Nowadays, consumers want to have complete control over their shopping experience. The days of just going to the store to purchase your desired gadget or visiting a website through a desktop computer to add your favorite designer bag into your cart are long gone.
People want to buy everything on the go through their mobile phones, tablets, voice-controlled IoT devices, and many others. With the rapid technology change, new trends in eCommerce platforms are also emerging. The latest trend for building a digital store successfully is headless eCommerce.
The headless eCommerce platform has become immensely popular among people for all good reasons. Many retailers choose the approach because it gives them more freedom around the front end of their website and showcases their products.
The pandemic of Covid-19 has changed every aspect of the buying journey. How can brands or companies extend their services quickly to meet the new needs? However, with the flexible headless eCommerce platform, they indeed can. Open-source headless eCommerce may have become the most discussed trend, but it still is the least understood one.
Suppose you are new to the headless eCommerce platform industry. In that case, it is necessary to understand what headless eCommerce is and why you should consider a headless commerce solution for your business.
- What is headless eCommerce?
- Reasons why you should consider a headless commerce platform for your business
- 5 Benefits of open-source headless eCommerce
- Best Headless eCommerce platforms that you can choose for your company or brand
What is headless eCommerce?
Headless eCommerce separates the front and back end of an eCommerce application to allow retailers to build whatever they want. In headless eCommerce, the presentation layer of your store will completely be separated from critical processes such as inventory management, transaction processing, and shipping.
A headless commerce solution will allow you to focus entirely on your online store’s customization and customer interaction without worrying about its impact on the critical processes. In addition, site customization will be done quickly then as the back and front ends are no longer heavily dependent on each other.
So, the store merchants will have the freedom to customize their online stores and provide the best customer support service to their valuable customers without impacting or making any changes to the back end. Isn’t it excellent for all online retailers?
All the brands or companies looking for a perfect solution to enhance their customer service should consider a headless eCommerce platform for their business.
What is headless eCommerce architecture?
In simple terms, headless architecture refers to wrapping up all the business logic and functionalities required in the set of APIs powered by specialized back-ends. The main aim of headless eCommerce architecture is to push your business data and content to all your desires types of platforms through APIs.
It will offer store merchants an opportunity to use the best platforms specialized in their functions such as Search, Payment, PIM, Media management, and others. In addition, it will allow them to choose the way they want to build the front end for their sales channels.
The headless architecture was introduced to the eCommerce industry a long time back and has been used by online retailers ever since then. As headless architecture is evolving with time, new definitions are also emerging with time.
However, headless architecture has given the right amount of flexibility and convenience to online store owners. Headless architecture has the full authority to decide how to build your business applications by selecting their building blocks from different parties rather than using one platform vendor.
Reasons why you should consider a headless commerce platform for your business
Early on, businesses used to take a full-stack stack approach for their online stores in which both front and back ends were closely connected. It made sense back then, as it allowed them to focus on one experience, such as a desktop.
However, now businesses need to tailor the experiences for different channels such as mobile phones, tablets, and other devices, yet keeping the overall buying experience consistent across their brand or company.
It is almost impossible to do with traditional eCommerce platforms. This is because the front-end and back-end are heavily dependent on each other and are designed to serve only a single channel.
Some of the few significant reasons why you should consider headless commerce solution for your business are:
Headless commerce lets you move fast
With headless commerce, you can easily make rapid changes to your front-end without impacting the eCommerce logic. In addition, the store merchants can quickly release new transactional touchpoints to keep up with the demand as soon as the customer technology changes.
Your developers will also be at ease as they can easily create custom delivery models without requiring a lot of their time and effort.
Headless commerce offers more customization and personalization opportunities
Many traditional eCommerce platforms may restrict online retailers from using different templates and themes for the front end, making it challenging to customize their online store.
However, if you want to have a more personalized front-end for your brand’s online store, a headless eCommerce platform might be a perfect choice for you. It will allow you to turn the creative vision of your designer into reality without hitting yourself with multiple restrictions.
5 headless commerce advantages
Today, with the Covid-19 pandemic forcing the pace in business change, brands need to bring creativity and innovation to their business plans like never before. Every hour of a developer is precious as their work speed will help increase the cash flow.
