If you work in eCommerce, you’ve probably heard of “turning headless” or creating a headless commerce platform. And if you’ve looked at headless solutions, you know there is a lot of information to sort through.
You may have observed that headless commerce implies a shift away from commerce-led options and toward content-led solutions. Or perhaps it reflects a shift toward an ‘API-first’ strategy? As with any expanding market, it can be challenging to determine which is growing faster: the tech or the term.
We’d want to bring some clarity and address frequent queries regarding upgrading your eCommerce architecture because headless might seem inaccessible (there are a lot of terminologies).
Headless commerce definition
Headless Commerce is the segregation of an eCommerce application’s back-end & front-end layers. As a result, headless eCommerce solutions operate on both levels independently.
In technical terms, headless commerce is defined as “a sort of e-commerce architecture in which the display layer is separated from database operations and may be operated without any front-end.” Headless Commerce solutions are quite similar to Headless CMS systems.”
Now that you understand what headless commerce is, let us look at how it works.
Headless commerce vs. traditional commerce
Examining the status quo helps understand why eCommerce teams are enthusiastic about headless.
An eCommerce solution with a “monolithic architecture” has historically enabled online purchases. Consequently, there is a mutual dependence between the CMS, shopping cart, subscriptions, checkout, and site design. Adjustments to one shop area need changes in other areas, which can make website upgrades tedious and sluggish.
The old, monolithic method of conducting business online has the benefit of being very simple to set up and manage. This lowers entry barriers since you already have everything to set up a shop, display items, and process payments.
However, as direct-to-consumer companies grow, merchants are discovering that using standard eCommerce systems by itself starts to restrict your design options and your ability to interact with customers. Poor site performance might result in a greater bounce rate and lower revenues if you rely heavily on mobile sales or have consumers that use numerous devices.
Furthermore, using an out-of-the-box eCommerce platform makes it extremely difficult to create a stunning website—think of something as sleek as Apple.com. Rich merchandising, micro animations, and personalization (which frequently help businesses advance as a brand) are becoming more and more challenging to implement within the constraints of conventional eCommerce systems.
The last thing to think about is content management. Your content management requirements get more sophisticated when you create hundreds of collections, and site pages than the native platform feature themselves can usually handle. Expanding beyond the limitations of a standard platform may be necessary to make changes at scale.
This is why growing businesses are upgrading the technology behind their storefronts or enhancing or adding to their current platforms.
Benefits of Headless Commerce
There are undoubtedly a lot of benefits to headless trade. This is why tech behemoths like Amazon, Nike, Tesla, McDonald’s, Toyota, and many more are adopting it. Here are the main advantages of headless commerce for you if you’re thinking about making the transition.
-
Omnichannel experience
The ability to share and promote your content everywhere & anywhere is the most significant benefit of headless commerce. You can share any type of content on different platforms, including product information, videos, user reviews, blogs, and other media.
-
Personalized customer experience
You can personalize the consumer experience across every channel with headless commerce. Headless commerce uses the client information you already have in the back end to give each user a unique eCommerce experience.
-
Flexibility for developers
The tremendous degree of freedom that headless commerce gives developers is yet another benefit. Because it separates the levels, developers may operate without restriction or concern about how their actions affect other layers. Additionally, with headless commerce, developers may select the platforms, languages, and frameworks best suit their needs.
-
Easy integrations
Since headless architecture relies on APIs, integrating anything with the eCommerce system is simple. You may reach out to many different devices and channels through quick and simple connections. As a result, you may reach a big audience in a short time.
-
Faster time to market
In conventional eCommerce, establishing any feature takes a long time and a lot of money. However, headless commerce helps you quickly improve consumer experiences at many touchpoints. As a result, it is highly useful for expanding into new markets, areas, or channels.
-
Simple and easy to use
Headless commerce has a variety of features and functions and is simple to use. Teams don’t need to have any advanced technical knowledge to access and update the front end. Adopting headless commerce does not require a high learning curve, though.
These were headless Commerce’s key advantages. Additionally, it offers numerous other benefits, like total site ownership, microservice design, high scalability, and future-proofing.
Is headless commerce the best option for your company?
You’re not the only one who finds the concept of going headless appealing. But there are difficulties as well. The difficulty of implementation may depend on how you approach it. Let’s first determine whether your company is ready.
Headless can be a perfect choice if your company is extremely content-driven and site speed & performance are vital to you.
Slow load times have long been a problem for mobile-focused eCommerce companies, but now that PWAs are taking on a more mature role and can power the front end across all media, the benefits in terms of speed and engagement are clear.
If your store relies on the advantages mentioned above—speed, flexibility, and customization—you might want to consider a headless commerce solution seriously.
Many companies are using this strategy – from Netflix to Amazon, but the one most likely to transition into headless:
- Must take into consideration a large amount of mobile traffic and transactions.
- Are content and providing outstanding branded experiences what define brands?
- Have clients who can complete a transaction from the initial click during the same meeting.
- Have a lot of material or require extensive content management.
Learn DevOps & Transition into Headless Commerce smoothly
Enroll in Cognixia’s DevOps Training to strengthen your career. Take a step to boost your career opportunities and prospects. Get into our DevOps certification course that is hands-on, collaborative, and instructor-led. Cognixia is here to provide you with a great online learning experience, assist you in expanding your knowledge through entertaining training sessions, and add considerable value to your skillset in today’s competitive market. Individuals and the corporate workforce can both benefit from Cognixia’s online courses.
Regardless of your familiarity with IT technology and procedures, the DevOps Plus course gives a complete look at the discipline, covering all critical ideas, approaches, and tools. It covers the fundamentals of virtualization, its advantages, and the different virtualization tools that play a vital part in both learning & implementing the DevOps culture, starting with a core introduction to DevOps. You’ll also discover the DevOps tools like Vagrant, Containerization, VCS, and Docker, as well as Configuration Management using Chef, Puppet, SaltStack, and Ansible.
This DevOps course covers intermediate to advanced aspects. Get certified in DevOps and become acquainted with concepts such as the open-source monitoring tool Nagios, including its plugins, and its usage as a graphical user interface. The Advanced DevOps fundamentals are discussed in full and Docker container clustering leveraging Docker Swarm & Kubernetes in the CI/CD Pipeline Automation.
Our online DevOps training covers the following concepts –
- Introduction to DevOps
- GIT: Version Control
- Maven
- Docker – Containers
- Puppet for configuration management
- Ansible
- Nagios: Monitoring
- Jenkins – Continuous Integration
- Docker Container Clustering using Docker Swarm
- Docker Container Clustering using Kubernetes
- Advanced DevOps (CI/CD Pipeline Automation)
Prerequisites
This course requires just a basic grasp of programming & software development. These requirements are helpful but not compulsory because this all-inclusive training is aimed at newcomers and experienced professionals.
