With the eCommerce industry spreading its roots further globally, several new businesses are listing themselves. This has further pushed the existing middle and large-scale market players to work meticulously and stay ahead in the competition. As a result, the industry has become crowded and hypercompetitive with all businesses trying to maintain a firm grip on the market and enhance their brand image. Besides, technology evolution and integration have further posed a challenge to several ecommerce businesses. Owing to this, they are in the pursuit to implement innovative ideas and revolutionize business strategies.
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Fortunately, CommerceTools is one such platform that if integrated properly can open a sea of future opportunities for ecommerce businesses. Considered as the founder of “headless commerce”, it empowers a business with capabilities that are hard to nurture in normal conditions. So, in this following article, we will shed light on Commercetools implementation, features, benefits, and several other related aspects.
What is Commercetools?
Commercetools is a comprehensive cloud-based ecommerce platform based on the MACH concept. It runs on microservice-based processes and implements the concept of headless commerce through APIs. Businesses can leverage this tool to deliver unified and state-of-the-art shopping experiences to the consumers across all the channels and digital touchpoints. Apart from this, it also empowers businesses to enhance customer engagement, increase conversion ratio, retain maximum consumers, acquire prospects, and generate better leads.
How does the Commercetools platform function?
As already mentioned above, Commercetools is based on the MACH concept. It implements four innovative, scalable, and nascent technologies, namely Microservices, API-first, Cloud-native, and Headless. Together, these allow ecommerce businesses to unlock limitless opportunities and bring revolutions in the processes and strategies. To help you understand better, we have broken down the components of MACH and explained them briefly in this below section.
Microservice-based
A typical website comprises numerous integrated process services or workflows, regardless of whether it is the frontend or backend interface. For instance, the backend interface of a traditional ecommerce website will have integrated codebases handling accounting, order placement, and data execution processes. Due to this, it becomes difficult for developers to work on individual services without affecting the integrated ones. This is where Commercetools microservices come into play. It is a development concept where each functionality is handled as an independent module having almost negligible dependency on other workflows. You can consider the enter interface being segregated into multiple modules which are monitored and operated via different codebases.
API-first
As MACH involves the implementation of modularity at a larger scale, separating the process services and their workflows, a proper communication system has to be developed. This can be achieved through a set of specific programs, known as service APIs. The Commercetools API set is developed in a way where users can interact with other modules, third-party plugins, and other websites without compelling the developers to fetch data or perform the execution manually.
Cloud-native
Thanks to Commercetools SaaS platform, ecommerce businesses can migrate their websites from the on-premise server to the cloud one for better scalability, improved performance, and enhanced productivity. The cloud server can also store the data directly, thereby reducing the time for data processing and generating as accurate results as possible.
Headless
Last but not the least, the Commercetools headless architecture allows decoupling of the frontend from the backend interface completely. As both these layers are separated, they can be handled independently. Developers won’t have to learn about the entire frontend layer in detail before working on the backend codebase and vice versa. Furthermore, the decoupled architecture enables developers to plan faster deployment schedules, reduce server downtime, and provide code changes without impacting the other interface.
What are the direct business benefits of using Commercetools?
With Commercetools composable commerce, businesses can not only yield better results from the consumers and their actions but also streamline the internal operations for consistent deliveries and performances. In this below section, we have defined some of the major benefits of integrating this platform with an ecommerce business at its core for better understanding.
Higher level of customization
One of the major benefits of Commercetools that makes it future-proof for the ecommerce industry is the higher level of customization. Businesses can easily utilize the platform and customize the frontend components, user interfaces, and backend logics to offer a better and improved customer experience. Besides with customization, it becomes easier to create a brand image that isn’t interchangeable or can be seen every now and then. Whether it is to connect with the audience spot-on or engage the consumers, the customization capabilities of Commercetools are indeed helpful.
Best-of-breed features
Unlike the conventional platforms, Commercetools allows businesses to select the best components they think will yield better results in terms of consumer engagement, revenue, performance, and productivity. There are numerous Commercetools integrations with which additional features can be developed and expanded for the concerned ecommerce website without going through the development from scratch.
Reduces risks and failures
One of the biggest advantages of using Commercetools is the freedom to experiment. It implements a headless architecture with the frontend and backend layers being decoupled from one another. Furthermore, to enhance modularity, it implements a microservice-based architecture in each layer. So, the process services are completely independent of one another and any change or new code introduction in one module won’t affect another one. This allows developers to make rapid modifications at the core level and deploy the same without risking server uptime and website performance. Once they are satisfied with the changes, they deploy the same to the live server from the beta version.
Faster time to market
Most ecommerce businesses have to struggle a lot in adapting to the dynamically changing market and meet the consumer expectations head-on. This is primarily due to the lack of flexibility, adaptability, and scalability. To overcome the shortcomings, integrating Commercetools seems to be a feasible option. It allows businesses to adapt to the market trends and develop and deploy features or fix bugs real quick. For instance, if there is any glitch in the checkout process of the ecommerce website, Commercetools will allow professionals to analyze and provide a fix at the earliest without taking down the website from the server or impacting any other business process. In fact, developers won’t even have to run a full-scale regression testing before making code changes or any other modifications at the core level due to modularity.
Conclusion
In this article, we have put forth what Commercetools B2B or B2C is and how it empowers an ecommerce business with abilities that can transform the operations real-quick. With this platform, developers not only have the independence to innovate and customize the process services and customer experience but also they can deliver unified services across all digital touchpoints without fail. So, if you want to overcome the shortcomings of your ecommerce business and the existing monolith architecture, it’s time you shift to a more radical approach in the form of Commercetools.
FAQs
What is Commercetools?
Commercetools is a cloud-based commerce platform running on microservices and headless architecture while using service APIs to establish internal and external communication channels. It allows an ecommerce business to deliver a uniform shopping experience with reduced failures across all channels.
Is Commercetools profitable?
Yes, integrating Commercetools with the existing business infrastructure is indeed profitable. It allows businesses to streamline the operations and generate higher revenues by enhancing the engagement, lowering customer acquisition cost, and increasing sales volume.
Who uses Commercetools?
Commercetools is specifically developed for the ecommerce businesses based on both B2B and B2C models. For instance, Audi has integrated its core business with this platform, thereby developing a robust architecture that not only handles the huge traffic from the consumer market but also delivers changes and modifications rapidly without server downtime.
Is Commercetools open source?
Yes, Commercetools is an open-source platform. There are several documentations and whitepapers already available about the usage of this platform, its codebase, and other components.
How much does Commercetools cost?
Commercetools comes with a customizable pricing model. It depends on numerous factors, like company size, annual turnover, targeted consumer base, and many more.
What is Commercetools used for?
Commercetools is used to provide an omnichannel experience to the consumers across all digital touchpoints while implementing features like decoupled frontend and backend, modularity, scalability, customizability, adaptability, and many more.