If you plan to adopt headless commerce, you will be overwhelmed by the number of benefits it can offer you and your business. Some of the significant benefits of headless commerce that can help you in accelerating your business are:
Better employee adoption
Many companies might be reluctant to use new technologies and tools due to learning issues. However, having a modern platform like headless commerce at your side, your employees can easily access and update the front end all by themselves without requiring any advanced skills.
Better customer experience
Headless commerce gives brands and companies the right tools to offer the best buying experience to their valuable customers, which they can’t get anywhere else. In addition, you will be able to provide your customers a consistent experience across all your channels.
You will have all the advanced tools in your hand to customize frequently and easily without having to worry about impacting your store’s performance.
Customers are the heart of every business. The more the number of happy and satisfied customers, the higher the sales. So, headless commerce will ensure that your customers are satisfied and remain loyal to your business by offering them the best customer experience.
E-book “Building headless eCommerce with best of breed approach”
It saves a lot of developer’s time
With a headless commerce approach, changes to the front end can be made with ease, saving a lot of developer time. In addition, using headless templates and partner solutions, you will only require developers to make a few clicks and some simple coding steps to jumpstart the commerce applications.
Agile marketing
A headless commerce system can support new technologies as soon as they are introduced in the market. So, if you use a headless commerce solution for your company or brand, you will be able to launch new front-end experiences quickly.
With a headless commerce solution, you will also be able to rapidly react to new market trends with a minimum cost of back-end development.
Thanks to the flexibility provided by open-source headless eCommerce, it will be easy for your marketing team to set up a new site without few days instead of weeks.
Long-term cost savings
It may seem that operating a headless eCommerce platform might be more expensive than a traditional eCommerce platform as front-end development costs will increase using a headless commerce solution.
However, when choosing a headless commerce solution, you make the most economical short and long-term choices. From product licenses to marketing to the maintenance of your website, you will save significantly on your resources.
You will be able to save your company’s time by customizing your website and reacting to market trends rapidly, thanks to the flexibility and increased agility provided by a headless commerce solution.
Best Headless eCommerce platforms that you can choose for your company or brand
Some of the examples of the best headless eCommerce platforms that you can trust for your company or brand are:
Sylius
Sylius is an open-source headless eCommerce platform for both SMB and Enterprise that need custom solutions. Sylius headless eCommerce platform will help you offer your customers the experience they deserve. It is available in two versions: open-source (Sylius) and paid one (Sylius Plus)
It is a robust engine that can help many aspiring entrepreneurs and business owners to build their personalized online stores. In addition, it provides a developer-friendly environment to set up the entire site faster than it can be on other platforms.
The Sylius headless eCommerce platform promises stability, easy maintenance, and a robust testing framework for ensuring quality.
Featured customers that trust Sylius headless eCommerce platform
More are more brands running their businesses on top of Sylius. Read about Sylius store examples. Some enterprise headless commerce examples are:
- Popsugar
- Casa Palacio
- BestValue
- Tediber
Fashion headless commerce
Headless commerce case study
Magento
Magento is undoubtedly the best headless eCommerce platform for analytics and data visualization. It helps developers deliver tailor-made applications with a high level of personalization for their operating companies to meet customers’ needs and expectations.
Magento has all the essential features that can help you build your highly customized online store. From inventory management to transaction processing, it can help you get everything done perfectly.
You can also obtain a live count of your retail stock by using Magento headless eCommerce platform. In addition, it will help you in configuring management settings globally per product.
Featured customers that trust Magento headless eCommerce platform
- Sigma Beauty
- Monin
- Vizio
- Nestle Nespresso
- Jaguar
Shopify
Shopify is a popular headless eCommerce platform that helps companies or brands separate their front-end design from the back-end design to make any device platform for their brand.
Shopify helps brands and companies to stay ahead of their competitors by offering their customers the best buying experience. It also helps in increasing the speed of your website. Shopify offers all the functionalities that are necessary for building an online store and handling its operations efficiently.
It integrates smoothly with popular eCommerce marketplaces such as Amazon and eBay. Shopify also works well with other applications such as google sheets, Stocky, Slack, etc.
Choosing the right solution for your business may be tricky. Contact us if you want to know more about headless eCommerce or need some advice on eCommerce-related topics!