What is Headless Commerce: A Complete Guide

The world of eCommerce evolves way faster than you can imagine. So what’s new in eCommerce? Headless commerce! 

Though it has been introduced quite some time back, its potential is being explored these days and the developers are getting seasoned with it and businesses are leaning more towards it. 

We thought of analyzing the ins and outs of headless commerce today. This blog will outline everything you need to know about it. Let’s get started. 

• What is Headless Commerce? 

Headless commerce is the practice of decoupling the frontend (also known as the presentation layer) from the product & order management system and shopping cart functionality on the backend (also referred to as the application layer). 

The traditional eCommerce model closely tied these two systems in a monolithic architecture. Therefore, any changes in the front end required updating the backend. Naturally, the updates were slower. 

Headless commerce architecture brings a revolution in eCommerce website development as it offers a platform via RESTful API that comprises a cloud-based infrastructure and a backend data model. As the platform is not knitted with the backend, content, products, payment gateways, and all other frontend features can be easily delivered on kiosk screens, smartwatches, and other IoT devices. 

• Difference between Traditional Commerce and Headless Commerce 

If you are still confused about the difference between traditional and headless eCommerce, this section will clear your doubts. 

1. Frontend Development 

In traditional eCommerce website design, frontend developers may face several constraints while designing the user interface. In order to make changes, they may need to spend a long time editing the code, database, and the front-end features. Developers can also be apprehensive of mistakenly preventing any future upgrade or voiding a warranty. 

Headless commerce gives a break from all that. The developers can create an engaging user experience from scratch that suits the business needs. They need not worry about modifying databases in the backend. All they need is to make an API call. This offers greater flexibility. 

2. Personalization 

Traditional platforms deliver a predefined experience to the customers and the administrators. Of course, there are several themes and plugins to customize the e-store, but that is limited in comparison to headless commerce. 

With headless commerce, the developers create user experience from scratch. Naturally, it renders greater control over the appearance and feel of the website. All you need is to engage an experienced and reliable website design company. The learned experts can take care of the rest. 

3. Hassle-Free Customization 

This is an extension of the earlier point. In traditional eCommerce, the developers often had to edit several layers of coding to make a customization. 

However, as the front and backends are decoupled in headless commerce, it opens a horizon of customization and the developers can make any change - from adding a new field to the customer account to implementing a custom checkout flow without any hassle. 

4. How Headless Commerce Works

Without getting into the technical nitty-gritty, here is a quick overview of how headless commerce works. A headless commerce system passes requests between the presentation (frontend) and application (backend) layers through API calls.  

For instance, once the users click the “shop now” button, the presentation layer or the frontend sends an API call to the backend or the application layer in order to complete the order. Consequently, the backend sends another API call to the frontend to display the confirmation of their order.

• Benefits of Headless Commerce

Ecommerce giants like Amazon leverage the power of headless commerce. As you can imagine, it has some advantages that you cannot overlook. Let’s reveal these ones by one: 

1. Omnichannel Shopping Experience 

Headless commerce enables you to deliver your product videos and other content to any channel available in the market. From Alex skills to refrigerators with screens - people can purchase anywhere and everywhere. Considering the rapid evolution of interactive digital signage, smart kiosks and other commerce-centric IoT devices, the omnichannel shopping experience is a matter that business owners cannot afford to overlook.

Also, you need not rearchitect the entire platform to publish across channels. Imagine the amount of time and money you are going to save! 

2. Seamless Integration 

Headless commerce solution operates with an API that paves the way for easier integration and communication. You can add your e-store to any new device and outreach to more customers in an effective way. And it takes only a few hours to integrate the eCommerce platform into a new device. 

You can also integrate IoT enabled elements into the headless commerce platform. Some of the examples may include smart cross-selling, proximity marketing, IoT based loyalty programmes, etc.

3. Long-Term Cost Savings

Initially, headless commerce may seem to be more expensive, but you need to look at the long run. You can add any and every frontend feature without impacting the backend. Also, you can offer a personalized user experience on multiple channels. It leads to greater chances of conversions. 

4. Remain Competitive 

Ecommerce trends are gradually changing and it’s time to leverage the trends to remain competitive. A stunning frontend with new-age features is a significant aspect of an e-store. 

Thanks to headless commerce platforms, you can easily deploy various rapid updates and innovative elements on your e-store without impacting the backend system. This speeds up the process. Naturally, it offers a competitive advantage. 

• Drawback of Headless Commerce 

The only drawback we can think of is that it has no frontend presentation layer at all. Therefore, the developers need to build everything from scratch - from the landing page to the product pages. 

However, this is not a drawback if you deeply consider it. It offers greater personalization and flexibility to the developers and enables them to create unique e-stores that resonate with the business niches.   

Headless Commerce Platforms 

• Magento 2
• BigCommerce 
• Shopify Plus 

Headless commerce allows you complete control across all the touchpoints to offer a cohesive customer experience. We hope our blog helped you to understand why headless commerce is the future of eCommerce. We would like to know your thoughts on it.

