What's the difference between headless and composable commerce?
The e-commerce software industry is inventing new terminology quicker than coronavirus can churn out a new variant! Early last year, "unified commerce" took over from "omni-channel" as the latest buzzword, this was then swiftly followed by "headless" as the latest and greatest in digital technology. 2022 has seen "composable commerce" displace "headless" as the latest bright young thing!
So, WTF does all this mean, and what does it mean to you as a digital retailer?
1) Headless technology: decoupling the presentation layer (consumer interface/user experience/content management) from the application layer (cart/checkout/promotions/inventory).
Example: use Wordpress for Content Management and use Big Commerce for the ecommerce capability.
Why do this? Improved content management or experience management for your customers.
Pre-requisites: That you have a comprehensive user/digital experience strategy underpinned by a business case, that you have clearly defined functional and non-functional requirements that you can use to ensure any proposed solution delivers what you need and that you have the capability to produce content that will be used by it.
2) Composable commerce: a business centric grouping of experiences that combines experience, tech and capabilities to provide a discrete business activity e.g. a checkout requires promotional capability, inventory checking capability, delivery option checking capability, transaction processing capability. So the checkout might require multiple applications to deliver the experience to the customer. Composable commerce sees the definition of these business centric experiences before assessing the tech stack required to deliver them.
Example: use Wordpress for Content Management and use Big Commerce for the e-commerce capability.
Why do this? Improved content management or experience management for your customers.
Pre-requisites: That you have a comprehensive user/digital experience strategy underpinned by a business case, that you have clearly defined functional and non-functional requirements that you can use to ensure any proposed solution delivers what you need, and that you have the content and capability to produce content that will be used by it.
Can you see what I did there? :)
So, are headless and composable commerce the same thing? No.
Headless commerce is a technical solution to a requirement that delivers "best of breed" user experiences. ie using the best tools available for the job.
Composable commerce focuses on the business requirements, capabilities and tech to deliver discrete customer experiences before selecting the technology.
So what does that mean to a digital retailer? Simple;
1) Understand specifically what customer experiences you want to deliver.
2) Determine the gap between where you are at today from a tech, process, data and people capability perspective
3) Define the requirements that will fill the gap and select the technology that provides the closest fit
Do not let the tail wag the dog! Identify your business objectives and requirements before selecting the technology! Don't buy a piece of software and ask "so how are we going to use this?"