Merchants who build businesses on popular eCommerce platforms often have to think inside the platforms’ box. However, headless commerce offers business owners the opportunity to prioritize their requirements and go beyond these limitations, without compromising their vision.
As the eCommerce landscape continues to evolve, it is becoming increasingly clear that headless commerce will play a crucial role in shaping the future of online shopping. In fact, over 60% of organizations agree that headless commerce can significantly improve engagement and conversions. Major companies across industries, such as Google, Amazon, Tesla, and Nike, have already adopted headless commerce to take advantage of its customization and API-enabled flexibility to optimize their customer experiences.
Let’s take a closer look at this exciting way to create a unique store.
- What is headless commerce?
- Why your business can’t afford to ignore headless commerce?
- Why headless commerce is growing in popularity despite Shopify’s offerings
- Ready to go headless?
What is headless commerce?
Headless commerce is an innovative architectural approach that separates the frontend or “head” of an eCommerce platform from its backend. This involves decoupling the presentation layer – what customers see – from the business logic and data layer that handles the backend processes. The key benefit of this approach is that it allows businesses to customize the frontend of their eCommerce platform according to their unique needs, without affecting backend processes.
This way, you’ll have more flexibility and agility when designing a user interface that aligns with their brand identity and integrates with other systems and platforms.
To better understand headless commerce, let’s take a look at a famous example.
Nike’s eCommerce platform is one of the best examples of headless commerce. The company aimed to create a personalized and mobile-first approach to eCommerce, which meant prioritizing interactive user experiences and optimizing visuals and CTAs for smaller screens.
This strategy has proven to be successful. By customizing and optimizing their eCommerce approach through headless API offerings, Nike has become a market leader and captured more market share than its competitors.
Why your business can’t afford to ignore headless commerce?
As online shopping and mobile devices, voice assistants, and social media continue to gain popularity, businesses must adapt. Incorporating headless architecture into Shopify can help create a more personalized and profitable online store. So let’s explore some of the key advantages that come with it.
Unleash the full potential of your store
By dividing the frontend and backend parts with headless architecture, you can break free from the limitations of eCommerce platforms and tailor your online store to your exact needs. Whether it’s customizing your checkout process or integrating third-party tools and applications, headless commerce gives you the flexibility to do whatever you want.
Create exceptional user experiences
With user experience (UX) at its core, headless commerce empowers you to create truly authentic and personalized experiences across various devices and channels. By using data and analytics to understand your customers’ behavior and preferences, you can deliver targeted content, product recommendations, and promotions that resonate with your audience.
Drive revenue and maximize your marketing investment
Headless commerce allows you to maximize your traffic and marketing investment by providing more precise control over your digital marketing campaigns or A/B split tests. By using headless architecture to optimize your store’s performance and deliver personalized experiences, you can improve conversion rates and generate more revenue without spending more money on advertising.
Accelerate your store’s performance
With headless commerce delivering content anywhere via an API, you can ensure the highest page load speeds for your website. By separating your backend infrastructure from your frontend presentation layer, you can reduce latency and provide a faster, smoother user experience for your customers.
Why headless commerce is growing in popularity despite Shopify’s offerings
Many people may question the need for any other eCommerce solution when Shopify provides a convenient and easy-to-use management system for all aspects of running an online store. However, businesses looking for innovative solutions and unique market positioning are turning to the headless approach to development, which we believe is crucial.
Outstanding UI/UX matters
In situations where high performance, unique market positioning, and outstanding user experience are critical, a default headless storefront written in React with Next.js can provide a more enjoyable experience. Although the initial loading may take some time, further interaction with the store will be significantly faster and more intuitive.
Speed and limitless development
Recognizing the relevance of this development approach, Shopify created a native framework called Hydrogen. However, while this framework may speed up development by using pre-existing templates, it still cannot provide complete uniqueness and lacks constraints. That’s why our team prefers to utilize with our own developments for a fully bespoke headless store.
At SpurIT, we didn’t start the headless development process from scratch thanks to our own skeleton development for some key pages. This approach speeds up development and avoids the constraints imposed by Shopify.
The only design limitation is your imagination
We can also offer design development services to bring your unique vision to life. In case you already have a design in place, our team can work with you to bring it to reality with a 100% match. Let your creativity run wild with limitless design possibilities of headless commerce.
Ready to go headless?
As a seasoned business with an established infrastructure or still building out your enterprise architecture, you might find that a headless commerce approach is right for you as it offers numerous advantages for businesses seeking a customized and personalized customer experience. However, before committing to this cutting-edge technology, carefully consider various factors, including your organization’s technical capabilities and the potential costs and benefits of implementing this modern architecture.