Commercetools is a cloud-based headless commerce platform
that utilizes a microservices based architecture that powers the
next-generation B2C and B2B commerce capabilities.
General
Questions
- As per profile and experience, what questions do we
ask?
- What questions are related to current roles and
responsibilities?
Commercetools
Basics
- What is an organization and a project, and how can we
create them?
- When and where can we define currency, language,
countries, zones?
- How do you restrict different teams and users for
specific access to, for example, Products, Orders, Customers, etc., with
options like read-only, edit, or both?
- What is an API client in commercetools, and where do
you get the API client from?
- What is a builder in commercetools, and have you used
this?
- What is the difference between category and product
type?
- What is a Custom Object, and why do we use this?
- Do you know what a product projection is?
- How does product status work in commercetools?
- What is your experience with creating customizations or
extensions in commercetools? What are API Extensions?
- What is your understanding of commercetools' API, and
how do you interact with it in your development work?
- What do you know about the 'API Playground'? Where do
you use this?
- How do you customize the API in commercetools?
- What is OAuth in commercetools, and where did you use
this?
Product
Management
- How do you handle product catalog management in
commercetools?
- How do you create a product? Is it required to have a
product type for creating a product?
- What is a master variant? Do you know what a saleable
product is?
- How do you set up a product for a specific store?
Product Selection?
- Write pseudo code for customer creation in case we have
first name, last name, and email?
Pricing
and Discounts
- How does price work in your project?
- How many types of prices are available to use?
- Do you know about Volume pricing and Tiered pricing?
- How would you approach implementing a complex pricing
strategy in commercetools?
- Do you know how discounts work in commercetools? Can we
apply, let's say, five product discounts to a product at any given time?
Order
Management
- How does Order management work? How do you do Order
Refund and cancellation?
- If we need to add an attribute for an order, what steps
will you follow to do that?
- What are Frozen Carts, and when do we need this?
Payment
- Do you know how capture and authorize work in payment?
Shipping
and Zones
- Can we create different shipping rates for different
countries?
- Steps to create a shipping method in merchant center?
- How do you use predicates to define Shipping Method
eligibility for Carts?
- What are Zones and countries, and how are they related?
- We have three countries to set up for shipping methods
(Belgium, Germany, and Sweden). In this scenario, we have two currencies.
Could you please explain how you would approach setting up the shipping
rates?
- Is it mandatory to have a zone for any country?
Integration
and Extensions
- Have you integrated commercetools with any third-party
services or systems? If so, can you describe the integration process and
any challenges you faced?
- What integrations have you worked on in commercetools?
Advanced
Topics
- How will you implement the multi-country rollout in commercetools?
- Theoretical question: understanding of MACH
architecture and other commerce-related topics?
- How do you decide which price to consider? Let's say we
have to define 500 prices for one product variant and also, in some other
requirement, we need to define 60k prices for a variant product?
- What are some strategies for handling large-scale data
migration in commercetools?
- How do you ensure data consistency and integrity in a
distributed microservices architecture like commercetools?
- Can you explain how you would implement a custom
workflow for order processing in commercetools?
- What are some best practices for optimizing API
performance in commercetools?
- How do you manage versioning and backward compatibility
in commercetools APIs?
- What is composable commerce?
- Why is everyone talking about composable commerce?
- What are the 3 key benefits of composable commerce?
- Can composable commerce reduce complexity and costs for
businesses?
Other
Related Technical Questions
- What features and modules have you worked on, and what
relevant questions are related to them?
- What is Composable Commerce?
- How do you set up a new commercetools application in
Spring Boot?
- Let's say we want to develop an end-to-end service/page
in Spring Boot. Please explain all the layers and the source files,
methods, and annotations you will create.
- What is Mockito framework?
- How do you implement performance testing in a project?
- CI/CD pipeline experience and implementing a testing
framework in the pipeline?
- If any service is having an issue, what steps do you
follow to resolve the issue?
- How do you set up a new pipeline?
- Some basic questions on Java/Hybris, especially if they
have less experience in commercetools and previous experience in
Java/Hybris?
