Extensible Platforms: The Key to Ecommerce Growth

Choosing extensible platforms can drive long-term success in an ever competitive ecommerce market.

Reminding businesses that the ecommerce market is growing often feels like a cliche—hasn’t it been growing for years? But that’s why it’s important to repeat: Every year, the ecommerce market grows in size and competitiveness—in 2024, for example, total revenue from online transactions grew 8.4% from the previous year—and every year, businesses face increasing pressure to be agile and adaptable. 

Success in a rapidly evolving market—especially when consumer behavior is similarly variable—is frequently short-term. Businesses need an extensible platform that grows and evolves with them to build the capacity for long-term success, a platform that enables agility and encourages iteration, experimentation, and curiosity. 

Finding extensible platforms isn’t as easy as a Google search, however, because the level and quality of the extensibility can vary from platform to platform. Before the platform search can start, companies must understand extensibility from the bottom up. 

What is an extensible platform?

An extensible platform, in its simplest form, is a software system that companies can easily adapt, modify, and extend to meet new business requirements. 

For enterprise software systems, four primary components support and enable extensibility:

• APIs: APIs (application programming interfaces) allow applications to “talk” to each other by ingesting inputs and giving back responses. APIs allow developers to access the core functionalities of a platform and integrate those functionalities with other systems, applications, features, and more.
• Webhooks: Unlike APIs, which are passive once set up, webhooks are active. Webhooks send data out when an internal event fires, enabling systems to provide real-time notifications of events happening within the platform. Not all platforms and tools offer webhooks, and they can require custom work if not well supported. 
• Custom apps: Custom apps are software applications built specifically for a platform (often by the company running the platform), which provide narrow solutions to meet unique business needs. In most cases, no business needs all the custom apps available, but almost every business has at least one unique need that a custom app can serve. 
• Extensions: Extensions are modular components that companies can use to add specific features and functionalities to the platform they’re using. 

Altogether, these components serve to create an extensible platform—one that provides a common foundation out of the box while also enabling different businesses to adapt the platform to the needs of the company and the demands of their rapidly evolving niche. 

Why is extensibility important for ecommerce?

The pace of change is the primary reason extensibility is important for ecommerce. The market is evolving rapidly, but not always in predictable ways, and companies will inevitably outgrow platforms that are good but rigid. 

Despite this risk, many business leaders underestimate the power of extensibility, preferring a platform that seems to “do it all” out of the box. Part of the reason why is history: Technology is not as extensible as it used to be. 

Extensibility is a core element of modern web infrastructure, but over the years, different industries have emphasized extensibility to varying degrees. The most familiar form of extensibility for most users, for example, is via web operating systems. But, as software engineer Steven Wittens writes, “Operating systems have largely calcified around a decades-old feature set, and are just putting up fortifications.”

Today, many end-users might not really know how extensible software systems used to be, which can result in them underestimating the power of extensibility in a business context.

When business leaders evaluate extensibility in a business context, however, especially over the long term and in a dynamic market like ecommerce, numerous benefits stand out:

• Customization: With an extensible platform, businesses can tailor the platform and its features to their specific needs. They can create unique customer experiences and workflows, allowing employees to work in ways that suit them and offering users an experience that stands out from the competition.
• Innovation: Extensibility fosters innovation, enabling businesses to adopt new technologies and trends quickly without having to lift and shift entirely from one platform to another. With an extensible platform, businesses can depend on a solid foundation while swapping new features in and out. 
• Scalability: Extensible platforms can grow and scale with the business, supporting increased traffic, transactions, and data volume. Businesses don’t have to choose between narrow platforms that suit their needs but can’t scale, and legacy platforms that are scalable but generic. Extensibility fills the gap. 
• Integration: Extensible platforms facilitate seamless integrations with third-party applications and services, allowing companies to expand the platform’s functionality. In a competitive market, there are many moving pieces, and sometimes the best move is to leverage a new offering, knowing you can swap to another one as times change. 

According to research, by 2027 world retail ecommerce sales are expected to hit $8.09 trillion, exceeding the $8 trillion milestone for the very first time. The businesses that thrive in the intervening years will be the ones that can keep up with the market’s pace. 

The risks of extensibility

Extensibility is not a panacea, and it’s not without its risks. 

To understand why, it’s helpful to think of extensibility as a spectrum: On one end of the spectrum is a completely customizable, modular platform that requires continual upkeep, and on the end of the spectrum is a platform that offers little flexibility beyond its basic settings. For most businesses, the ideal level of extensibility will lie somewhere in the middle. 

Nowadays, many businesses recognize that the overly rigid platforms of yesteryear won’t work—but then they flip too far from overly rigid to overly flexible. But is “too much flexibility” really a thing? For most businesses, the answer is a surprising but resounding “Yes.”

Overly flexible, customizable, extensible platforms introduce numerous risks and challenges:

• Higher costs: Many extremely extensible platforms advertise unlimited flexibility but also require large investments in engineering and infrastructure just to keep the lights on. In the end, much of their flexibility is locked up in spending development resources on maintaining the platform itself. 
• Repetitive work: Many big and challenging problems in ecommerce, despite their size and difficulty, have been solved by advances in technology. Shopify, for example, offers peerless scalability out of the box—but many overly extensible platforms require companies to build that capacity from scratch, “solving” an already solved problem that could be avoided simply by using the right platform.
• Complexity: Extensibility can introduce much more complexity than businesses anticipate—complexity that can remain stubbornly sticky over time. 

This pattern repeats across many overly extensible, customizable approaches: Companies frequently get saddled with more challenges than they expect, making the tradeoff of investing in these approaches disappointing. 

Shopify: An extensible platform that strikes the right balance

Shopify's platform is built on composable commerce principles. These principles ensure that Shopify is highly extensible, enabling businesses to:

• Build custom storefronts: Shopify offers Storefront APIs that allow developers to create unique, engaging customer experiences across the web, apps, and games.
• Extend core business logic: Shopify Functions APIs enable developers to modify core features like pricing, checkout, and shipping.
• Integrate with external systems: Shopify's robust API ecosystem facilitates seamless integration with ERPs, PIMs, WMSs, and other critical business systems.
• Create custom apps and themes: The Shopify CLI tool and App Bridge API empower developers to create custom solutions that streamline workflows and unlock new possibilities.

All of this extensibility is built on a platform that solves the common challenges all ecommerce businesses face, such as scalability and facilitating checkout. 

The only constant is change

“The only constant is change,” a quote ascribed to Greek philosopher Heraclitus, is a well-worn principle that nonetheless remains relevant today. 

The ecommerce industry is fast-paced, and is only getting faster. An extensible platform like Shopify provides the flexibility, scalability, and integration capabilities necessary to adapt, innovate, and thrive in response to constant change. 

By embracing extensibility, businesses can create truly unique customer experiences, optimize operations, and achieve sustainable growth that will allow them to survive today, thrive tomorrow, and reap the rewards of a growing market.

FAQ on extensible platforms

What is an extensible platform?

An extensible platform is a software system that organizations can adapt, modify, and extend to meet new business requirements, and allows them to add features and experiment with new ideas.

What is platform extensibility?

Platform extensibility refers to the ability of software systems to extend via APIs, webhooks, custom apps, and extensions.

What is an extensible system?

An extensible system is one that companies can adapt, modify, and extend easily and out of the box with APIs, webhooks, custom apps, and extensions.

What is an example of extensible?

An example of extensible is Shopify Checkout Extensions, which allows companies to make no-code customizations, components, and APIs to build unique checkout experiences.