Don’t let legacy tech suck the life out of your business! From sinister checkout glitches to scaling horror stories, legacy tech is always ready to jump-scare customers and haunt success. Here, learn how to finally ghost technologies that hold you back by adopting composable commerce. Your customers — as well as your team — will fang you very much.
We all hear how much consumer expectations have shifted toward digital and omnichannel experiences. We also know that delivering on those customer-centric promises is only possible with high-performance technology that not only meets those expectations but also exceeds them. Yet, many brands and retailers still leverage legacy technology that is inflexible and the opposite of agile, which ends up causing many issues that scare customers.
That’s not surprising though, as legacy eCommerce platforms have been around since the birth of online shopping and managed to capture the lion’s share of B2C enterprise clients. For many companies still using legacy systems, changing technology comes with potential constraints that range from vendor lock-in and a lack of budget to inertia and internal resistance to change.
The problem is that these platforms are essentially outdated, monolithic systems that aren’t built for the digital-first world we live in. Brands and retailers running on legacy tech aren’t able to respond to consumer needs on the fly, which erodes their competitive edge, loyalty and revenue prospects over time.
That said, do you smell a rat in your eCommerce infrastructure but aren’t sure what’s wrong exactly? Let’s explore 4 spooky signs that show why legacy tech isn’t working anymore and the reasons composable commerce is a fa-boo-lous approach for your business.
1. The horror stories of slow websites and limited scalability
Nobody likes to see a loading spinner on a website: Indeed, 83% of online users expect websites they visit to load in three seconds for a website to load. And yet, it takes a frightening 8.6 seconds for the average website to load on mobile devices. The scary result? A one-second delay in page load time can result in a 7% reduction in conversions.
Clearly, consumers have raised the bar and now expect ultra-fast performance, no matter the device they’re on, and they aren’t afraid to depart sites with prolonged loading times or non-responsive pages.
If your website is slow, regardless of how many visitors land on it, imagine the crashes it may face during heavy traffic peaks like Black Friday or Cyber Monday. Not only is your team scrambling to meet demand with capacity, but your business also misses immense revenue opportunities.
The composable fa-boo-lous answer to boost scalability and speed
If your website is experiencing speed and performance issues, it may be due to legacy eCommerce systems that depend on on-premise or cloud-hosted infrastructures. Unlike cloud-native SaaS solutions, these platforms lack the ability to dynamically scale online capacity. Instead, they require manual intervention to increase capacity, which involves adding or upgrading servers. This manual approach can lead to bottlenecks during peak traffic periods, ultimately affecting user experience and conversion rates.2. The checkout graveyard
A poorly designed checkout process can cast a dark spell on the effectiveness of your buying journey. After all, speed, convenience and security are the three ingredients consumers look for in a best-in-class checkout flow.
When businesses are unable to create frictionless experiences, about 70% of shoppers abandon their carts. As glitches during the checkout experience remain common for businesses relying on legacy platforms, it’s no wonder consumers ghost their shopping carts so easily!
More than transaction failures, security during checkout is a problem legacy platforms aren’t equipped to handle. For instance, scores of legacy eCommerce tech run on outdated software or rely on third-party plugins or extensions with their own security issues, which make them more vulnerable to security breaches than composable systems.
The composable fa-boo-lous answer to move the needle in conversions
Streamlining the checkout process is crucial for brands and retailers to reduce abandoned carts, raise the average order value, and even cross-sell and upsell products by implementing product recommendations and personalization features.3. The woes in inventory mismanagement
Limited real-time visibility into inventory levels results in inaccuracies that impact omnichannel experiences, such as BOPIS (buy online, pick up in-store), as well as your conversion rates. Think about it: If a consumer lands on your website and wants to buy a product, then finds out during checkout that the product isn’t available, you’ve just lost a customer.
It’s crucial to provide instant inventory information across all channels and throughout every stage of the buying experience. However, legacy solutions are cursed with an inherent inability to match this need due to data silos, manual processes, integration issues, and even a lack of automated reordering processes. The consequences are not only customer dissatisfaction but stockouts and overstocking that become increasingly harder for your company to manage.
The composable fa-boo-lous answer to provide real-time inventory data
Composable commerce platforms are designed to integrate with various data sources and systems within an organization via API-based architecture, including inventory management solutions, point-of-sale (POS) systems and your eCommerce engine.4. Lost in the haunted woods of unmet customer expectations and faster competitors
A recent research by the MACH Alliance uncovered that 90% of IT leaders agree that customer expectations are increasing all the time. In addition, 87% of respondents find it important to deliver constant improvements to the customer experience. For companies dependent on legacy tech, it’s witchful thinking at best to believe that meeting customer expectations in such a constantly changing business climate is possible.
With legacy tech, it’s hard to expand to new countries easily, create a multi-brand strategy or provide true omnichannel experiences. Integrating or upgrading new features requires tremendous effort and energy, as moving the pieces of a monolithic platform without downtime or a complete crash isn’t a simple task. If your business relies on a legacy platform, you probably have experienced this innovation paralysis countless times!
To add insult to injury, your slow innovation rate directly impacts customer churn, as faster-to-innovate competitors can lure your customers with sweet experiences that you’re still unable to match.
The composable fa-boo-lous answer to stay ahead of customer expectations
It’s key for your business to keep up with customer expectations at speed, and a composable approach enables you to do just that. More than flexibility and agility, composability is all about crafting unique customer experiences through extensibility and customization.No tricks, just treats: Unified commerce with composable
87% of technology leaders acknowledge that composable commerce (and, by extension, MACH technology) has been important in helping their business meet customer expectations, a trend that continues to gain momentum across enterprises worldwide. Composable commerce isn’t considered a fad anymore as businesses of the caliber of Sephora, Mars Inc., Audi and so many more demonstrate the benefits of this modular technology.
To unlock the benefits of composability, you can plan a gradual legacy-to-composable migration. This phased approach lets you move each functionality from the monolithic application to composable at your own pace. And, of course, finding the right commerce vendor that best fits your needs will accelerate ROI over time. To find unbiased and clear resources to help you in this journey, check out the Gartner® Magic Quadrant for Digital Commerce as well as the Critical Capabilities for Digital Commerce.
So, why commercetools? As a leader recognized by market analysts like Gartner, IDC and more, commercetools provides a spooktacular composable commerce platform that will turn your eCommerce nightmare into a dream come true. All you have to do isn’t wait for the next crisis — and tap into this opportunity today.
The next step? Leverage our fang-tastic 60-day free trial and check out for yourself that moving from legacy to composable is simpler than you think!
Dasha leads Product Marketing at commercetools. Software engineer by profession but a creative at heart, she found her happy place in marketing. With 15 years of experience in tech, she concurs that “Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.” Loves problem-solving, big libraries and 80s music.