The evolution of ecommerce architectures from monolithic systems to more agile modular frameworks— composable commerce —is redefining the industry. Quite literally, actually.
This shift is dictated by an urgent business need for flexibility, scalability, and the ability to selectively integrate the best technologies into their tech stack in hopes of enhancing customer experiences, meeting operational efficiencies, and remaining competitive in the overly saturated market.
During our panel discussion with the experts from Alokai, Coveo , Contentful , and VML we’ve established that composable architecture itself is a trend among ecommerce technologies, with 62% of respondents highlighting its importance.
But more importantly, we’ve discovered the key drivers behind fast-tracked composable popularization in the sector. So here are 5 main reasons for accelerated composable commerce adoption by ecommerce merchants:
1. The growing demand for business flexibility and scalability
The principle of composable commerce lies in its inherent flexibility. It allows businesses to choose the best components for their specific needs rather than being tied to the constraints of a single vendor system.
There are simply too many factors affecting your ecommerce operations to keep in mind:
Rapidly changing customer expectations;
Unpredictable market dynamics;
Hastened technology advancements;
Complex omnichannel operations management for global companies.
All of these and more impact your revenue in the long run, which is why being able to react and change your setup quickly becomes an invaluable advantage. So much so, in fact, that the ecommerce sector has reached the point where agility is now a necessity, not just a competitive edge:
But where there is freedom of movement, there often is a paralysis of choice. Hence the next point:
2. Enhanced integration capabilities
Monolithic platforms let their customers build all the essential ecommerce storefront elements, such as payment, search, or checkout. The trouble usually arises when you try to go beyond the basic stack and try to integrate with the latest technological solutions, such as AI recommendations, BNPL functionality, or seamless social commerce engine.
Modularity that comes with composable architecture solves that issue. With freedom of integration being among the top anticipated benefits from transitioning to a composable stack, it’s importance cannot be overlooked:
Experimentation is a crucial part of the composable approach. It’s not just about many different channels that we need to engage our customers. It’s about the actual capabilities, the setups what we’re creating for our ecmployees responsible for delivering these experiences and creating customer engagement. That’s really where composability has some huge advantages because we can adapt them to the needs of particular teams doing the work.
Nicole France, Chief Evangelist @ Contentful
3. Deepening personalization in customer experience is a must
Personalization is not just about guessing what your customers need these days and delivering it to them. In many ways, it’s about big data analytics, tracking, and market analysis. However, it’s also about speed.
It’s not enough to match the customer’s preference. You need to be the first one to do so.
We’ve coined a phrase at VML—”compressed commerce”—covering the notion that customers want to move from inspiration to purchase a lot quicker and more efficiently than before. We see that 63% of consumers prioritize getting inspiration from purchase all the way through to the decision as quickly as possible. Such reactivity to trends seems to be driving a lot of the movement from a technological perspective.
John Iles, Enterprise solutions consultant @ VML
The flexibility of a composable stack allows you to integrate the right tools to meet all the prerequisite requirements to achieve these levels of personalization. Monolithic platforms, however, may struggle with such reactivity.
4. Achieving omnichannel consistency can be challenging for multi-brand global operations
Composable commerce facilitates a unified and consistent experience across all customer touchpoints, essential in today’s fragmented shopping environments.
Back when so-called traditional–or monolithic–stacks were built, you had a laptop, a desktop, a mobile, and a tablet. Those were the journeys and places where customers could turn up. Whereas now you’ve got things like metaverse; you’ve got people wanting to transact via TikTok and social channels; you really do have to think about how to show up consistently as a brand across all those different experiences.
John Iles, Enterprise solutions consultant @ VML
Businesses can deploy uniform functionalities and interfaces across different platforms—from web to mobile to IoT devices—ensuring a seamless user experience that boosts customer loyalty and brand consistency.
It may be especially important for global multibrand stores , as the right composable setup facilitates making changes across all storefronts at once, while also maintaining a possibility to customize specific regions, channels, or brands.
And the right setup will make managing these operations easier, too!
5. Speed to market is all that matters, really
The modular nature of composable commerce dramatically reduces the time to market for new features and innovations.
One of the most radically different things in a composable world versus a traditional monolithic world is the delivery model itself. When you’re working on one platform and everything is tightly coupled together, by virtue of the technical architecture you have to release everything at once. In a composable environment, you break down those dependencies and you push a lot of quality gates back into the teams, as long as the theme is sort of self-governing. It’s much faster in terms of getting features into the hands of customers.
John Iles, Enterprise solutions consultant @ VML
Rolling out new features shaves off months of development time with the composable approach. And the faster you get to market, the higher the chance you beat your competitors to it.
Addressing challenges and strategic considerations
While all of this sounds great, it’s important to recognize that composable architecture is not for everyone and it won’t be a magical remedy against all your ecommerce struggles. It’s a powerful way to bypass some of the common challenges, but it’s not an easy (nor is it a cheap) task.
Transitioning to a composable architecture requires careful planning and strategy. It’s crucial for businesses to evaluate their core needs, the readiness of their existing systems for integration, and the potential complexity of managing multiple vendors and APIs.
One of the key reasons people decide against going composable is a fear of failure. You don’t want to do something wrong or the company has already invested in their existing tech stack and you’re holding on to it for lots of different reasons. Maybe you don’t want to do it internally, maybe you don’t want to give up on the investment. But the solution is simple: you need to learn how to fail fast. You need to start experimenting a bit, opening up!
Louise Hagström, Director of Strategic Alliances & Channel EMEA @ Coveo
Start with frontend to minimize the risks
However, starting small with a specific business area or function can mitigate risks and provide learnings that inform broader implementation strategies. For example, at Alokai, we encourage our clients to start with the frontend, while running their core backend operations as usual. This way, they can still leverage the strengths of their monolithic architecture while also experimenting with the layer the end customer most familiar with.
The imperative for change
The move towards composable commerce is increasingly becoming not just as a technological upgrade but as a strategic necessity. As we move further into the digital age, the flexibility to adapt quickly to market changes, integrate new technologies, and meet evolving consumer expectations will dictate a business's ability to succeed.
Ecommerce businesses looking to remain competitive in 2025 and beyond are finding that composable commerce offers the tools to do so effectively, by enabling faster adaptations, personalizations, and innovations.
Such a shift toward composable commerce represents a paradigm shift in how digital commerce platforms are conceived, built, and maintained. As the boundaries of digital commerce expand, so too does the need for architectures that can support rapid growth and change.
