Why Composable Commerce is the future of online sales

What we know about traditional eCommerce platforms

These days, we’re all looking towards innovation and user-centered design to connect with consumers in a unique way that captivates and grows our business. A simple strategy in a complex technology ecosystem where the reality of stability, adaptability and cost effectiveness are bumping heads in traditional eCommerce environments.?

Until now, eCommerce platforms have existed in a closed ecosystem where the front-end presentation layer of your website was built in a closed eCommerce environment; limited to the tools, maintenance schedules and ownership needed to keep your commerce machine in motion.?

Customization required a significant dedication of internal resources and carried the ongoing burden and technical debt of maintaining in-house expertise for continued upgrades without access to best-in-class tools needed to help differentiate and grow your business.?

Composable commerce responds with a cutting-edge approach by delivering unmatched flexibility, scalability, and agility to address the shortcomings of traditional eCommerce platforms.

Why - Composable Commerce delivers on:

• Future-proof scalability, optimization and customization
• Improved resource efficiency and cost reduction
• Unlocking the brand experience from back end complexities
• Complete freedom to integrate new and existing tools
• Multiplying workstreams for faster growth and innovation
• Unifying commerce infrastructure across all digital platforms

What - Composable Commerce solves:

• High costs from specialized and unforeseen customization
• Design and customer experience limitations
• Scalability issues to support peak hours/seasons
• Performance bottlenecks from single-platform dependency
• Vendor limitations of fixed ecosystems and tools
• Slow innovation bottlenecks due to platform architecture?

Who - Composable Commerce best suits companies that:

• Grow rapidly and need to scale, iterate and innovate
• Focus on customer experience to differentiate their brand
• Prioritize longer lasting and robust infrastructure
• Plan to change core systems like CRM, ERP or CMS
• Need flexibility to A/B test and try new tools
• Have fluctuating regional or seasonal operational needs
• Service many locations with separate systems and operations
• Want to combine online and traditional store infrastructure

Tip: It's best to consult with your expert partners to see how Composable Commerce can help you innovate in your eCommerce environment. Need a partner? Reach out: More About Vincit. Results. Not Hype.

What is “Headless” Composable Commerce?

The front end, known as the "head," in a traditional eCommerce ecosystem refers to the customer experience— what you see on your screen when accessing a website or application. Typically, this is tightly linked to the back end, which encompasses the server's stored data and its structure.

Traditionally, the front end is directly connected to the back end, that includes the servers and data. Because these systems are custom built, those traditional eCommerce ecosystems are limited to a specific front-end framework, resulting in a disjointed or aging customer experience.

Composable commerce architecture represents a decoupled approach designed to disseminate content to any platform via APIs. In this model, the architecture prioritizes background processes to maintain data accessibility for independent front-end applications utilizing commerce APIs.

The backend, inclusive of infrastructure and security, operates in the background. These components communicate via API calls, enabling developers to employ any device or application for their product or service. This flexibility is crucial as customers increasingly adopt new ordering methods, such as through televisions and digital home assistants.

In essence, composable commerce architecture disassociates the front end of a commerce website from the back end layer, empowering businesses and developers to utilize any device or application to deliver their products or services. This is particularly significant as consumers embrace new and unconventional ordering avenues, including utilizing audio functionalities on their phones, digital home assistants, or even televisions.

How Composable Commerce Reduces the Cost of Your Infrastructure

Traditional eCommerce platforms require a greater investment of time when integrating new technologies, managing updates and servicing existing issues– an area where Composable Commerce marks the shift to a new paradigm.

• Streamlined Integration: Unlike traditional eCommerce platforms with independent management and disjointed user experiences, headless commerce seamlessly integrates with a centralized backend.

• Efficient Front end Updates: Headless commerce architecture enables swift front end updates without impacting the backend, a notable advantage over the cumbersome process in traditional commerce, which often consumes significant time.

• Enhanced Scalability: The rapid scalability afforded by headless commerce, attributed to its centralized backend framework, is a key factor prompting many businesses to adopt this model over traditional commerce, which typically scales at a slower pace.

• Unified Commerce Infrastructure: For many businesses, the development of their online store was done independently of their brick and mortar and app-based platforms, leading to multiple streams of IT administration and feature development. With CC, existing APIs can be used to unify those development streams, taking advantage of existing infrastructure to develop the same functionality across all digital platforms.

Maximizing Innovation and the Effectiveness of Your Infrastructure

One of the greatest advantages of headless commerce is the native flexibility attributed to its API-based architecture. By design, Composable Commerce enables comprehensive API integration to supply everything from content and processing to innovative front end technologies that help to enhance your customer experience, deliver innovative technologies and integrate the back end tools that help to maximize the effectiveness of your business.

