With the ecommerce market becoming so hypercompetitive, businesses are struggling to cope up with the dynamic and adapt with the changes. The lack of agility and flexibility in business processes further prevent adopting new technologies or revamping the workflows for enhanced productivity. Many businesses have even reported to face difficulties in amplifying ecommerce performance owing to shortcomings in the IT field, primarily the website through which the business is handled.
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Most of the ecommerce websites are based on the traditional monolithic architecture that lacks the flex required to meet current market stats and behaviors. IT professionals have a hard time in deploying changes, upgrading the current functions, and even making the website customer-centric with this architecture. This is where the concept of adopting composable commerce architecture comes into play.
What is composable architecture and how is it different from monolith?
As the term “composable” suggests, this type of software architecture provides a great deal of flexibility to the developers to choose the best-of-breed website components. In reality, the architecture is based on the approach of developing decoupled frontend and backend layers where the integration is achieved through service APIs instead of direct connection. As a result, developers can choose different third-party plugins and library functions to compose a customized ecommerce website.
The major difference between the composable commerce and monolith architectures lies in the integration of frontend and backend layers. In monolith, these layers are closely integrated with one another, thereby limiting developers in terms of choosing the tech stack or working independently on the website and business logic components. On the contrary, the composable architecture decouples the layer and allows professionals to treat each component of either layer as a separate module.
What are the benefits of migrating to composable architecture?
Before you make the call, it would be better to acknowledge the true potential of the composable commerce architecture in developing the website. Below we have illustrated a couple of benefits businesses can enjoy with this new radical development approach.
Flexibility
One of the main reasons to migrate from the rigid monolith to composable commerce architecture is flexibility. As the frontend and backend layers are decoupled, developers can work on each layer independently without having to learn about the other one in-depth. Furthermore, each module can be treated as a PBC or Packaged Business Component comprising a third-party plugin or library function. The PBC handles a dedicated workflow of the commerce website, like the shopping cart, checkout module, and many more. Thanks to such a higher flexibility, the website performs in a better way and delivers outstanding output throughout.
Omnichannel experience
An ecommerce website is dependent on multiple touchpoints, considering the numerous marketing and sales channels. For instance, consumers can access the website directly from the search engine or through a social media platform. Furthermore, the website can be accessed through different devices, like laptops and mobiles. To ensure the platform behaves uniformly across all touchpoints, it is crucial to migrate to the composable architecture from the conventional monolith one.
Faster time to market
Another major benefit of migrating to the composable architecture is faster time to market. The backend layer is primarily based on a built-in platform, like SAP Commerce Cloud. So, all developers have to do is compose the frontend layer using different third-party plugins and JavaScript-based library functions. Since they don’t have to depend on the business logic layer, the beta version of the website can be deployed faster to the real-time server for the users.
Enhanced user experience
Thanks to the higher level of modularity and differentiation in the ecommerce website, developers can work on enhancing the user experience by several notches. Customers won’t have to worry about server downtime as developers can deploy the changes without taking down the website from its hosting server. Additionally, the enhanced agility and flexibility of the website allows customization and personalization of the functional modules for better UX.
Better security
With the decoupled frontend and backend layers, it is possible for developers to implement a higher degree of abstraction in the codebase. The methods and library functions handling the functional workflows can be made private and saved from being exposed to the outer world. Furthermore, the addition of service APIs allows developers to abstract the backend layer since no one would be able to know the business logic implementation or the database where all datasets are stored.
What are the best strategies to make the migration of an ecommerce site successful?
Since we have learned the benefits composable architecture offers to the developers, it’s time to plan the ecommerce migration workflow. However, it is much easier said than done. There are numerous blocks that need to be addressed beforehand so that the migration schedule won’t end up in a disaster. To do so, below we have mentioned a few strategies that can make the migration workflow successful easily.
Establish a communication strategy
Without proper communication across all leads and layers of the organization, it would be difficult to overcome the shortcomings and make the migration process successful. So, all the stakeholders should be looped in so that they are aware of the broad-scale changes to be introduced through the migration workflow. This will further help in brainstorming the ideas, acknowledge the risk factors, and ensure the shortcomings can be handled in a better way.
Apart from this, engaging with the product owner is imperative to ensure the ecommerce website and the functional workflows do not end up in a mess. Since the migration workflow will involve multiple teams, it is crucial to plan and delegate duties accordingly. This will ensure the teams know what they need to do and the workflow can be handled in a streamlined manner.
Define the migration strategy
The next step is to plan and define the entire ecommerce platform migration strategy properly. Start with analyzing the current behaviors of the website and list down the pain points. Acknowledging this will give IT professionals a clear idea about what areas require the change and whether they can be achieved through platform migration. Apart from this, it is crucial to list the opportunities that can be leveraged to enhance the site performance and behavior.
Understand the market trends through data analysis and make plans accordingly to ensure the website is perfectly synchronized with the consumer trends post migration. Defining the migration strategy will help a lot to orchestrate the workflow and follow the disciplinary actions accordingly.
Choose the migration approach
There are two ways in which the ecommerce site migration can be handled at the core level. These are:
Greenfield approach: Here, migration from the existing system to the new one needs to be done at a time. In other words, the new system infrastructure is developed and tested in the beta version till it is ready to be deployed into the live environment. Once done, the migration schedule is implemented and the switch is done at an instant without segregated deployment.
Phased approach: Here, the migration schedule is segregated into different phases. The website is divided into several modules and a certain number of functionalities and part of the codebase is migrated to the new environment at a time. After migration, the website is tested with real-time scenarios to ensure the migrated functionalities are working in the expected manner.
Data migration and backup creation
The next step is to create a full backup of the business and website data before migration. This will help developers restore the original website in case there is a mishap in the migration. After this, plan for migrating datasets properly so that no data is lost or corrupted during the process.
Conclusion
In this article, we have illustrated the entire ecommerce migration checklist developers need to follow to make the process successful. Once the website is migrated from conventional monolith to the lightweight, agile, and fast-paced composable architecture, end-to-end testing needs to be done. This will ensure the expectations are met properly and the interim bugs are analyzed and fixed before go-live.