THE
BACKBONE OF COMPOSABLE COMMERCE: MACH® ARCHITECTURE
Microservices-based: As
granular and independent services, microservices make it easy to implement new
features, touchpoints and more.
API-first: Bridge the dialog
between your frontends and a centralized backend with APIs.
Cloud-native: Commerce
services hosted in the cloud eliminate server dependencies while enabling
automatic updates and auto-scaling.
Headless commerce: Architecture
that decouples customer-facing frontends from internal backend operations
provides maximum flexibility and speed.
What
is composable commerce?
Composable commerce is a component-based solution design
approach that gives companies flexibility and freedom to build and run
outstanding shopping experiences. A composable system combines three core
traits: It should be cloud-native, component-based and tech-agnostic.
Why
is everyone talking about composable commerce?
Traditional eCommerce solutions, also known as legacy or
monolithic platforms, are indivisible blocks of standardized software that are
hard to customize and slow to update.
Every time you change or update something, the entire
system must be retested and redeployed, which may cause issues or even a complete
system crash.
This inherent lack of flexibility and agility doesn’t
compute at today’s accelerated pace; consequently, companies struggle to
innovate and even hire and retain talent (unsurprisingly, top engineers aren’t
eager to work with old technologies).
Plus, the cost of running monolithic infrastructures has
become prohibitive due to additional fees for upgrades, integrations, etc.
What
are the 3 key benefits of composable commerce?
True composable commerce provides businesses of any size or
industry with three main benefits:
Benefit #1- Infinite
scale:
You can run multiple brands, expand to new markets, bring
in new channels and even try out business models with ease. Also, autoscaling
enables you to respond to new influxes of traffic and customers in real-time,
so your business is ready to monetize on Black Friday-like moments.
Benefit #2 —
Unlimited flexibility and agility:
Change a component, not the platform. When something
doesn’t work, you can easily replace it or drop it. Composable commerce is all
about freedom and adaptability: With modular iterations and best-of-breed, you
can add, remove or switch functionalities without vendor lock-in. Innovate
faster and adapt customer experiences on the fly, and release new features up
to 8x faster than legacy tech.
Benefit #3 —
Lower cost:
When you invest in financial and technological flexibility,
you achieve higher cost efficiency and eliminate technical debt. A true
composable system optimizes commerce investment because you can select the
components and solutions that meet your requirements. With a versionless
solution, you no longer have to pay for forced upgrades you don’t need or that
don’t drive value for your business. You can effectively say goodbye to
maintenance fees and backward compatibility testing, too.
Can
composable commerce reduce complexity and costs for businesses?
As the composable approach is a relatively new technology,
it’s common for executives and tech professionals to express misconceptions
surrounding complexity and high costs.
These concerns stem from the misperception that
implementing best-of-breed solutions would result in an overwhelming number of
vendors, as well as compatibility and interoperability issues.
Another worry is whether composability requires a large
team of developers, which could incur additional personnel, recruitment and
training expenses.
However, composable commerce is actually able to reduce
complexity and costs:
Simplified commerce architecture: By
leveraging modular and interchangeable components, composable commerce makes
the architecture easier to manage and maintain.
Seamless integration: The
adoption of new cutting-edge solutions, such as search and AI tools, becomes
faster and more efficient without incurring additional integration costs.
Real-time updates and maintenance: True
composable systems are versionless and continuously updated and maintained in
real-time, which eliminates technical debt and renders version upgrades
obsolete.
Scalability: With a
cloud-native SaaS solution, businesses no longer need to manage their own
servers or handle capacity increases. The system offers infinite scalability to
handle a large number of products or increased online traffic.
Increased developer productivity: Working
with modern tech means developers become more productive, enabling the company
to innovate at a faster pace.
An ecosystem of composable commerce vendors: Vendors
like commercetools offer extensive partner networks and accelerators that
simplify implementation timelines and enable businesses to leverage best
practices.
These advantages of composable commerce alleviate complexity and costs, providing businesses with a more streamlined and efficient approach to their commerce operations.
