When it comes to eCommerce, there are uncountable trends to account for, so much so that you might lose the count after a certain time. From different store development platforms to third-party integrations, the trends can be seen in almost every vertical of the industry. Therefore, as an ecommerce business owner, you have to plan ahead and take necessary actions to supersede your competitors, generate higher revenues, and acquire and retain the maximum number of customers. But things are easier said than done! Technology has truly revolutionized the market, giving more power to the customers. In addition, new tech trends like machine learning, data science, big data, and AI provide in-depth information to people, opening a host of buying options, diverse experiences, and state-of-the-art store options.
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So, to meet the changing dynamics of the ecommerce industry, you must step up and adopt new tech trends. Leveraging these will give you a chance to not only overcome the current challenges but also acquire and retain customers in a better way. Furthermore, you can provide a refined and pleasant customer experience, whether it is through a next-gen store UI or streamlined shopping process. To achieve these milestones and generate better ROIs, the most radical and result-yielding approach will be to invest in composable storefront. In this following article, we have provided in-depth illustrations of a composable ecommerce storefront, its features and benefits, migration routine from an SAP Commerce storefront to the composable one, and so on. With this detailed guide, not only will the decision-making process become hassle-free but you will gain more knowledge about this new trend.
Composable storefront(Spartacus): What is it and how is it different from SAP Commerce?
SAP Commerce Cloud is a cloud-based platform that allows you to streamline your ecommerce store’s operations and generate higher ROIs through advanced features. But to utilize this tech solution, you need a storefront at the very beginning. Although there are numerous ways to develop a storefront, like off-the-shelf application or custom omnichannel software, these do not offer the flexibility and scalability required to meet the dynamic changes of the market. So, to ensure you can integrate SAP Commerce Cloud and its variant solutions with your storefront, you have to rely on a next-gen development platform, like SAP composable storefront.
A composable storefront is an SAP-based platform developed as a part of the Spartacus project. It utilizes a high-end codebase written in Angular Java and deployed into the server as JavaScript libraries. So, all you need to do is develop a JavaScript web application and import these libraries from the SAP composable storefront to make it fully functional and align with the prerequisites of the SAP Commerce platform. This is what makes the composable storefront different from other solutions since it allows implementation of the libraries so that you can develop a progressive web application with features like customizable, scalable, upgradable, and extensible.
Know More: SAP Commerce Cloud Integration with E-Commerce Architecture
Leveraging composable storefront to overcome the challenges of monolithic architecture
Till now, several ecommerce stores are reliable on the monolithic architecture. Being a conventional concept, it doesn’t offer much flexibility and scalability to the developers, let alone offering opportunities for amplifying the customer experience and streamlining the journey. This is why you should let go of such an inflexible and rigid concept and adopt agile practices through composable storefront. To make it clear for you, we have further shed light on the benefits you can enjoy once you migrate your ecommerce storefront to the composable storefront from SAP.
1. Highly scalable
One of the major shortcomings of the monolithic architecture is its rigidity and complex codebases. An ecommerce application having such an architecture needs tons of third-party integrations with other applications like databases, code handlers, and so on. As a result, making any code change on the go is next to impossible, especially when you expect not to take down the app from its hosting server or minimize the impacts on other functionalities. This is why relying on the composable storefront from SAP seems to be a feasible solution. Here, you can not only deploy the changes dynamically but can scale the functions with ease. Besides, the composable storefront architecture is based on microservices, where each module is handled through APIs and generates quick responses between the client and server-side interfaces.
2. Reduced load time
When we consider a monolithic architecture, the huge and complex codebase needs to be compiled multiple times. This further increases the page loading times and often results in time outs. It has a direct impact on the customer experience, creating disarray in the way your target audience perceives the online store and its performance. So, to minimize the impact and ensure your customers won’t have to suffer from high page loading time, or worse time outs, you can migrate the ecommerce application to the composable storefront. This will solve numerous issues at a time, like reduced store performance, workflow efficiency, page timeouts, stuck threads, and so on.
