Head of Integrations at commercetools Talks Composable Commerce & Tech Tools for the CX of the Future
Tags: Cappasity, AR, Luxury Tech, Ecommerce, Product Photography

commercetools, the world’s leading next-generation commerce software company that helps retailers create unique and engaging digital commerce experiences everywhere, offers its customers a wide selection of supported third-party integrations. Cappasity has recently joined this list of technology providers to allow clients of the platform to demonstrate their products in 3D and enhance the customer experience.

Today, Ivo Bronsveld, Head of Integrations at commercetools, will share his vision for the customer experience of the future and talk about the tech tools that will help retailers get there. Without further ado, let’s get started.

commercetools has shot up the ranks from Visionary to Leader in Gartner’s latest Magic Quadrant for Digital Commerce. Congratulations! To what do you attribute this success?

I would say the success of commercetools is a combination of a couple of things. First of all, the market matured. commercetools has always been an API first, completely headless solution and, at first, headless was mostly seen as a developer thing. It was not always clear what the direct benefits of headless were. But if you compare that to today, the benefits of such a composable architecture are way more apparent and the adoption of that is skyrocketing.

In addition, we obviously have worked really hard to make sure our platform is the best one out there. Our product teams have done incredible work to make our vision a reality and I really believe this is a crucial part of our success. I think that our dedication to performance, security, and the developer experience are what make commercetools unique.

Composable Commerce is something that you mention a lot in your blog. Could you give a brief rundown of what it is and why it is important?

I think Composable Commerce is basically a much better name for the Best of Breed solutions of the past. What many companies have noticed over time is that the traditional commerce platforms do not really provide the flexibility that is required nowadays.

Customer expectations change all the time and, generally speaking, companies that can adapt to these changes tend to do better than the ones who can’t.

Composable Commerce provides a model to introduce agility to your commerce environment. By building your architecture using more modular solutions, it becomes easier to add or replace certain components over time.

commercetools has an impressive list of technology partners. Could you give us an example of how your clients leverage the tech solutions offered by your partners?

Sure thing! Our technology partnerships are quite important to us, as commercetools is typically just one piece of the puzzle. This is why we invested heavily in our third-party ecosystem and launched our Integration Marketplace.

At the start of a project, there are always challenges that every customer has to figure out. For example, because the commercetools platform is fully headless and does not provide a front-end, our customers will have to figure out how they want to approach this. Luckily, we have strategic partnerships with almost all of the key CMS vendors, so customers can find their solution of choice quite easily.

There is also a category of third party solutions that I would consider a bit more “optional”. For example, I would put third party search solutions that provide all sorts of fancy AI/Machine Learning in that category. While it provides a lot of benefits, it is certainly not required when you are just starting your project. But, then again, at a later stage, it might become crucial.

I might be biased, but I really believe our technology partnerships are crucial to all our customers because they help create that Composable Commerce architecture.

Why is it necessary for retailers to embrace the importance of customer experience and the tools that enhance it?

Honestly, I don’t think there is anyone out there who would disagree with the fact that customer experience is important. However, I do believe that people don’t always realize that they need the right tools to provide that great customer experience.

Like I mentioned before, the customer expectation is always changing. So even if you implemented the perfect experience at one point in time, the way customers interact and shop will change. Whether that is due to technological improvements or a global pandemic, change is the one constant.

So that means you will need technology that enables you to change. A two-year-old commerce platform that is 3 major updates behind is not going to be of much use if you first need to do a bunch of expensive upgrades to the system.

Retailers are realizing that their ability to adapt is one of the crucial factors that determine whether or not they can keep the customer happy.

Thank you!

You can find more information about commercetools at commercetools.com.

commercetools’ software has been implemented by Fortune 500 companies across many industries. Retail clients of the platform can now draw on the capabilities of the Cappasity solution for fast production, easy embedding, and powerful analysis of 3D content. The Cappasity integration allows merchants to automatically embed 3D images into their online store. Those who choose to take advantage of the Cappasity integration will benefit from increased engagement that comes with interactive 3D imagery.

Cappasity integration demo

Cappasity at commercetools’ Integration Marketplace

How to integrate Cappasity with commercetools