Composable commerce

Connecting commerce capabilities from specialised components

Composable commerce is an architectural approach that combines specialised components into a commerce solution. Search, content management and the commerce platform can be selected separately, for example. Defined interfaces and shared business rules bring the components together. They do not necessarily have to come from different providers. Headless specifically describes the separation of frontend and commerce system; that alone does not imply splitting all commerce capabilities into components.

A fictional tool merchant plans a separate search service alongside its commerce core. In this example, the commerce core is designated as the authoritative price source. If the search index lags, a result can still display an old price. The integration therefore needs to define how the current price is checked on entering the cart and how a discrepancy is explained clearly. Updating the search index is also part of the coordination. Replacing a search component consequently requires more than a new results view: product mapping and price handover must continue to fit together.

Sources

• BigCommerce docs · Composable Commerce and Headless Storefronts

• commercetools · Composable Commerce