‘Composable commerce’: everything you need to know

White Stuff

Are you keeping up with consumers? Or, more specifically, are your ecommerce platforms keeping pace with your channel-hopping shoppers’ expectations?

Fast-moving trends and shifting shopping behaviours mean businesses need to be flexible, adaptable and innovative to stay ahead of their competition. But this can be difficult for online players stuck with a legacy, one-size-fits-all ecommerce solution.

A new ecommerce trend report suggests that composable commerce could be the answer. As more brands and retailers overhaul their digital store fronts and switch to this modular approach (see lifestyle retailer White Stuff’s case study below), might a composable approach be right for your business?

Composing your online operations

Traditional ecommerce solutions – often referred to as “monolith” systems – are often holding back businesses from keeping up with today’s omnichannel shopper. They can slow down time to market, which is needed in these dynamic, trend-led times. They can lead to a lack of efficiency and innovation, contributing to poor customer experiences through outdated or limited online experiences.

Legacy systems can even increase vulnerability to security threats. This is because, for many brands and retailers, back-office ecommerce operations are tied to the front-end, consumer-facing element, so it can take too long to make any changes, let alone add the kind of updates that Gen Z consumers demand online.

Meet the composable theory: a modular, component-based approach to build, run and future-proof online ecommerce platforms across desktop websites, mobile stores and apps, that allows brands and retailers to flexibly integrate and remove different technologies as their websites evolve.

The term was coined by business management consultancy Gartner in 2020 as an evolution of the “headless commerce” concept, and has gathered momentum as an effective way for brands and retailers to free online operators from the restrictions of monolith systems.

From headless to composable

While the concept of headless commerce is to separate the front end from the back end of online operations, the composable approach adds a new level, enabling ecommerce teams to “compose” their websites and tech stacks with a mix of the best-in-class innovations that are most relevant to their specific customer. With this approach they can also personalise online experiences, add new functionalities, integrate new social channels or marketplaces, and remove tech that is no longer performing and upgrade to something new.

“We know you need [tech] partners in these categories: channels, marketing, operations and fulfilment. How you choose to architect them is based on your use case and needs – from “self-serve simple” all the way through complicated, partner-powered integrations for enterprise merchants,” says Sharon Gee, senior vice-president of sales and partnerships at Feedonomics, a product feed management system, which works with brands and retailers through a composable set-up owned by ecommerce platform BigCommerce, which works with White Stuff, Harvey Nichols and Muji, and others.

The approach can even help brands and retailers to operate different, personalised versions of the same site – for example, across different languages – with the same back end, and quickly and easily capitalise on new channels to keep up with market shifts.

White Stuff boosts customer experience with new composable website

White Stuff

British lifestyle retailer White Stuff launched in 1985 and now has more than 110 bricks-and-mortar stores.

Like many traditional, store-reliant businesses, it was hit by shop closures through the Covid-19 pandemic. But as consumers were forced to shift online, the business realised the potential of its digital operations – although it became evident that it needed to invest to overhaul its digital store fronts to deliver what today’s demanding customers require.

“Our previous online store was SaaS-based (software as a service), but the performance and site speed weren’t strong enough to keep up with customer demand,” says Steve Borg, the retailer’s technology and transformation director. “[Back then], changes were difficult to make [to the website], and it didn’t scale during busy times.”

The business wanted a new platform that could support an agile, flexible and fast tech stack that could easily adapt to future needs. Offering the best omnichannel experience to complement its store estate was important.

It decided to switch to a composable approach with the help of BigCommerce. It partnered with Apply Digital for implementation, and chose Vue Storefront for digital storefront, Amplience for content management, Akeneo for product information management, and Constructor for search and product discovery.

After switching to a composable site architecture, White Stuff’s site speed increased by 80%, and its mobile site speed increased 100%.

“We have a relatively small team, and therefore we look most importantly for good partners,” Borg says. “Running a proof of concept with BigCommerce’s open platform as the foundation combined with these best-of-breed integration partners gave us the confidence that these solutions would work really well together, would give us the headless solution we were looking for to keep things lightweight and would give us the ability to innovate quickly to deliver an incredible customer experience.

“The new tech stack [also] allows us to run multiple country sites efficiently and without duplication, supporting our international growth plan,” adds Borg.

“White Stuff now boasts a highly composable tech stack that capitalises on MACH Alliance principles, and gives it the ability to integrate platform and platform data, and then use that data to quickly pivot and adapt,” says Mark Adams, senior vice-president and general manager of EMEA at BigCommerce. “Its customers are ultimately the big winners here as White Stuff is able to add new features that enrich the website experience.”

“We now have more flexibility to do everything we want in the short term, and we are ready to adapt to whatever the future holds,” adds Borg.