How to compose your commerce in 2024 - step-by-step

Composing your commerce is about adopting a flexible approach. This method lets businesses pick and integrate top solutions for each part of their online operation. It's essential to understand and use the right components. This creates a smooth and effective online shopping experience and allows you to refine and adapt to changing needs continuously.

How to compose your commerce tech stack

To show you how to set up a composable commerce system, we'll follow a product's journey from start to finish.

1. Choosing an ERP and Setting Up the Product

Start by laying a solid foundation with an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system. It's the core of your online business, handling essential tasks in one place. First, we will add your product details to the ERP. This keeps track of your stock, prices, and basic product info. The product is now "born".

2. Selecting a Product Information Management (PIM) System and Enriching Product Data

Next, we need a Product Information Management (PIM) system. This system lets you enrich and improve your product info. It ensures your products look good and have correct details across all selling channels. Good product info is critical to attracting customers and boosting sales.

3. Implementing a System for Search and Indexing

Once the product is enriched, we need to index it. Having a solid search and indexing system is crucial. It helps customers find what they want quickly. A good search system makes your products more visible, adds a personalized experience, and increases customer interest and sales.

4. Adding a Content Management System (CMS)

When we have enriched, properly indexed products, it's time to present them online together with your website content. Content is vital online, and a Content Management System (CMS) helps you manage and update your website's content and structure. It's essential for keeping your site engaging and current, drawing in and informing customers.

5. Incorporating a Front-End Interface

The CMS alone isn't enough to create a great experience. Your website's front-end presents the content and is what customers see and use to navigate. Having a front-end that's easy to navigate and looks good is essential. This makes shopping on your site a pleasant experience for customers. Additionally, implementing a Content Delivery Network (CDN) to speed up web page load times is also a great idea. In short, a CDN will store cached versions of your site geographically closer to the customer.

6. Integrating a Cart and Order Engine

Of course, we want to enable the visitor to buy the product. Here's where a smooth cart and order engine is essential. It makes the checkout process easy and should be able to handle a large number of simultaneous orders. This system handles shopping carts, order processing, shipping, and payments, ensuring a hassle-free purchase for customers.

7. Implementing a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) System

Once the transaction has been made, we want to store customer information and communicate with the customer. Managing customer relationships is important, and a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system helps you make shopping personal. It manages customer data, keeps customers informed, and helps maintain good, long-term customer relationships.

8. Sending Orders Back to ERP

After a sale, it's important to process the order back in the ERP. This ensures smooth order fulfillment, keeping inventory updated and the finances in check.

9. Adding a Warehouse Management System (WMS)

Ok, so now the order is processed and stored in the ERP. To handle order fulfillment, a Warehouse Management System (WMS) helps store and ship products. It's also vital to keeping your warehouse organized and efficient and customers happy.

10. Putting it all together

Obviously, we need to connect all the components to create a well-functioning eCommerce setup. Selecting components built on the MACH principles (and especially API-first) makes this a breeze. With an API integration between components, where appropriate, product information and orders can flow freely.

And that's basically it. You now have a fully working Composable Commerce ecosystem in place.

Conclusion

The above steps are clearly very high-level but should give you an idea of what fundamental components are needed and why. Additionally, to optimize your processes further, you probably want to add other systems and services, such as return management, reviews, order management, etc. But, by using this approach to building composable eCommerce, you can add, remove, or change components easily as you go.

Composing your own commerce

Now, you might ask yourself: what components should I choose? There are millions. Get in touch with us to start the discussion. We have composed eCommerce setups for merchants of all sizes, and we know what you need.

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