Using Composable Commerce to Increase Basket Size

What is composable commerce?

As you’re probably catching on, composable commerce selects best-in-class commerce components and combines them into a customized solution. The “composing” enables you to achieve a perfect combination of tech, creating Packaged Business Capabilities (PBCs). The PBC has a special capability within the application, usually composed of third-party software.

For example, a retailer may require a new checkout process and a shopping cart for their storefront – functions typically found in top eCommerce platforms. Simultaneously, they may require supply chain management, marketing, and the ability to add new features to the marketplace, which a PIM can provide. The point is, rather than having one solution that handles the most basic function for each component, composable commerce allows you to employ the best vendors for each function to create a single comprehensive platform.

Composable commerce advantages

Here are some of the top benefits of composable commerce:

It is flexible and allows for customization

Composable commerce provides flexibility and customization capabilities for retailers. It does so by breaking down the composable commerce platform into smaller, independent components, otherwise known as micro-services. This enables businesses to select the best-of-breed solutions for each function.

It also ensures they have the right tools in place to meet their specific business requirements. This approach also facilitates customization and integration. In turn, this allows businesses to respond quickly to changing market conditions.

It is efficient and scalable

Another benefit of composable commerce is scalability. Businesses can add or remove platform components as they grow. The platform can handle increased traffic and complex automations without disrupting business performance. In addition to this, composable commerce can help businesses reduce expenses, as they only have to pay for the components they require.

It enhances the omnichannel customer experience

Even further, composable commerce enables businesses to provide a more personalized customer experience at every storefront. With the composable commerce omnichannel potential, businesses can provide a seamless and consistent shopping experience across all touchpoints. This is done by integrating various channels such as eCommerce, mobile apps, and even physical stores – and all software associated with these areas. Businesses can also collect and analyze customer data from these various touchpoints to better understand customer preferences and behaviors. Thus, they can tailor their marketing and product offerings accordingly.

It enables faster time-to-market

Composable commerce offers businesses a reduced time-to-market by rapidly deploying and integrating features and functionality due to deep integration within the eCommerce tech stack. This is especially useful for businesses that need to react quickly to changing market trends or launch new products and services.

It lowers risk and enhances resilience

Composable commerce can also assist businesses in lowering risk and increasing resilience. If one component fails, the rest of the platform will still function. Furthermore, composable commerce can make the platform easier to update and maintain, lowering the likelihood of downtime and security breaches.

So, there are numerous composable commerce benefits for all kinds of businesses. Businesses that use this architecture can optimize their digital commerce operations and provide a better commerce experience for new and existing customers alike.

eComm technologies are becoming more specialized

Composable commerce technology is growing more specialized as the landscape of digital commerce changes. The increased complexity of contemporary eCommerce platforms and the requirement for firms to quickly adjust to shifting consumer demands and disruptive developments are the main drivers of this trend.

Retailers can become more responsive to shifting consumer demands and achieve a competitive edge faster with composable commerce. Businesses can select the best-of-breed solutions for each function by segmenting their platforms into smaller, autonomous parts with specific functions, ensuring they have the instruments necessary to meet their unique requirements.

Because of their adaptability, companies can react swiftly to shifts in the market and give customers a more engaging and hyper-personalized experience.

Proactive vs Reactive

You can also react wisely to disruptive developments. Businesses may experiment with new technologies and business models thanks to composable commerce, all without having to completely revamp their platform. For instance, to increase sales and consumer engagement, a shop might incorporate a brand-new AI-powered recommendation engine into their online store.

Rather than attempting to do everything, a lot of tech businesses are concentrating on becoming the greatest in one area of expertise. Although this is a good thing, it may also deprive eCommerce businesses of essential services. Composable commerce provides an answer to this issue by enabling companies to integrate the best-of-breed products from several suppliers to build a customized platform that satisfies all of their requirements.

With composable commerce, you can take advantage of extremely specialized, cutting-edge technologies to proficiently execute every essential task, resulting in the ideal tech stack. Businesses can gain access to state-of-the-art technology and knowledge in fields like omnichannel commerce, artificial intelligence, and personalization by utilizing specialized components from the top platforms out there – may of which are moving further into composability. By doing this, companies may maintain their competitive edge and provide outstanding client experiences.

The movement toward specialized, modular commerce technology is a positive development that can make companies more adaptable, competitive, and nimble in the digital era. Through meticulous component selection and the application of a composable design, enterprises may construct a robust and efficient eCommerce instance tailored to their specific business needs.

How composable commerce works

Composable commerce, also known as composable commerce architecture, is a contemporary approach to developing and managing digital commerce platforms. Unlike traditional monolithic platforms, composable commerce divides the platform into smaller, independent components called microservices. This composable architecture enables businesses to optimize their digital commerce operations by selecting best-in-class solutions for each function, ensuring they have the right tools in place to meet their specific business requirements.

One of the primary advantages of composable commerce is its flexibility. Businesses can easily deploy and integrate new components as needed, without having to completely overhaul their ecommerce solution. This agility allows businesses to easily deal with changing market conditions and offer a more personalized shopping experience.

Unlike traditional commerce platforms, which frequently require businesses to use an all-in-one solution, composable commerce allows businesses to mix and match components to create a customized platform that meets their specific needs. This flexibility can result in significant cost savings and increased efficiency.

To summarize, composable commerce provides numerous advantages for businesses of all sizes, including increased flexibility, scalability, and agility. Businesses that use a composable architecture can optimize their digital commerce operations and provide a better commerce experience.

Cloud-Native

Using a “composable” approach also leverages cloud-native business capabilities enabling you to create a practically future-proof digital commerce platform. As a result, it is quickly becoming the state-of-the-art strategy e-comm businesses prefer. You create headless commerce, separating the front end and back end of an e-commerce application so you can build what you need when you need based on how you want it to work. In turn, you improve the customer experience because your agility enables you to keep up with emerging touch points without updates to both your front and back end. Cloud architecture also reduces the need for time-consuming upgrades, as each tech company manages this for you.

Composable commerce: Working in tandem to increase basket size

With a PIM, brands can connect directly to their creative marketing software, enabling both technologies to perform on a more effective level. Product information and enriched catalog creative work together to convert customers. A PIM automates the attribute-assigning process for brands, providing them with incredibly granular product imagery options they can use for A/B testing. In addition, a centralized hub lets you pull enriched data from one location instead of spending time searching for information.

The PIM + enriched catalog creative combo creates a whole greater than the sum of its parts when these two tools work together – the very basis of composable commerce. They build off each other, so your product feed becomes more productive and efficient. You increase basket size by:

• Updating and improving: A single source of truth makes it easy to enrich existing data, so customers have the information they need to make informed purchases.
• Onboarding new items: Established conventions simplify onboarding new products to expand offerings while improving information quality so customers can make more purchases.
• Creating seamless marketing: Your marketing experts can enrich product information with descriptions that are brand appropriate and create an omnichannel shopping experience across all touch points to instill trust and increase sales.
• Improving customer experience: Consistent, high-quality information and content across the most trusted marketplaces expands your reach while improving customer experiences.

Technologies are enhanced when used alongside complementary best-in-class tech.

A new freedom to experiment

With composable commerce, you have a testing ground to try different methods and practices for leveraging technologies together. As an API-first architecture, the functionality works independently yet symbiotically, enabling you the freedom to add or remove solutions to remain agile.

Bottom line

This was an overview of how you can use composable commerce for retail and eCommerce. Do remember that though that composable commerce requires ongoing maintenance and experimentation if you want to reap long-term benefits. Check out Pimberly to learn more about what a composable Product Information Management (PIM) solution looks like.