Headless Toolkit: 14 Essential Tools for the Future of Composable Commerce
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Headless toolkit: 14 essential tools for the future of composable commerce Authors: Tom Karwatka, Piotr Karwatka, Bartosz Picho, Damian Kłaptocz, Bartłomiej Loc, Piotr Znamirowski, Kacper Cebo Introduction Headless toolkit: 14 essential tools for the future of composable commerce We see that the eCommerce software monoliths are starting to crumble. We’ve been working with eCommerce platforms for more than 12 years at Divante, and we see the competition getting fiercer with every year. The fast-paced eCommerce world is a ruthless test for any tech bottlenecks and weak spots. It can quickly push you to the wall where your old software gets stuck against your budget, just like the Ever Given container ship in the Suez Canal. The headless approach is an answer to those problems. It replaces a complex picture with puzzle pieces that you can quickly move around, plug them in and out, and seamlessly replace if necessary. It gives you the maneuverability to pursue constant optimization, ambitious business results, and new trends. This eBook will introduce you to new and prospective technologies for the upcoming years. It presents a set of proven headless tools that have been on Divante’s radar for some time and are steadily growing in popularity. Introduction We’ve tried them out so you don’t have to go through each solution one by one. It’s all in here. It consists of three chapters that start with the initiation of the project and follows through to the headless technology: ■ What comes next: Composable commerce An introduction by Tom Karwatka that presents our vision for the composable future. ■ Our CTO’s take on eCommerce technologies Insights on the ever-changing technical aspects of eCommerce and the newest hot topics by Piotr Karwatka. ■ Headless toolkit A set of reviews by our team, including Damian Kłaptocz, Bartosz Picho, Bartłomiej Loc, Piotr Znamirowski and Kacper Cebo. They’ll present you their most important features and, in the case of marketing tools and digital experience platforms, walk you through their dashboards and onboarding. In the end, you’ll be aware of the essential details of each platform and see how they might help you in your business. ■ eCommerce platforms ■ Product information management ■ Enterprise search ■ Marketing tools ■ Digital experience platforms Of course, feel free to jump right to the chapter you need. After all, the main goal of this eBook is to save your time and help you kickstart innovations in your own company. Now, let’s take a deep dive into the possibilities of headless applications. The rocket ships of eCommerce / 16 What’s How about the others? / 16 Feature sets vs. ecosystems / 17 inside Our approach to the tech stack of the future of eCommerce / 17 What comes next: Headless Toolkit | 19 Composable commerce | 6 eCommerce Platforms / 20 What is composable commercetools / 20 commerce? / 7 Shopware 6 / 24 Packaged business capabilities / 8 Spryker / 33 What are the differences between Shopify Plus / 38 microservices and PBCs? / 8 Product Information The ecosystem of composable Management / 45 commerce vendors / 9 Akeneo / 45 Composable commerce Pimcore / 49 is already here / 9 Enterprise Search / 54 How to start with composable Algolia / 54 commerce / 10 Constructor.io / 58 A CTO’s take on Marketing tools / 61 eCommerce technologies | 11 Open Loyalty / 61 The myth of enterprise software / 12 Talon.One / 67 The vital change in eCommerce / 12 Digital experience platforms / 83 Own vs. buy / 12 Contentstack / 83 The future of eCommerce Contentful / 96 software / 13 GraphCMS / 108 Illustrating the future Strapi / 117 of eCommerce software / 13 Authors | 126 Evaluating eCommerce software / 15 Headless toolkit: 14 essential tools for the future of composable commerce 4 Empowering eCommerce. Together. We build powerful digital products and passionate communities around the technologies that are coming next. 400+ 280+ global brands eCommerce experts as clients. on board. 11+ 1000+ years on the market. delivered projects. Let’s talk about new technologies in your eCommerce. Contact us at divante.com What comes next: Composable commerce Tom Karwatka, Advisory Board Member at Divante Headless toolkit: 14 essential tools for the future of composable commerce One of our four fundamental values at Divante is Next. We’ve always said that “We don’t believe in novelty. We seek and utilize technologies that will shape the future.” In our domain, composable commerce is almost certainly what comes next. The dramatic shifts in the market we saw this year have made us all realize that the flexibility and speed of implementing enterprise software are more crucial than ever. The so-called headless approach is helping companies to innovate faster by separating the back end from the front end. It’s a genuine game-changer in software development, and it leads the way to composable commerce. In the last couple of years, we’ve seen the growing popularity of microservices, API-first, cloud, and headless (MACH). This year, commercetools started to promote the MACH