New trends and opportunities in composable commerce
Experts from Contentstack say the sector’s evolution is creating new possibilities (and challenges) for both vendors and business users
Long before Susan Beermann was a composable commerce executive, she discovered the technology’s benefits as a user.
“I was actually a customer, a very early adopter as a customer,” recalls Beermann. “We were using it to supercharge our websites, and things that were normally taking weeks would take minutes or hours.”
Yes, before Beermann took on the role of Chief Marketing Officer at Contentstack, she was one of the company’s clients. A few previous jobs (and companies) ago, she used Contentstack’s composable commerce offerings to optimize websites, target ads to users from within a product, and build a platform so her then-employer could host a virtual event during the pandemic. In Beermann’s words, she became a composable commerce convert “from my own personal experience.”
That journey from business user to vendor marketer gives her a unique perspective on trends in the space. We sat down with Beermann and Todd Rathje, Contentstack’s Chief Revenue Officer, to break down how emerging trends in composable commerce are creating both opportunities and challenges for vendors and their customers.
Generative AI
“Everyone’s talking about AI or generative AI and the impact on digital experiences. The use cases are literally endless,” says Rathje.
He names a few of them, such as CX-oriented applications involving chat, site navigation, and refinement querying (for example, using ChatGPT to create questions for customer personalization quizzes.)
Contentstack sees the potential, and recently integrated ChatGPT into its headless CMS, saying it will allow content teams to “create, test, and even translate short or long form content in seconds.” For brands operating across several markets and channels, that’s a potential efficiency boon. Contentstack has also unveiled a ChatGPT Connector for its Automation Hub, a visual low-code/no-code tool for workflow management that automates routine tasks and simplifies integrations.
“Automation Hub enables you to automate workflows, so incorporating generative AI into that will accelerate those automations further. It’s a really exciting frontier,” says Beermann.
In Automation Hub, the ChatGPT Connector can automate tasks like content generation, language translation, and data analysis.
Beermann is particularly enthusiastic about the potential of generative AI within product discovery.
“I think we’ve barely just uncovered the tip of the iceberg; it’s going to drastically change how people are searching. In the future it could be as easy as a customer writing a short paragraph on what’s important to them about a shoe, and then ChatGPT will help them find shoes they like. The AI will help generate the recommendations using a shopper’s own terms, without having to force them into completing a rigid [customer] survey,” Beermann predicts.
While she believes composable commerce vendors can harness generative AI to help brands innovate faster, enter new markets more quickly, and gain a competitive advantage, she’s mindful of the potential risks too.
“The challenge is that you have to compose it right and you have to have a strategy first. You can’t enter into [generative AI] thinking ‘I just need a technology’ versus really thinking about ‘what’s the endgame here, what am I trying to achieve?’ I think it is the future, but it’s definitely a learning curve,” Beermann says.
Expanding composable use cases
Another trend is to expand composable use cases beyond their original B2C core of retail and ecommerce. During his presentation at the MACH Two conference in June, MACH Alliance President Casper Rasmussen said the vendor-neutral industry organization wants to promote composable to “a broader group of business representation.”
A brand doesn’t have to be a retailer or etailer to implement composability within its content layer to improve digital experiences. Beermann points out that when she first became acquainted with composable as a business user (for the website optimization, ad targeting, and virtual event purposes mentioned earlier), “those were very B2B [use cases], no commerce involved whatsoever.”
“There’s a lot of [composable commerce] applications that aren’t commerce-based,” Rathje elaborates. “We see it as a balance between pure commerce and content in every opportunity … The connectivity downstream – into areas of digital assets, personalization, search opportunities, into even product information management opportunities – we see all of those as areas of opportunity that could either complement or offset a commerce project.”
Omnichannel optimization
Omnichannel is taking on a whole new dimension as businesses interact with users and customers through a widening array of touchpoints. Beermann mentions a Contentstack client that wants to deliver targeted ads via digital avenues ranging from in-store kiosks to gas station pumps.
“You’ve got to be wherever [users and customers] are,” Rathje says, “whether they’re at a gas pump, in a physical store, on a website, or driving in their car."
As the number and variety of channels expands, so do the opportunities for composable commerce vendors to help businesses deliver excellent digital experiences across them in a seamless, efficient, relevant fashion.
“At the end of the day, companies are representing the attributes of their brand across these channels. And it’s not all about the [cash] register,” Rathje says in another nod to non-commerce use cases.
The biggest opportunity of all, according to Rathje, lies within the technology itself: the flexibility and agility that businesses need to innovate, create, and ultimately resonate with users and customers.
Christine Wong
Senior Technology Staff Writer, Orium
I've been telling enterprise technology stories for almost three decades in print, online, and on television. I started out in journalism, covering the telecom boom, the birth of social media and the emergence of digital commerce. I'm always looking for the human angle in every technology story I write.