Explaination of what is Headless Commerce
What is the next generation of web development frameworks, with the raise of popularity of headless architecture web frameworks, headless commerce is growing fast and is expected as the future of web building.
Business model and consumer shopping behavior has big changed during the Covid-19 pandemic. Most of the substantial enterprises are getting worse due to the harder economy. In contrary, the online business has grown immensely in the past three years. This forces the substantial companies to invest the online store. More and more startups jump into the online business the share the market, which intensify the competition.
To stay ahead of technology and winning in the digital market, the merchants and big retailers are now rethinking the digital strategy in order to meet the new needs of users and win in the future.
What is headless commerce?
Headless commerce is new ecommerce architecture, which decouple the frontend and backend in separated system, and run independently. That means, the brands build their own e-commerce store using modern frameworks and technologies. Headless commerce has no more with templates to do, and can be freely customized that matches to brand and consumers.
Front-end
The front-end is the presentation layer of data and user interface, which can displayed in the store or websites.
Back-end
The back-end layer store all the data models and serves to different digital solution, such as user model, analysis model, marketing data and so on.
Traditional vs headless E-Commerce
The traditional ecommerce platform makes the online business much easier than ever. The biggest pro is it is out of box. All the operation will be implemented inner the system, which ties the frontend and backend tightly together, also called Monolithic.
Due to the monolithic solution the traditional online store is stiff. As the growth of the web pages and lacking of technical optimization, the store runs slow leading to low conversion.
Headless commerce is the perfect e-commerce solution to improve the user experience. Thanks to the decoupling of frontend and backend, the storefront runs smooth with lightning-fast. The merchants use the headless tech stack to carry out the digital marketing of Omni-channel.
APIs are the key feature to achieve the communication between frontend and backend. All the trending digital experience platforms (DXP) can be easily integrated into the application to accelerate business growth. The merchants who use headless ecommerce are much more flexible and scalable in the modern digital age.
When do you need headless commerce
Go Headless means you are ready to scale fast with you online business. If you still have no idea what is the right time to consider the new tech stack, you can think about the following signs which give you more guidelines.
Your online store is facing slow site speed
Over half of the online retailers said they are facing the challenge of slow loading time after one year with traditional platform. They try to fix the problem through third-party extension or even hiring extra developer, but works little. Especially on the black Friday, the checkout procedure are not always smooth due to the massive shoppers at the that time. There is another reason to slow down the site speed, that the online owner needs to install many extensions to make the store with more functionalities, which is inextricable by store owners without coding knowledge.
You want to build more user experience brand and shopping journey
If you are a newcomer in online business, you don't need to take much care about your brand awareness, the template design of your storefront can meet your expectation at present. But for the brands and enterprise who need to create a unique look and store feeling with brand matching, headless is the best-in-breed solution to customize your storefront in freedom. Delivering an exceptional customer experience is a “nice to have” addition to your growing business.
Creating a good-looking store and Immersive shopping experience will not just benefit your brand, come along with high conversion rate and huge revenue.
You are growing fast and preparing for future growth
Once your brand is growing fast you will meet the choke point of flexibility on monolithic platform. To satisfy the user expectations which change continuously you should keep staying the trending and flexible to utilize a new strategy. The elements like Omnichannel, Digital Experience Platform, Progressive Web Applications etc., are crucial for sustainable growth.
Headless commerce is the future-proofing solution for next generation ecommerce. The developer team are allowed to build the system like building blocks, which means every component in the whole headless commerce represents just one block, and the brands build what they want, when they need. Go Headless means Go for Future.
Is headless commerce right for your online business
Does every online retailer need a headless commerce? The answer is up to you and your online business model. If you are a startup, and want to start your online selling in quick way, the monolithic ecommerce is best choice. You can use the all-in-one platform, such as Shopify or bigCommerce, to reduce the costs and shorten time to market. Some businesses don't need crossing multi-channels or Omni-channel the traditional ecommerce would be sufficient.
But, to some brands and big merchants, who want to stay ahead to beat the competitors and win more market share, headless ecommerce solution play a role of creating amazing shopping experience. An experience-focused and user-centered brand will be standing out in the crowd with the help of headless commerce.
To win more conversion and lower the marketing costs, develop a headless system is an alternative for brands, who want to continually satisfy the customer needs. Developers use the trending technology and third-party DXP to offer a better shopping experience. Moreover, brands are flexible to develop tech stack and scale the business in the future.
Transformation to headless ecommerce is a big decision for your business, you need to choose an excellent platform and web development tools fitting to your business model and work closely with developer together. Let me help you to achieve your business goal and building online ecommerce for future.