3. Personalized and customized features
Also, the monolithic architecture doesn’t offer many scopes for personalization and customization. At the present time, almost every eight people out of ten look for personalized shopping experiences where they can modify their carts at any point of time, save items for later use, use advanced filters to search exact products on the category pages, and so on. To integrate such features and provide this level of control to your customers, it is better to leverage SAP Spartacus composable storefront. It allows the integration of personalized functionalities with quick and customer-centric responses.
Difference between headless ecommerce and composable ecommerce storefront
Both the concepts of composable storefront and headless ecommerce originated from Spartacus. But they are not similar terms used in the tech field. Instead, both share a lot of differences which should be recognized before you proceed with the migration routine from Accelerator to Spartacus.
- Headless ecommerce decouples the backend from the frontend to enhance the flexibility of deploying changes. Here, users have access to the frontend composing of all UI elements and functionalities while the backend is used to perform all other operations, like order management, payment processing, notification, and many more. But when we consider composable storefront, it not only decouples the backend from the frontend interface but also allows the developers to work on backend components independently. In other words, the backend elements like APIs, database integrations, and so on can function independently on one another.
- When a change is deployed to the backend interface, it can impact several other processes due to the interdependency in headless ecommerce. But when the composable storefront is considered, the impact on other processes can be reduced after a specific change deployment in the backend due to independent functioning.
- Composable storefront offers a higher degree of flexibility and scalability than headless ecommerce, which ensures the dynamic behaviors can be achieved with ease.
In what ways a composable storefront can be leveraged for streamlined operations?
It is indeed true that SAP Commerce offers a host of opportunities for ecommerce business owners, including higher scalability, personalized workflows, superior control over UI components, and many more. But that’s not all! With a composable storefront, it is now possible to leverage the advanced features for streamlined store operations. To make it clearer, we have discussed some of the major operational benefits of the composable storefront from SAP.
Reduced development & implementation time
One of the key benefits of the composable storefront is the faster development and implementation time. Since the codebases are deployed in the form of JavaScript libraries, you can import them at any point of time and integrate the same with the ecommerce application for extending the functions. Besides, the composable storefront platform allows development of a Single Page Application or SPA, which automatically reduces the development and implementation time.
Follows headless ecommerce architecture
Thanks to the base Spartacus concept, the composable storefront follows the principles of headless ecommerce. In other words, the backend and frontend can be decoupled from one another to ensure the changes can be deployed independently without affecting the other interface. Also, you won’t have to take down the application from the hosting server, which is why you won’t have to worry about increased ecommerce storefront downtime.
Can be upgraded with ease
Another major operational benefit of composable storefront is the upgradability. Since Spartacus is still in the development phase, new features and upgrades are often released for public use. These upgrades are meant to handle the discrepancies in existing functionalities and amplify the store performance. Besides, the composable storefront is configurable, which means you can add or remove the JavaScript libraries on the go without affecting the overall store’s performance and operations.
Higher degree of customization
It cannot be ignored that the composable storefront can be customized at many levels when compared to the monolithic architecture. You can customize the UI components, APIs connecting the server-side and client-side interfaces, and several other aspects of the entire SPA. This way, you will not only provide a better and refined customer experience but also ensure the store matches the current market trends and dynamics.
Greater degree of responsiveness
Lastly, SAP Spartacus offers a higher degree of responsiveness with reduced loading time. Once a request is fired or triggered from the frontend interface, the interim APIs handle the communication between the interfaces and call the concerned microservices. Apart from this, the composable storefront is independent of devices and operating systems, which is why you won’t need multiple codebases.
Benefits of investing in composable storefront from business point of view
From the business point of view also, SAP Cloud offers numerous benefits that further make the investment in composable storefront worthy enough. For instance:
- With a composable storefront, it is possible for you to integrate multiple modules working on microservices and APIs. This way, you can offer personalized shopping experience to your target audience and even manage store operations more efficiently.
