Are Headless Ecommerce Solutions Transforming the Ecommerce World?

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Are Headless Ecommerce Solutions Transforming the Ecommerce World

With the introduction of omnichannel shopping experiences across various channels and devices, eCommerce businesses are struggling to provide seamless and consistent user experiences throughout the buying process. Headless commerce is the recent buzzword in the eCommerce world and empowers online merchants and retailers with a disruptive technology that allows them to create future-ready online shopping experiences. With the increased eCommerce adoption, especially due to the ongoing global COVID-19 pandemic and the need for businesses to enhance customer service across various digital channels, headless eCommerce solutions are becoming more popular. In this article, you will explore the concept of headless commerce, its benefits, and how headless eCommerce solutions are transforming the eCommerce world.

With more and more shopping experiences happening across different channels and devices, from computers to mobiles to smart devices, eCommerce businesses face the challenge of offering seamless user experiences throughout the shopping process. Headless commerce is about to disrupt eCommerce and give businesses a technology to build future-proof online shopping experiences. Propelled by the rise in eCommerce adoption, resulting from the pandemic and the need for brands and retailers to better serve online shoppers as they scale their digital channels, headless commerce is becoming more and more popular.

In this article we explore the concept of headless commerce and its benefits for eCommerce businesses.

An Overview of Headless Commerce

Traditional eCommerce development platforms like Magento are built on top of a monolithic architecture with closely coupled frontend and backend systems, enabling businesses to sell their products and services via a web-based online shopping experience. The explosion of smartphones and other mobile devices has compelled businesses to adopt a multi-channel approach. Headless commerce solutions address this problem.

Headless eCommerce solutions involve the decoupling of the frontend presentation layer from the backend system and establish communication between each other using APIs.

An eCommerce business can leverage headless CMS development and a headless eCommerce platform to run their business operations such as marketing promotions, product logistics, inventory management, etc.

The content is then circulated through APIs with a click of a button across several devices and channels. This enables eCommerce businesses to streamline their content easily while offering customers seamless shopping experiences irrespective of the device they’re using.

Traditional CMS vs Headless CMS

The biggest perk of headless commerce is that it has the potential to create the content once and use it anywhere, unlike traditional CMS solutions.

Here’s a quick comparison of traditional CMS vs headless CMS development:

Points of Difference

Traditional CMS

Headless CMS

Omni-channel

Many content silos for all platforms.

A centralized hub for each platform.

Customization

Limited customization options for pre-designed frontend.

Complete control over the content presentation.

Customer Journey

Pre-designed frontend themes with some personalization capabilities.

A unique theme for the storefront made from scratch for a brand-specific experience.

Time to Market

New frontend touchpoints need changes in the backend system.

Creates new frontend touchpoints quickly with no change in the backend.

Page Performance

Interconnected traffic between the two ends

Separate traffic on each end

Security

Even a minor threat can affect the entire system because of the connection between the two ends.

Threats are isolated and hence, cannot affect the whole system

Technology

Limited choice of technology

Freedom to choose technology

Why do Online Merchants Need to Go Headless?

Headless commerce can help online merchants quickly respond to the demands of the modern, changing market, especially when it comes to omnichannel and personalized experiences. While traditional commerce is able to meet the needs of small-scale stores, problems arise when the business grows and expands to new platforms.

Online merchants and retailers enjoy various benefits when opting for headless eCommerce solutions. These solutions help businesses to:

  • manage their storefronts on various digital channels

  • employ the technology of their choice

  • enhance the performance and security

  • offer a decent User Interface and visual editing experience for your team editors and marketers

  • create flexible and custom storefronts

  • focus on providing solutions your customers are looking for

Key Benefits of Headless Ecommerce Solutions

  1. Enhanced User Experience

In headless CMS development, two key components are involved namely a headless CMS integrated with your eCommerce platform.

By unifying all of your content within your headless CMS, you can deliver content across multiple channels for an enhanced omnichannel experience.

Having a centralized content management system is essential if you’re focusing on:

  • Personalization

Online merchants and retailers can create personalized shopping experiences for customers based on their preferences, intentions, interests, and the channel through which they have landed on your site.

