The 4 pillars of eCommerce: Creating a flawless online experience

Pillars of eCommerce

Technology never stands still. In all industries, businesses have to adapt quickly if they want to stay ahead of the competition, and in 2021 that means putting the customer first by offering a flawless online experience.

Special thanks to our partner emporix for offering useful insights into the topic.

Take over: The customer-centric approach

From grocery shopping to general online retail, the customer-centric approach is taking over. That means brands have to deliver a cohesive and unified experience across a number of devices and platforms, allowing customers to engage and shop on their own terms. However, businesses can’t reinvent the wheel every time consumer preferences change and new technologies become available.

That’s where technologies like headless commerce, microservices (find out more here), APIs, and cloud adoption come into play. Each of these 4 technologies blends together to allow businesses to develop scalable, adaptable solutions that feed into this idea of a universal service model.

The 4 pillars for scalable and adaptable solutions in eCommerce

Headless commerce

The commerce experience is tailored to each individual customer-facing endpoint, with those endpoints operating independently of backend processes.

Microservices

The use of small, modular applications designed to deliver very specific features, which adds up to create a unified experience.

APIs

APIs hold microservices together, setting the rules by which data is shared between applications. APIs are so prevalent in today’s digital ecosystem, that some organizations are now starting with an ‘API first’ approach.

Cloud native

Applications and platforms that are built and continue to exist in the cloud, making them more accessible, secure, and adaptable.

These four technologies are most certainly the future of eCommerce, and over the past decade, organizations have seriously started to take notice. A 2020 report from Wunderman Thompson found that more than 80% of eCommerce organizations rated their understanding of the above technologies as “strong” or “solid.”

However, understanding and doing are different things. The real question is how many of these organizations feel prepared enough to use these technologies to their advantage? The same report asked 400 businesses throughout the US and UK to rate their “ability to work” with headless, microservices, API first, and cloud native technologies.

Pillars of eCommerce

Encouraging results in eCommerce

More than 30% of businesses said they were fully prepared to work with any of the technologies. 48% said they had a solid understanding and, with a bit of work, could easily adapt to using any of the technologies. 22% of businesses said they felt “under-strength” and not quite ready.

On balance, this means around 4 out of 5 businesses are fairly confident when it comes to adopting the “4 pillars” of eCommerce. With the right levels of expertise and resources, even smaller retailers and brands could leverage the technology to their advantage, leveling the playing field and allowing them to compete for online retail spend.

To find out more about headless commerce and microservices, get in touch with the experts from emporix.

emporix commerce is a cloud native eCommerce solution based on microservices and APIs. Thanks to headless commerce, customers benefit from maximum flexibility with fantastic customer experiences and basically any kind of touch-points including voice commerce or Internet of Things (IoT). Microservices allow agile development with short release cycles and continuous deployment which results in IT that enables business.

Find out more about emporix on www.emporix.com, Twitter, and LinkedIn

Stay in the loop

Subscribe to our newsletter to keep up-to-date on all the latest Frontastic news.

Related

operational efficiency as metric for headless commerce

Operational efficiency: The future metric for headless eCommerce platforms

,
This blog post explores how operational efficiency will be the future metric for headless eCommerce platforms. If you've moved to headless or are planning towards headless transition then this article will serve as the best guide for you.
Read more

Frontastic architecture: Frontastic studio

,
In our architecture blog series, we'll look at each part of the Frontastic architecture, how it works, and what you can do with it. In this post, we'll focus on the Frontastic studio.
Read more

Progressive web apps vs native apps: Pros and cons

,
Just because websites are online storefronts doesn't mean you should ignore improving your user's experience. If anything, that fact alone should encourage you to offer up-to-date website experiences. This blog post explains why brands need to experiment when developing digital experiences.
Read more