Composable Commerce with Optimizely Connect Platform (OCP)

The Optimizely Connect Platform (OCP) empowers developers to streamline data ingestion and channel activation by creating connectors that integrate seamlessly with any marketing suite. Developers can publish these connectors to the App Directory, and marketers can easily install and use them to compose digital experiences. - https://world.optimizely.com/products/ocp/overview/

In essence, OCP allows you to create applications that take information from transactional commerce services and add it to Optimizely Graph. It serves as a hub that aggregates data from multiple sources into one cohesive system.

This architecture leverages Application in Optimizely Connect Platform as a central integration hub between content and commerce systems.

Data Flow Summary

• PIM → Commerce: Product data and metafields are synced

• Commerce → Connect: Webhooks notify changes

• Connect → Graph & CMS: Data is synced into Optimizely

• CMS → Graph: Content is indexed

• Frontend → Graph: Frontend fetches all content and product data via GraphQL

• Frontend ↔ Commerce: Handles user interactions like checkout, login and cart

Comparison: With OCP vs. Without OCP

Feature	Without OCP	With OCP
Data Ownership	Split: PIM, Commerce, CMS all manage data	Centralized: Optimizely Graph owns all product data
Commerce Data Flow	PIM → Commerce → Headless App	PIM → Commerce → OCP → Graph → Headless App
Revalidation Speed	Fast (direct read from Commerce & Graph)	Slower (delayed by syncs from PIM via OCP)
Cache Invalidation	Manual or real-time via CMS/Commerce hooks	Delayed due to webhook-based multi-step sync
Dev Complexity	High – headless app merges two APIs	Low – one API (Graph) handles CMS/product info
Sync Complexity	High – headless app needs to listen to changes from two sources	Low – one API (Graph)
Real-time Accuracy	High – data is fetched live	Lower – sync delays might cause stale content
Scalability	Moderate – more API calls from frontend	High – Graph acts as single fast CDN source

The Optimizely Connect Platform can be an incredibly powerful tool in this landscape, offering a modern way to stitch together content, commerce, and search across distributed systems with great performance and flexibility.