  • Internationalization

Creating a multilingual shopping experience using a contemporary CMS is extremely easy. When it comes to creating an omnichannel experience, multi-language support provides marketers an effective tool to engage with global people and unravel new markets without requiring them to spend money on a dedicated translation team.

  1. Enhanced Performance and Security

Storefronts built on headless architecture have a blazing-fast loading speed and offer high-end security. Fast loading sites impact the overall user experience and allow eCommerce businesses to enhance SEO and organic performance.

Several headless storefronts rely on the Jamstack using static websites that give you a performance boost due to the configuration of a headless system towards a faster loading time and performance.

  1. Flexible, Custom Storefronts & Quick Deployments

Another advantage of headless eCommerce solutions is that they give flexibility and freedom to frontend developers. They can build unique user experiences from scratch to match a business’s eCommerce needs. Frontend developers need not worry about any limitations in the backend system as they can get data using an API call.

Moreover, for minor to major change requests from your team, the developer on the frontend can work independently from any backend system which makes the frontend update process more efficient.

  1. Quick Time to Market

With headless CMS development, you can use any technology today or in the future. So, developers have the freedom of making technology decisions. This will also give control to your marketing team to introduce new initiatives and make marketing campaigns live across various devices, channels, platforms, or sites.

It’s because of the flexibility offered by a headless commerce setup, your marketing team can launch new websites and marketing campaigns in days or weeks then taking months.

When Should You Opt for Headless Ecommerce Solutions?

Whether you’re using a fully customized eCommerce platform or solution like Shopify, WooCommerce, Adobe Experience Manager, etc., a headless architecture makes your life much easier especially if you depend on the below-given use cases.

Here are some questions that you need to ask when comparing your current setup with headless eCommerce solutions:

  • What are the devices that you want to target?

  • What technology you’d like to use?

  • Is there any possibility of redesigning?

  • Will the customer interface “work”?

Usually, the following scenarios are considered when an eCommerce business opts for headless CMS development.

  • Monolithic Systems

If your marketing team is frustrated because new marketing campaigns, landing pages, or small, simple website change requests take a lot of time and the IT team is struggling to keep your system intact, then you should consider switching to headless CMS development.

  • Performance

If you’re keeping a check on your competitors’ site page speed as well as core web vitals, then you should look for solutions to enhance the storefront’s performance. Headless eCommerce solutions help reduce page loading times significantly.

  • Security & Compliance

A headless commerce setup provides you improved security and meets compliance. Ultimately, it will reduce the work of your IT team as your headless CMS handles everything.

Wrapping Up

Headless eCommerce solutions offer APIs and effective tools that help developers to build brand-consistent and seamless experiences across various channels based on centralized data view. Frontend designers can focus more on enhancing the user interface and user experience to boost user engagement, retention, and conversion rates.

Headless eCommerce platforms provide the flexibility and agility that enable developers to quickly develop using tools, code, APIs, and third-party integrations. If you want to gain a competitive edge in the market by delivering a personalized and engaging experience, then you should consider investing in headless CMS development.

With headless CMS and headless eCommerce platforms, you can take your first step towards a better future for your business. Now is the right time to adopt a headless solution for your eCommerce business. Look out for a reliable headless CMS that allows your developers and marketers to deliver amazing content experiences across various digital platforms. Many leading brands such as Coca-Cola, Pizza Hut, Adidas, etc., are already leveraging headless CMS development to manage and distribute content amongst users across the globe.

If you’re new to this emerging eCommerce trend, you should consider approaching professionals specializing in headless eCommerce development. They can help you strategize, deploy and set up headless CMS, and maximize profits and customer base by employing powerful headless eCommerce solutions.

********************************************************************Author’s Bio

Chandan Kumar is Digital Marketer and Technology Blogger working in Orange Mantra. He loves writing on a wide variety of interesting topics related to web and mobile application development, eCommerce development, the latest technology and trends, and a lot more. In his free hours, Chandan loves bike riding and exploring localities.

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