- Thanks to SAP Spartacus, composable storefront implements the concepts of agile framework with higher efficiency and better operational performance.
- The composable storefront platform opens a host of opportunities to innovate your store or its operations and workflows. For instance, you can enhance the personalized filters or integrate real-time order monitoring modules with ease.
- Also, the platform streamlines most ecommerce storefront operations to ensure the customer journey can become seamless and hassle-free. As a result, the customer experience is enhanced by ten folds.
Step-by-step guide for migrating SAP Accelerator to composable storefront interface
Now that we have established the benefits of composable storefront over headless commerce and other SPAs, it is time to orchestrate the migration schedule. To do so, following are the major steps to be followed.
Devising the migration strategy
SAP Accelerator and composable ecommerce platforms use different tech stacks, which is why you cannot include the existing functionalities in the migration workflow. Instead, you have to devise a migration strategy that will automatically transfer the storefront.
Resource utilization and planning
Once you are done with preparing the migration strategy, shift your focus on resource planning and utilization. Ideally, when you will migrate your store, you have to handle the interface components, content, and the backend services. So, three teams have to work collaboratively to ensure the migration process is successful and the redundancies are minimized to the most.
Deployment and delivery approach planning
Since the ecommerce store development lifecycle will be long, it is better to implement an agile methodology based on scrum principles. Each phase will be tagged as sprints and a software can be used to track all the user stories and other tickets concerning the sprint deployment.
Deciding tech stack
Lastly, you have to define a proper tech stack that handles both the frontend and backend functionalities. Following are some of the tools and frameworks to be used for composable storefront migration.
Frontend interface: CSS, Spartacus, Bootstrap, and Angular
Backend interface: SAP Commerce, microservices, Java Springs
Composable storefront and its impact on business ROIs
With the help of a composable storefront, you can improve the business ROIs in three major ways. These are:
Pay as you go: The composable storefront behaves as a Library-As-A-Service, which means you have to pay only for the libraries you have imported for the ecommerce store. When you remove certain libraries, the overall cost will reduce significantly.
Enhanced business revenue: Without a doubt, the composable storefront will amplify your revenues by lowering customer acquisition cost and retaining more customers over a period of time.
Reduced maintenance costs: Thanks to the scalable and upgradable features of composable storefront, the overall maintenance costs will also reduce.
Comparing SAP Composable Storefront and Other SPAs: Key Differences
The SAP composable storefront, previously known as Spartacus, has officially transitioned into a fully supported SAP product starting from version 5.0. It has been rebranded as the ‘composable storefront’.
Let’s explore the distinctions between the composable storefront and other Single Page Applications (SPAs).
| Aspect | Composable Storefront | Other SPA |
|---|---|---|
| Core Technology | It is a lean, Angular-based JavaScript storefront designed for SAP Commerce Cloud. | Other SPAs are typically new storefronts built using React or Angular and can function as single-page applications. |
| Starting Point | The composable storefront offers an existing SPA accelerator as a starting point for development. | Other SPAs require building the storefront from scratch, which can come with cost and time constraints. |
| SAP Support | The composable storefront benefits from SAP Support. | Other SPAs typically do not receive SAP Support. |
| Deployment | SAP Cloud Portal takes care of deployments for the composable storefront. | For other SPAs, an independent deployment model is required. |
| Upgrades | Upgrading the composable storefront is made easy, with SAP providing guidelines for the process. | Upgrading other SPAs is an independent activity without SAP involvement. |
| Responsiveness | The composable storefront comes fully responsive out of the box. | Other SPAs require building separate storefronts for desktop, mobile, and tablet devices. |
Leverage composable storefront to align with the dynamicity of ecommerce market
With this guide, you now understand the wide array of benefits composable storefront offers to every ecommerce business owner. So, it is your call now if you want to migrate the store from Accelerator to composable ecommerce. If you agree to do so, ensure the migration strategy is formulated beforehand so that you can run a risk analysis and mitigate failure chances better.
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