Three reasons to go composable

1. Flexible adaptability to evolving needs

To stay ahead of the competition, online businesses must quickly adapt to changing consumer behaviours and market needs. Rigid, monolithic digital commerce platforms rarely facilitate the agile adoption of new features. Composable commerce architecture, on the other hand, is built from separate, modular components that operate independently but integrate seamlessly with each other.  

Composable commerce allows businesses to independently manage and develop components like payment gateways, product management, and customer engagement features. They can opt for standard components for less critical functions, while investing in best-of-breed, custom solutions or creating their own tailored components in areas where they can gain a competitive edge. Composable components make introducing new functionalities or channels effortless, as there is no need to revamp the whole system.

2. Build a reliable, long-term tech stack piece by piece

Composable commerce allows you to choose reliable and long-life components to handle basic e-commerce functionalities. When a single component reaches the end of its lifecycle, whether due to desired functionality or scalability limitations, it can simply be replaced with a new one. Thanks to the modular structure, the entire system doesn’t become obsolete. This is not only cost-efficient but also reduces the need for large-scale investments or complete system overhauls, which positively impacts Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).

Of course, doing a complete overhaul of an existing digital commerce platform is a massive undertaking – and often unnecessary. The beauty of composable components is that businesses can start by replacing or updating individual components as needed. This approach, called unplatforming, gives you flexibility and a chance to test different solutions

3. Avoid unnecessary vendor lock-in with additional components

Monolithic digital commerce platforms can lock companies in the supplier's ecosystem, which is often less ideal. Businesses looking to test new AI features or shopping cart functionalities may find themselves at the mercy of the vendor's product roadmap and release schedules.

With composable commerce, companies can mix and match components from different vendors, integrating specialised solutions like payments or search from provider Y with core functionalities from provider X, along with custom-built components.

For core e-commerce functions, it’s typically more efficient to rely on a single vendor's solution rather than splitting them across multiple providers, both from a technical and licensing perspective. The key is to choose a solution that plays well together with additional components.

By leveraging composable commerce, companies can develop their digital services at the pace of best-of-breed solutions, free from vendor lock-in restrictions.