Nowadays, firms look to speed up their digital transformation. This is due to relentless eCommerce growth, competition, and changing customer behaviors. Traditional systems are slow and prevent scalability.
So, how do we overcome the limitations of the traditional monolithic system? The answer is Headless Commerce.
Headless commerce is faster, lighter, and more efficient than the traditional eCommerce infrastructure. In this article, we will go through all the intricacies of headless commerce. We will also determine how it can improve your website’s performance.
What Is Headless Commerce
Headless commerce is the process of separating a website’s frontend layer from the backend system. This approach allows you to create custom user experiences.
A headless architecture provides brands with flexibility and control over the customer journey. Additionally, headless commerce allows companies to build more detailed, personalized shopping experiences.
Headless Commerce vs Traditional Commerce
Before headless commerce, eCommerce brands relied on the traditional commerce model. The advantage of using a traditional model is the ease of finding everything in one place. Implementing a traditional model is a piece of cake. It’s fast and easy. It provides full-fledged control of the IT department and enables developers to deliver highly customizable front-end solutions.
Traditional commerce architecture has an integrated backend and content management system (CMS). However, under traditional architecture, it is difficult for businesses to add functionalities or make changes to their eCommerce platform without affecting their CMS. Being interlinked, any alteration to one will inevitably affect the other. Headless commerce came into the picture to solve this problem of lack of flexibility.
Headless commerce edges traditional commerce models, giving merchants more flexibility and scalability. The decoupled front end and back end allow developers to build and deploy features and functions. Headless commerce also makes integrating websites with third-party services and applications more accessible.
For example, you want to add the feature of Guest Checkout to your website. With headless commerce, the front end would send an API call to the backend. This helps in the fast implementation of the guest checkout feature.
APIs are the heart and soul of headless architecture. APIs are microservices that allow the transfer of information between the front end and back end. It acts as a connector, so separating the frontend and backend layers is possible.
Headless commerce makes this task of adding a feature instantaneous. In contrast, it would take hours to become available to customers if you want to add a feature using traditional architecture.
How Headless Commerce Improves Your Website’s Performance?
Headless commerce solutions are an alternative to traditional commerce engines. They allow you to speed up your site performance and build your storefront how you want.
1. Faster Website
Fast loading speeds are vital when running an online store. Most customers will exit your store if a webpage takes more than 3 seconds to load. A Headless infrastructure stores content centrally and delivers content when needed via APIs.
Additionally, headless commerce solutions use CDNs and caching to improve page loading speeds. Headless solutions can use lazy loading and image compression, improving page loading speeds.
Google’s algorithm recognizes loading speed as a critical factor while ranking websites. So, by making your website faster, headless commerce also helps you to gain a competitive advantage in SEO.
2. Omnichannel Experience
Omnichannel retail refers to a system that allows customers to shop from various channels. True omnichannel experience is achievable only on headless platforms. Although many legacy systems claim to provide an omnichannel experience, it is impossible. Traditional monolithic engines can’t provide the entire omnichannel experience.
Let’s take an example.
If a legacy system doesn’t support a particular feature, you cant add it. You have to wait till your platform supports the feature. But in headless platforms, the frontend and backend are not interlinked. This allows you to develop a new frontend for the feature you want without relying on your platform.
3. Complete Customization
Traditional e-commerce platforms are rigid. They work within the constraints of the front-end tools developed by firms. In traditional models, making any frontend changes will affect your backend layer. This puts a considerable constraint on brands and limits them to default designs. On the other side, headless products provide endless potential on the front end.
Headless architecture provides brands with high customization abilities. In headless architecture, any changes to the frontend don’t affect the backend layer. This gives developers the freedom to design the frontend in the exact way they want.
There are zero constraints to customization when it comes to headless architecture. This becomes an added advantage as brands can provide the best UX to their customers.
4. Efficient Scaling
Your eCommerce solution should allow the growth of your business. Scaling is an integral part of any business. While choosing an eCommerce platform, you should always take scalability into account.
Customer needs keep changing with the innovation of technology. It is challenging to upscale a traditional commerce website. Even with the help of a professional eCommerce development team, it takes a lot of effort.
Headless solutions can future-proof your brand by allowing you to scale as you need. Frontend developers can add back-office functionality to your existing system. They can also use frameworks as they see fit by using APIs.
By using a headless architecture, you can treat each new functionality separately. Developers can integrate new features as your site expands. This allows businesses to scale efficiently without confining themselves to a platform’s limitations.
5. Personalized Customer Experience
Delivering personalized customer experiences provides a competitive advantage in the cut-throat eCom space. Customers demand individualized experiences that resonate with their specific needs and preferences.
You can’t provide personalized experiences to your customers with a traditional model. But, with headless platforms, customization capabilities become limitless.
The headless approach allows you to provide a more balanced consumer experience. Changing the content layer is easier and less risky because you won’t disrupt the backend.
Businesses looking to stand out should customize the online sales presentation experience. This includes features like individual purchasing preferences, personalized recommendations, and promotions tailored to the user based on previous purchases.
Personalization strengthens the link between the customer and the brand. It is also known to increase customer retention rates in the long run.
Wrap-up: Is Headless Commerce Fit For Everyone?
Shifting from traditional commerce architecture to headless architecture might seem an obvious choice. But hold your horses. It isn’t always better to shift to headless architecture, especially if a traditional model is working for you. Why change what’s working for you?
A headless architecture won’t magically turn the tide in your favor. Several big brands are still using traditional architecture and are doing quite well. A headless architecture needs expertise, time, and effort. First of all, your development team should be proficient in coding. An expert team of developers is critical for delivering personalized user experiences.
Shifting to a headless commerce system takes time and effort. You have to check if the benefits of a headless architecture align with your business goals. If you are short of expert developers, we recommend you go for monolithic architecture. But if you want to go headless, you can always outsource your development activities to third parties.
Implementing headless commerce can be initially expensive. While it is not the right fit for everyone, it is the only solution for brands that want to scale without limitations. With headless commerce, you can achieve limitless possibilities with your design. You can tailor personalized experiences and offer true omnichannel experiences to your shoppers.
Headless commerce enables developers to utilize their expertise and integrate AI and AR models into the website. It also allows organizations to easily integrate their existing systems (ERP, PIM, etc.) to the architecture building a seamless shopping platform. With headless architecture, brands can design and deliver personalized customer experiences.