Alliance, of which Vue Storefront is a member. It aims to educate corporate clients about the benefits of using software that is microservices-based, API-first, cloud-native SaaS, and headless. We can use these MACH technologies to build with a more business-minded approach. MACH is something like a set of digital Lego blocks where every block can be a separate business feature. It also lets us look even further, beyond headless builds, to see what comes next. Composable commerce connects all the dots and allows us to imagine a whole new way of building eCommerce systems. What is composable commerce? Composable commerce is a commerce system built from packaged business capabilities (PBCs). Each PBC is a software component that represents a well-defined business capability. This way, composable commerce offers every business a selection of best-of-breed commerce components that are all connected, or composed, into a custom application built for specific business needs. Each packaged business capabilities is a feature or capability of the application and is typically a third-party software component. An excellent example of PBC is a checkout or a search engine. The composable approach utilizes a whole palette of various vendors who offer dedicated solutions for specific business needs. Headless toolkit: 14 essential tools for the future of composable commerce 7 PBCs Allow Organizations to Compose Modular, Hybrid Experience Applications Experience Customers / Users/ Roles Commerce Service ERP CRM Vendor / Partner-Built Custom-Built Hybrid Application API DXP/MXDP/FaaS Source: Gartner Packaged business capabilities Each PBC can be deployed independently, and that means you completely eliminate the risk of choosing the wrong component. Every component of your eCommerce system can be easily removed or exchanged with another one. This allows you to experiment with more vendors. What are the differences between microservices and PBCs? Microservices are a relatively low-level and technical approach to building applications from independent components. PBCs are usually a whole set of microservices connected to deliver a business value. Headless toolkit: 14 essential tools for the future of composable commerce 8 The ecosystem of composable commerce vendors One of the most significant benefits of using composable commerce is the freedom of choosing the best vendor for every business aspect of your operations. This is why it’s essential to be aware of what components are on the market already. Composable commerce is already here We see a growing number of vendors of PBCs on the market. It’s already possible to buy or rent capabilities from dedicated vendors to address functions like: ■ Product catalog ■ Shopping cart ■ Checkout ■ Promotions ■ Loyalty ■ Reviews and ratings ■ Search ■ Product recommendation ■ Content management ■ ID management ■ Analytics ■ Front end The list is getting bigger and bigger because the whole composable commerce concept is fueling many new startups. In the future, integration among PBCs will be even more accessible by using a no-code or low-code approach. Headless toolkit: 14 essential tools for the future of composable commerce 9 How to start with composable commerce With its recent publication on composable commerce, Gartner is giving clear recommendations for companies to move from monolithic architecture to a more flexible one. Gartner recommendations: ■ Create a roadmap to strangle your digital commerce monolith by adopting an incremental, modular approach using packaged business capabilities. ■ Secure the future of your digital commerce strategy by developing a composable commerce platform. ■ Maintain business agility and control by selecting delivery options that retain business user control of the presentation. It’s a good idea to focus on capabilities impacting customer experiences, such as search, personalization, new touchpoints, and mobile UX. This is where you can find quick wins and gather momentum. Headless toolkit: 14 essential tools for the future of composable commerce 10 A CTO’s take on eCommerce technologies Piotr Karwatka, Advisory Board Member at Divante Headless toolkit: 14 essential tools for the future of composable commerce The myth of enterprise software If you deal with enterprise systems of any sort, like eCommerce, fintech, etc., you may be convinced that complex systems require complex architectures. This is somewhat true because the architectures aren’t getting any simpler. However, the way they’re managed and accessed is. Teams prefer to divide the complex systems into services or microservices that are deployed separately to serverless infrastructures. This way, they avoid the expensive dev and maintenance operations to provide more business value faster and easier. The complex enterprise systems increasingly turn towards a “buy” instead of “build” attitude. That means that they’re willing to even adapt how their existing business processes work in exchange for way lower ownership costs by using existing API-first, cloud-native, and open-source standards. The vital change in eCommerce One of the pretty cool examples of the shift is how eCommerce has evolved.