Is Your Business Ready to Leverage the Boom in Ecommerce Market

The global pandemic has led people to believe eCommerce will sink deep down. But, take it from us, eCommerce is not going anywhere, not anytime soon. In fact, according to a study by Space Shop Commerce, global eCommerce sales may reach $3.9 trillion this year. And by 2021, this number is about to touch $4.5 trillion!

Are you curious to know which factors are operating behind it? Which sectors are benefitted the most? And more importantly, do you want to leverage some benefits, but clueless where to start?
No worry. As a reputed eCommerce website design company, we will help you to take a closer look at it.

Factors Playing a Key Role in the Growth of Ecommerce  

Convenience is the very first reason behind the growth of eCommerce. People don’t have to waste time and energy in visiting multiple stores for purchasing something as they can easily buy these with a few mouse-clicks (or finger touch!) and get the delivery at their doorstep. Further, with enhanced mobility bandwidth a la 4G technology, the entire browsing and purchasing process has become faster.

The availability of numerous eCommerce stores has spoilt potential buyers with choices. Different discount offers, coupons, and promo codes also help in slacking some budget. Free shipping beyond a certain price is yet another alluring factor.

Most Benefitted Sectors

The following sectors have benefitted the most due to the rapid growth in eCommerce:

• Grocery
• Apparels
• Jewellery
• Electronics
• Food
• Cosmetics

Other than these, pharmacy too is witnessing a rising growth in eCommerce sales, especially in the urban area.

How can You Leverage Its Benefits  

This is the most interesting part. As you can understand, it’s high time to convert your brick and mortar shop to an online store. It will not only allow you to reach a wider audience but you can also notice a positive impact on your revenue. Here’s what you can do:

1. Design an Ecommerce Website

Ecommerce website design is the first leap to take. An attractive and optimized website will drive more leads and boost your ROI (Return on Investment).

2. Design an Ecommerce Mobile App

If you already have a site, take your business to the next level with an app. This will further enhance convenience for the users. You can also create an app independently.

Remember, mobile commerce accounts for over 50% of total eCommerce sales (source: Bigcommerce). So, the professionals at any mobileapp development agency remind you not to neglect this part.

Now, designing an eCommerce website or app must be hectic and you may miss something or the other. Relax! We got you covered! All you need is to minutely go through the following passages and make sure your site or app incorporates these features. 

Must-Have Features in Your Ecommerce Site or App

1. Responsive Design

If you are designing a website, make sure it is responsive so that anyone can access it via any device. The first element of a responsive site is its scalability. Constantly pinching the site on a mobile screen to adjust its visuals highly affects the user experience.

2. Loading Speed

Usually, people don’t spend more than 3 seconds for a web page to load (source: Hobo Web). Especially, a significant part of online shoppers comprises impulsive buyers. You surely don’t expect them to wait for 10 minutes while your webpage loads.

So, optimize your page loading speed. The same thing is applicable for your app as well. If it takes a long time to load, people will stop using it and subsequently uninstall it.

3. Quality Pictures

Pictures play a key role in alluring people to make a purchase. So, ensure that your store has high-quality and attractive pictures of the products. But there’s a catch. Large pictures often slow down a site and contribute to increasing the bounce rate.

This is why you better engage a professional eCommerce website development company to optimize the images.

4. Save the Shopping Cart

With so many shopping sites available in the digital ecosystem, you cannot expect potential buyers to see one item on your store and go straight to the purchasing process. They spend significant time in browsing multiple sites, check the rates, often think twice whether to buy – and all these may take more than two to three days before they make a purchase. During this process, your store must save the items that are already added to the cart.

Wish list functionality is yet another must-have element in your e-store. If any of your products is out of stock or too pricy for some customers at that point of time, they can save it in the wish list and purchase later. It doesn’t clash with the cart.

5. Don’t Delay Conversions

Delaying the conversion is the worst mistake you can make and a compulsorily sign-up form works as a catalyst in this. Your intention should always be to reduce the steps before someone can make a purchase.

People often find it inconvenient or time-consuming to create an account. And the guest check out option can be a rescuer at this point. To reduce friction, you may enable easy checkout only with contact details (phone no. / email id) and payment mode.

6. Include Reviews

More than 50% of online shoppers purchase a product based on its reviews (source: Pew Research). So, customer feedback should be an integral feature in your online store.

7. Stay Available

Your potential customers may have any query or confusion and you need to resolve that as soon as possible. Make sure to keep your contact information visible. Ideally, you can install an automatic chatbot on your e-store. This will help to resolve general confusions without any hassle.

If you want to increase your revenue from your e-store, you’ll find this blog really effective - cool hacks to stop shopping cart abandonment.

Conclusion

Remember, the competition is quite steep once it comes to eCommerce sales. According to 99firms, the contemporary global digital ecosystem is crowded with 12 to 24 million eCommerce stores. If you want to create an impactful presence among these, you need to deliver a top-notch user experience.

So, it is better to engage eCommerce website design services or hire the professionals at any mobile app development company to build an attractive and feature-rich site or app along with the above-mentioned features.

What’s your take on our article? Comment below and share your thoughts.