Composable commerce is a component-based design approach to eCommerce shopping.
In practice, this allows companies to pick and choose the combination of software and services that best align with their sales and revenue goals while simultaneously improving the end-user experience. Along with reduced complexity and increased efficiency, a composable approach can also help companies more effectively meet eCommerce key performance indicators (KPIs). Here’s how.
Key Traits of Composable Commerce
Composable solutions are different for every company — this is the core of their value proposition at scale. There are, however, three traits shared by truly composable frameworks: loud-native, component-based and tech-agnostic.
Cloud-native
Cloud-native composable commerce software means it runs in the cloud and all its functionalities are natively integrated with core components of major cloud providers rather than migrated over from standalone or legacy versions. In addition, companies can run cloud-native software using the provider of their choice, from Google Cloud to Azure to AWS.
Cloud-native software offers exceptional scalability, improved resilience and increased adaptability.
Component-based
Composable commerce is component-based. Software and applications used in composable commerce are comprised of modules that can be developed, deployed and maintained independently. This offers several benefits for businesses.
First is troubleshooting. If problems arise in an application, IT teams can trace the source to a component rather than the software at scale. This component can be removed, assessed and reintegrated, all without impacting overall application functionality. Component-based software can also save time and effort in new service deployment. Rather than build new software tools from scratch, businesses can use lightweight APIs to connect key components.
Tech-agnostic
Finally, composable commerce is tech-agnostic. Businesses can pick and choose the technology and vendors they want for specific components and then use APIs to connect these components without running into problems with proprietary purchases.
For example, businesses might choose to build eCommerce storefronts that use a mix of Java, Node.js, php, Swift and .NET. Because each component can be isolated from those around it, companies never need to worry about being locked into walled gardens or limited by proprietary technologies.
How Composable Commerce Helps Companies Meet KPIs
KPIs help companies measure the impact of sales and marketing efforts and help inform new strategies. These KPIs are based on collected and curated data — some of the most common include shopping cart abandonment rates, sales conversion rates and customer acquisition costs (CAC). For example, if cart abandonment rates are increasing, this could indicate a problem with product pages or checkout processes.
Composable commerce enables companies to be agile and react fast to data and insights, allowing them to execute their strategic decisions ASAP. This is critical as data volume and velocity rapidly increase — even day-old information could be out of date.
With the ability to seamlessly connect many tools into one composable commerce ecosystem, businesses can easily pull information from any of those cloud-based tools on demand, providing a real-time snapshot of current KPIs. Indicators can then be compared to both historical and current data to track ongoing trends, while data analysis tools can help predict future behavior.
Consider the cart abandonment KPI. A business discovers the rate is 75%, up from 50% the week before; further data analysis finds that most cart abandonments are tied to a specific product page, leading IT teams to discover an issue with page details not updating. On a composable stack, the IT team can quickly fix the problem, and cart KPIs return to normal. In a non-composable model, this kind of deep dive and quick resolution isn’t easily attainable. When it comes to CAC, meanwhile, data pulled from software modules can help organizations see where they’re spending the most, where it has an impact and where they can streamline processes.
The ability to quickly obtain KPI data also helps improve the customer shopping experience. If customers encounter and report problems with product pages, carts or checkout processes, teams can quickly resolve these issues and keep customers engaged.
Calm, Cool and Composed
Composable commerce gives companies the visibility, agility and scalability they need to build exceptional eCommerce experiences. This model also makes it possible for businesses to track and manage KPIs on demand, in turn, allowing them to evaluate current operations, pinpoint potential problems and take swift action to get their KPIs back on track.
