”
To accomplish this, Jake recommends adopting digital or hybrid shopping experiences and amplifying design and performance on digital platforms. When focusing on website design, it’s important to utilize clear visuals and comparison tools to emphasize product attributes. By combining design features with optimized performance, you can create a streamlined front-end user shopping experience.
