Headless commerce is growing in popularity thanks to the myriad of benefits it offers eCommerce businesses as well as consumers. Headless commerce offers the benefit of flexibility, while its ability to alter websites enables businesses to meet growing customer requirements. Embracing this digital commerce innovation can help enterprises gain a competitive advantage while delivering an excellent user experience for customers.
How Headless Commerce Works
To understand how headless commerce works, it’s important to understand what it is. Because the frontend and backend of the purchasing process is decoupled, business with headless commerce can exercise greater agility, while increasing experimentation and testing. With headless commerce, the API handles data transfers between the front end and back end of a company’s online store. The front and backends can be experimented with independently because the decoupled systems are connected via the web or API.
Headless commerce affords store owners the opportunity to enhance their online storefront without compromising the backend. In fact, this allows owners to offer a better buying experience for their clients.
Benefits of Headless Commerce Over Traditional eCommerce
Since an eCommerce business’s front and backends are totally linked, traditional platforms lack the potential for customization. Modifying the user interface or adding a new UI means that an adjustment to the backend is needed. Although client experiences can be individually tailored, it’s important to realize that adjustments to the front and backend will always be required.
Headless commerce provides a completely different environment. Because the frontends and backends of an online shop are decoupled with headless commerce, numerous possibilities exist for the store’s interface. Businesses can easily control changes and improvements to their store’s user interface when an API is utilized to transfer data between the frontend and backend.
Benefits Of Headless Commerce
- IT time savings
- A coupled design allows for quick updates to be made to the front or back end without affecting either. Additionally, features and integrations can be implemented quickly due to the flexibility of the architecture
- Greater optimization
- A headless commerce system opens the door to testing and refinement enabling businesses to gain better understanding of their target audience
- Agile marketing
- A decentralized commercial system has the capability of adjusting to new technologies. With that, the marketing department can implement new ideas to enhance the customer experience in relation to branding, products, and services
- Smooth integrations
- Headless eCommerce clears the way for seamless integration with various platforms. In lieu of spending countless hours on a new process, businesses can easily adapt their commerce platforms to new hardware
- Staying competitive in a crowded environment
- Speed and flexibility are two ways businesses can stay competitive. A headless platform offers both, enabling businesses to implement necessary changes while staying pace with consumer demand
- Going omnichannel
- The success of online stores in a crowded market can be dependent on their ability to be omnichannel. Customers have ever-changing demands and businesses need to exercise their capacity to provide omnichannel purchase experiences. Omnichannel experiences can prove to be daunting with monolithic systems, however headless commerce can help to overcome challenges with older solutions, especially with updates and modifications
Reasons to Embrace Headless Commerce
- Greater customization and personalization
- Countless monolithic systems have front ends that are limited to predefined themes and templates. A headless solution enables businesses to easily create personalized experiences that appeal to consumers
- Architecture can handle influx
- A headless content management system allows the user to forego worrying about rendering and modifying content. Further, the site can manage loads and large numbers of visitors during peak periods
- Lower operational costs
- Operational costs are lower because the developer can independently scale the front and backends. Heavy frontend traffic has little impact on the backend due to loosened coupling between the front and backends
- Faster integration
- Due to code changes, traditional eCommerce architecture does not allow for easy integration of content management systems, payment gateways, mobile devices, etc. like headless commerce. Because of the AI layer, the features of headless commerce operate autonomously. Overall, the consumer is offered a better experience
- Headless online retailers are omnichannel
- Retailers looking to tailor an exceptional customer experience need to improve the omnichannel shopping experience everywhere, including their own sites, in-person at brick–and-mortars, social media, and marketplaces. The ability to change and sync frontend updates in real-time across platforms relating to an eCommerce website developed on headless commerce platforms create an omnichannel experience
Gaining an Edge with Headless Commerce
The eCommerce market is extremely crowded, but headless commerce can help to offer a competitive advantage. As new technology has contributed to the rise in digital commerce, it’s vital for companies to run their systems as efficiently as possible. Headless commerce offers the speed and flexibility to meet lofty consumer expectations while enabling content reuse over numerous digital channels. Embracing headless commerce enables businesses to gain operational benefits, but most importantly provide their customers with an excellent experience.
Apexon uses data and technology solutions to optimize the commerce experience and provide seamless interactions. With its eCommerce expertise, the team at Apexon enables companies to deliver engaging and personalized messages by providing omnichannel commerce solutions. Apexon has you and your customers covered across every channel. Check out Apexon’s Digital Commerce services or get in touch with us directly using the form below.