• Uncompromising Brand Voice: Creating a lasting brand impression is an art form often met with technical limitations and impacted by the importance of performance in the eCommerce space. By decoupling the front end from the back, the headless approach of Composable Commerce gives the flexibility for developers to incorporate innovative technologies that favor flexible design and can be easily integrated with technologies that accelerate the delivery of your brand experience for a cohesive voice and aesthetic that best conveys the personality of your brand.
• Simplified A/B Testing: Leveraging frontend flexibility, headless commerce facilitates quicker and simpler A/B testing for optimizing user experiences. Developers can create and compare two user experiences to identify conversion-enhancing strategies, a process more laborious in traditional commerce.
• Integrate any CMS, ERP or Automation Suite: Given the freedom to utilize any API, you have the opportunity to opt for the platforms that suit your needs best. Selecting a CMS and ERP that align with your needs and offer the features that enhance your business objectives. Additionally, this allows your team and technology partners to manage and update content and pricing seamlessly without affecting backend operations.
• Take Advantage of Trending technologies: The API-based structure empowers your front-end development team to respond swiftly to trends and customize customer experiences without disrupting backend operations. This enables testing of new features, fine-tuning adjustments, and staying ahead of trends. The outcome is heightened performance, increased conversion rates, and enhanced bottom-line results.

Unlock the ability to scale your eCommerce at every level

Another rationale behind businesses opting for a headless commerce model is its capacity for rapid scalability. With all platforms converging on a centralized backend framework, headless commerce facilitates swift scalability for brands, outpacing the rate achievable with a traditional commerce model.

• Scalable Infrastructure: Composable commerce allows businesses to scale specific parts of their system independently, ensuring high-traffic areas such as product pages or checkout processes can manage increased loads without impacting the entire system.
• Content Acceleration: In a closed eCommerce environment, acceleration is limited because of the connection by the front and back ends. With a headless Composable Commerce, true content acceleration is possible by compressing images, code and delivering front end functionality closer to the user for the fastest possible experience.
• SEO Optimization: Traditional eCommerce takes speed out of your hands, but with headless Composable Commerce, your development team can control site performance. They can implement fast, modern solutions that prevent even the most impatient customers from clicking away.

Opening the Door to User-Centered Design and a Tailored Customer Experience (CX)

Unconstrained by rigid frontend designs and capable of seamlessly integrating across multiple platforms, headless commerce architecture allows for highly personalized user experiences, contrasting with the limitations of traditional commerce.

• Independent Customer Experience: Delivering a seamless and memorable customer experience provides a significant competitive advantage in modern business. By switching to a headless commerce architecture, you gain the flexibility to tailor your platform to your audience, offering an exceptional user experience without the constraints of traditional commerce models.
• Customize User Journeys: In today's market, conversion opportunities span multiple devices and applications. Conversion isn't always a sale; it can also mean a subscription or a social media follow. With headless commerce, touchpoints can be tailored to the customer journey, delivering the right messaging at the right time.
• Innovative 3rd-Party Tools: Unlock the freedom of giving your marketing and creative teams state-of-the-art CMS tools to manage the customer experience, while keeping essential eCommerce back-office tasks like product inventory management, pricing, and shipping within a dedicated eCommerce platform.

Future-Proofing your online store with Composable Commerce

Headless commerce architecture holds promise as a potential necessity for eCommerce adaptation to evolving customer demands. As new apps, devices, and platforms proliferate, traditional commerce may struggle to keep pace with the demands of creating, maintaining, and upgrading interfaces.

• Vendor Freedom: Unlike traditional eCommerce ecosystems, Composable Commerce enables developers to pull data, content and functionality from any/all sources. This approach gives access to best-in-class tools and allows for the selective testing of new tools and infrastructure on specific pages on your site. Vincit has experience both integrating and identifying best-in-class services, tailored to specific business needs.
• Driven by API & Microservices: At its foundation, Composable Commerce relies on the concept of connecting core functionality to existing APIs and Microservices that can connect directly to your existing infrastructure or to purpose-built APIs. Vincit excels at swiftly developing both prototypes and complex, scalable web services. With a team of highly skilled experts, Vincit has the talent and experience to realize almost any vision.

An Efficient, Scalable and Customizable Future

Having the foundation to provide an unforgettable customer experience stands as a significant competitive edge for your brand. A transition to headless Composable Commerce architecture grants you the freedom to craft a user-centered platform, unencumbered by the technical and creative limitations inherent in traditional eCommerce models.

Reach out to our seasoned Vincit team to learn how we can assist you in strategizing and bolstering sales with a foundation built around business and customer needs. Our distinctive methodology at Vincit provides expert guidance, cutting-edge technological solutions, and agile teams that yield optimal outcomes for your enterprise.