Create your online shop with composable commerce

Composable commerce – the future of online shops?

Increasingly larger shares of retail are moving to the Internet. And although social networks are gaining importance through social commerce, the foundation of most companies’ success remains their online shop. In the past, companies usually relied on the all-in-one solutions from the market’s big players when they wanted to set up e-commerce in their shop. These are standard systems that offer all functions and services from a single source. For the most part, they can also not be separated or expanded on because compatibility with other manufacturers is sometimes problematic. The complex, standardized structure of these shop systems also means implementing changes is very time-consuming. Therefore, providers sometimes react less quickly to dynamic changes on the market.

Meanwhile, however, a certain shift can be seen: composable commerce is increasingly gaining ground against one-size-fits-all solutions. In composable commerce, companies on the market select precisely those solutions they need for their individual shop system from highly specialized providers. This gives them more flexibility while building and expanding their own e-commerce, and is made possible by the fact that solutions can more often be networked and are compatible with each other.

Reasons behind the success of composable commerce

There are various arguments in favor of the composable commerce approach when companies are looking to build and expand their own online shop.

#1 Faster development via specialized providers

In composable commerce, companies compile a system from multiple individual solutions. Since their manufacturers are specialists and handle payment services in detail, for example, they can develop the best solutions for this area in the least amount of time.

#2 Direct response to dynamic market requirements

The development speed also pays off for companies building their online shop according to the principle of composable commerce: they can respond more quickly to the dynamic requirements of their customers. For the company, this might mean simply adding the new service of a provider on the market, instead of waiting for the further development of its uniform system.

#3 Competition in e-commerce

There is a great deal of competition in e-commerce. More and more companies have set up their own online shops in recent years. As a result of this escalating situation, they themselves have less time for the trial-and-error development of their own solutions and are more dependent on market-ready systems.

Practical experience with composable commerce

Composable commerce has become much more widespread in recent years. This is also the case at the kernpunkt agency, whose founder and CEO Matthias Steinforth tells us about his approach:

The integration of external microservices enables both greater security and a high degree of flexibility. We recommend that online retailers regularly review and evaluate their processes. However, which areas can be handled internally to ensure an optimal customer experience remains an individual decision depending on the respective business model. From a technical point of view, however, the digital processes in a modular shop system can be excellently mapped via microservices using API connections via the cloud. The basis for this technology is provided by the MACH architecture (Microservices, API-first, Cloud-native, Headless) and, more broadly, the composable commerce approach.”

Long-term customer relationships lead to success

Online shops are an important medium for building and maintaining customer relationships. They are the place where key interactions between companies and their customers take place. All companies should be aware of this when they create and use the platform. Matthias Steinforth also emphasizes this.

Matthias Steinforth: “Long-term customer relationships are basically only created through continuous interactions based on the individual needs of the customers. Online retailers can achieve this by integrating a loyalty and promotion engine like Talon.One. Designed as a microservice, the application enables personalized and targeted marketing campaigns. At the same time, provided it meets the requirements of the MACH architecture, such as with commercetools, the company’s own online shop is elevated to the next level.

By integrating a customer loyalty app such as this, online retailers can create their own customer loyalty programs, individual discount campaigns, and personalized offers based on individual customers’ behavior and preferences. In addition, depending on the customer, individualized content can be displayed in the e-commerce project – this is where Contentful comes into play as another microservice and content management service. Individualizing the customer experience with digital tools not only strengthens customer loyalty, but also increases customer satisfaction and promotes long-term customer relationships.”

Composable commerce or all-in-one – it’s the experience that counts

Jaromir Fojcik, founder and CEO of the creativestyle agency, emphasizes that at the end of the day, it’s the customer experience alone that takes center stage:

For companies, one thing should be given priority above all else: finding the best solution for their individual needs (and thus those of their customers) when building their online shop. At present, it is becoming apparent that composable commerce services in particular, which can be linked to one another, achieve very good results. It remains to be seen whether their flexibility will replace the intuitive, uniformly operable all-in-one solutions in the long term.