Headless commerce has now become a trending buzzword among e-commerce retailers. It’s not a trend that’s going to come and go; it certainly is going to stay for way longer. This post will tell you about HOW and WHY Headless commerce is the future of online retail.
Along with the advancement of technology, the dynamic world of e-commerce is drastically changing, making a radical shift in customers’ habits. Customers are getting more used to making purchases through various touch-points every passing minute. That’s why it’s essential to understand the customers’ intent and keep up with their needs to stay ahead in the game.
How would you do that? Adopting the current prevalent way, and there’s nothing more prevalent than headless commerce development in the e-commerce market. It’s literally raging right now!
Headless commerce is everywhere you look, and if your brand hasn’t considered a headless setup yet, your e-commerce business can be in danger and assuredly left behind. For that reason, you should look for a decent e-commerce website development company having hands-on expertise in making your e-commerce go headless.
It’s been around for a few years, but the technology has picked up steam as more retailers and consumers lean into online shopping, especially via mobile. Some of the biggest online retailers globally, including Walmart, have already made the switch and 61% of retailers are either currently leveraging or planning to leverage a headless commerce architecture in 2020 yet.
What Is Headless Commerce?
As it sounds, headless commerce is where CMS or digital experience platform is decoupled from the e-commerce platform body, meaning separating the front-end and back-end of the e-commerce store and letting each one function independently from the other. This also means that you can make changes to the front-end without making changes to the back-end.
Put another way, in a headless commerce setup, you will have a CMS that can store and manage your content, but unlike traditional CMS setups, there’s no attached front-end. This type of architecture offers you the freedom to build whatever you want, offering an enriched customer experience.
Is Headless Commerce Different from What You Already Have?
The retailers often debate about headless vs traditional commerce: which one to choose? If headless, how is it different from traditional? And so on. Let’s get to know what makes the headless different from traditional commerce.
Front-End Development
Traditional commerce comes with design constraints, meaning your CMS’s front-end is coupled with your back-end framework. On the other hand, headless carries no design constraints and allows you to use a pre-built front-end or build your own from scratch.
Customization
Traditional commerce comes with a pre-defined experience for both the admin and the customers. Customization takes coding and IT knowledge to do so. Simultaneously, headless commerce allows you to create your own experience and customize it accordingly as needed to respond to buyers’ wants and needs.
Flexibility
In traditional commerce, if you want to make changes in the front-end, you need to do the same with the back-end. What you can display on the front-end is constrained to what the CMS is designed to allow. Headless, on the other hand, gives you complete flexibility in making changes to your front-end without affecting the back-end or vice versa.
7 Reasons to Opt Headless Commerce Your E-Commerce Business
The most competitive and successful online retailers in the future will be those who can market and sell their products/services across multiple channels, devices, and digital touch-points, and headless enables you this option. Let’s have a look at other reasons why headless commerce is the right choice for your e-commerce business to flourish now and in the future.
High Potency
In all honesty, headless commerce is a great fit for e-commerce businesses (today and beyond) that use multiple storefronts for different languages and locations. Using full-stack architecture may need you to manage a different back-end every year, which is usually time-consuming. Headless commerce allows you to manage multiple sites from the same back-end (without needing a change), saving your loads of time and money.
Increased Speed
As headless commerce eliminates the intertwining of front-end and back-end, the retailers can concentrate on one thing, resulting in increased speed. This allows retailers to make swift changes as soon as possible concerning consumer demand or technology changes. Through this, retailers can sustain with every changing demand and immediately release new touch-points.
Inexpensive
Headless commerce solutions are less expensive to run on a scale than traditional platforms because each microservice scales to fulfill demand. To make it clearer, think as if a season sale is going on; during a flash sale, you’ll see traffic going up and up, your cards and payment systems would scale independently, then reduce down accordingly during a calmer period. You don’t need to spend independently on such things.
Longer Market Time
If you go with the traditional commerce approach to manage and create a multichannel or omnichannel retail experience, you will need to wait for quite some time. On the flip side, headless commerce enables brands to specialize in building front-end experiences on different devices and touch-points, so that the content and products/services can be delivered via API to anywhere.
Seamless Integration
Every e-commerce store owner wants to tailor the architecture seamlessly to fulfill the business circumstances; headless commerce satisfies demand. The headless approach allows you to decide on the best tools for various parts of your e-commerce project and make them work together for seamless operation.
Easy Optimization
These days, testing and optimizing the experience is crucial to winning customers. Amazon and Netflix are two giant samples of companies that are constantly making an effort to improve user experience to stay ahead in the market. Headless commerce makes it easy to deploy changes, allowing you to run multiple tests without delay and optimize everything for an enhanced buying experience.
Enhanced Customer Experience
The customer needs are ever-changing; people want to buy from brands that understand their needs across all channels; that’s where headless commerce lets you hit the right nail and compels your potential users to shop from you. The back-end already has information about the consumer; it used the data to power the personalization engine on CMS, mobile apps, and social channels to improve customer experience.
The Future of E-Commerce Is Headless: How and Why
The future of e-commerce is assuredly bright. E-commerce is one trend that’s not going anywhere – in fact, the e-commerce industry continues to grow at an impressive rate. Per Statista, global e-commerce sales grow – from an estimated $4.206 billion in 2020 to a projected $6.542 billion in 2023. If you want to keep up with the pace and not be left behind, you need the right tool; you need the futuristic tool. In the e-commerce case, the right tool is headless commerce architecture.
Due to its several benefits, headless commerce has become so popular in recent years and will boom in the coming years. If you can cover the upfront expenses, the improved performance and customer experience with headless commerce will make up whatever it costs you initially. Consequently, you can expect headless e-commerce stores to make up a larger share of total e-commerce sites in the coming years.
Final Thought
Headless commerce is a coming of age solution to existing e-commerce business problems. Now you know a lot about headless commerce, from what it is, how it is different from your current store, why you should go headless to the future of headless commerce, you must’ve known that this is the future of e-commerce, and that’s why you too should adopt it. So are you ready to go headless and secure your e-commerce future?
