The earliest eCommerce platforms were the full-stack platforms in which the front-end and back-end of the website were inseparable.
Headless commerce is a growing technology that provides agility and adaptability to companies by segregating the front-end and back-end of their eCommerce functionalities. It lets companies create eCommerce solutions on various platforms with APIs.
For moving your business towards headless to create winning commerce experiences, you can hire a reliable headless commerce company. Keep reading this blog post to know more about headless commerce, its advantages, disadvantages, etc.
What is Headless Commerce and How is it Different from Traditional Commerce?
If we say making a storefront ‘headless’, it means decoupling the store’s back-end from the front end.
If we talk about traditional commerce, it works on the monolithic (composed all in one place) architecture as the front-end is inextricably connected with the back-end. This results in personalizing the user experience by revamping the front end. Further, for little customization, developers need to upgrade various coding layers.
Conversely, headless commerce works on a decoupled architecture that lets developers make the user experience according to business requirements and objectives. It provides endless customization possibilities and makes creating customized user experiences less challenging.
Headless Commerce is a trending architecture for creating robust eCommerce websites. You can refer to the comprehensive headless commerce guide to get an in-depth analysis of how it fits your business needs. Now, let’s discuss the benefits and limitations of using headless commerce for your eCommerce store.
Benefits of Headless Commerce
Switching to headless commerce provides numerous benefits to businesses. Some of them are discussed as follows –
- Better Flexibility: Headless commerce offers flexibility and personalization as its core strength. It lets you create a personalized user experience that suits your customers. Because of the decoupled front-end from the back-end, headless commerce creates limitless opportunities for adaptation and flexibility.
- Enhanced Customization: Headless commerce eliminates customization issues of traditional commerce. So, it is possible to create a customized user experience. With the help of a company offering headless commerce development services, you can customize your existing platform and move your business to the next level.
- Faster Scaling: With headless commerce, it is possible to rapidly change the front-end or integrate the products’ additional features without disrupting the website’s performance. Therefore, it is easy to scale up the websites whenever required.
- Brand Recognition: With traditional commerce, generally, brands depend on the existing templates. They look more similar in nature, apart from some graphics and colors. Conversely, headless commerce facilitates you to create customized UIs for making a unique identity of your business in the market. So, if you are tired of the traditional eCommerce platforms, you can switch your existing eCommerce store to a headless solution. Moreover, you can hire an organization offering headless commerce development services to develop a successful eCommerce store.
- Seamless Integration: Because of using the API concept, headless commerce makes it easy to integrate and communicate with other platforms. You can enhance outreach to many customers and expand opportunities by adding your brand to a new device.
Limitations of Headless Commerce
Now, let’s discuss some of the downsides of headless commerce.
- Additional Costs: Along with the benefit, the decoupled architecture of headless commerce is a limitation too. This is because creating a separate front-end and back-end requires their hosting and maintenance, which can cause an increase in the total cost.
- Requires Continual Oversight: Headless commerce architecture requires more mixing and matching. Based on the complexity, you may need to hire more than the development team to oversee the various pieces of headless architecture. Without enough staffing and maintenance strategy, the process can be cumbersome.
Headless Commerce Platforms
Headless commerce development companies generally use different headless commerce platforms to provide a tremendous headless solution to their customers. Some of the headless commerce platforms are discussed as follows –
- Shopify: It is a powerful eCommerce enterprise solution. This extensive platform provides numerous headless options and offers businesses the ability to customize store performance and user experience. It is an ideal choice for mid-to-large-sized brands to create high-growth online stores.
- BigCommerce: It is a flexible and API-first eCommerce platform that lets merchants grow their sales across every stage. It facilitates developers to create headless eCommerce websites for delivering highly customizable shopfronts.
- Magento: Magento is an entirely scalable and extensible platform with headless capabilities that allow you to rapidly integrate new technologies.
Is Headless Commerce Fit for All E-Commerce Stores?
Obviously, the answer is no. It is not a good fit for every eCommerce store. If your business is running well with traditional eCommerce architecture, it will not be a good choice to invest your time and finances in headless.
It depends on your business goals that what are you trying to achieve – then evaluate whether the headless is the best option for you or not. Suppose you want a unique customer experience that is coupled with flexible development, and you have the resources to support the headless transformation; in that case, it will be the best choice for you.
There are some scenarios you can consider before choosing headless commerce for your business.
- If you want a unique storefront experience that is not possible with your present platform.
- If the theme and template of your storefront are not as customizable as you require for your brand.
- If the performance of your eCommerce site is poor and it takes too long to load, that results in a user exit before loading the site.
Moreover, you must consider the cost and time while deciding to go headless. If we talk about a headless enterprise project, it may cost anywhere from $50,000 to $5,00,000 plus the annual maintenance cost, supporting tools, customization level, etc.
Conclusion
Major eCommerce brands have now started adopting headless commerce. Headless commerce brings solutions independent of each other that can be merged easily. It lets you create a particular platform for your visitors.
But you must be aware of your business requisites before selecting headless commerce for your business. So, if you feel that your existing eCommerce store is stopping you from expanding across multiple customer touchpoints, it is the time to upgrade your existing setup towards a headless solution that can work wonders for your business.