Headless Commerce To Head The Commerce In 2021 – Here’s All You Need To Know

While running an eCommerce business successfully is a laborious process that requires analytical skills and strategic skills to go hand in hand with marketing skills, technology expertise takes a front seat in building a dynamic and powerful online store.

The increase in customer expectations for a more personal, consistent, and sophisticated shopping experience urges the business today to switch to a more flexible, modern, and modular technology.

The way customers search for products has immensely changed. From text search to voice search to image search and smart voice assistants, customers are empowered with limitless options to explore product information.

The places to reach out to the target audiences have also transcended beyond the traditional markets and search engines. Shoppers today explore products and make purchases across various touchpoints. Technologies like the Internet of things (IoT) and progressive web apps (PWAs) have become the order of the day. Customers precede the retailers in embracing this change and businesses are left with no choice but to keep up with this rapid pace.

Since customer expectations are only going to keep changing more frequently than ever, you need to find a solution that is more flexible, modular, and easily fits the needs of changing environments. With great challenges come great solutions. Headless commerce is a powerful solution that has got the agility and modularity to resolve these complexities and meet the fast-changing requirements.

Wondering what’s headless commerce? This article summarizes the key highlights of headless commerce, its benefits, and the best practices.

What is headless commerce?

Headless commerce refers to the kind of eCommerce solution where the front end and the back end of the application are decoupled. This separation allows brands to push their boundaries limitlessly and build their store the way they want. In the headless approach, the front end and the back end stand independent from each other and it provides a future-proofing alternative to the traditional monolithic eCommerce practices.

Headless commerce comes with an API-first approach that enables businesses to make changes to their sites just like that and provide delightful customer experiences rapidly.

Headless commerce Vs traditional commerce

To understand the future-ready benefits of headless commerce, let’s take a look at the key differences between traditional commerce and headless commerce. Here’s a list of the top 3 factors that explain why to choose headless commerce over traditional practices:

1. Headless commerce comes as a no-limit solution for front-end developers

In the traditional eCommerce development scenario, the front-end developers have only limited choices. They have to keep in mind that every single change they make might entail subsequent changes in the entire application, architecture, and database. Since the front end and the back end are heavily dependent on each other in the monolithic architecture, developers are restricted with limited choices. Also, making any change to the existing environment (say code-level modifications or database updates) is a labor-intensive and time-sensitive task.

Headless commerce is a decoupled solution that delights the front-end developers with easy-to-modify APIs and quick resolutions. This enables the coders to bid goodbye to the predefined front end platform. Here are the other benefits of headless commerce for the developers:

• Headless commerce allows front-end developers to easily and quickly make changes to any part of the site.
• Providing the end-users with a rich and enhanced user experience is easy with headless commerce.
• Modifying the database in the backend is a daunting task and with headless commerce, they don’t have to do it anymore.
• API-powered solutions enable the developers to make easy and quick calls without heavy technology dependency.
• Developers are freed from all the constraints, shackles, and hassles of traditional commerce.

2. Headless commerce uncovers endless possibilities of personalization and customization

Traditional commerce platforms are generally built to deliver well-structured business solutions that are confined to predefined peripheries. The customer experiences, as well as the admin interfaces, are already defined and confined that has no room for customization or personalization.

That’s not the case with headless commerce where both the end-users as well as the administrative users are vested with limitless choices of personalization and customization. Here’s how headless commerce helps businesses to redefine the customer experiences:

• There’s no front end in the headless scenario. This allows developers to create any kind of design innovation from the scratch.
• Unlike traditional commerce, headless commerce platforms don’t restrict the admins and customers to what they define as the right user experience.
• Developers gain complete control over the design, look and feel of the website, and its user experience.
• This enables the business owners to discover the ease of selling and customers to enjoy a smooth and seamless shopping experience.

3. Headless commerce lets you unleash your potential to the fullest

Since traditional eCommerce platforms have tightly coupled front end and backend infrastructures, flexibility is not an option for the developers. Every single change takes time and effort, and it involves a series of updates from multiple layers of coding in the front end to changes in the databases that are buried in the backend. The business logic in the backend, other capabilities, and functionalities consume up to 85% of the time, effort, and resources deployed in the overall development process. Got more questions? We got solutions! Check out our FAQs.

Headless commerce comes with a great deal of flexibility, adaptability, and modularity. Since the front-end and back-end architectures are mutually independent, it becomes extremely easy for the developers to make changes on the fly. Besides enabling the businesses to leverage technology to their advantage to the fullest extent, the flexible headless commerce platforms also allow them to unleash the fullest of their own capabilities. Here are some more pointers on the flexibility and adaptability of headless commerce:

• With APIs that enable easy and fast modifications, headless commerce guarantees adaptability and flexibility.
• Since the front end is not there, developers can start from the point of completion.
• This saves a lot of time, effort, and money. Even the number of front-end developers required for building eCommerce stores on headless commerce platforms is relatively less.

BigCommerce – The most flexible headless commerce platform

Known for a plethora of sales-boosting features and functionalities, BigCommerce also houses extensively flexible and modular headless commerce solutions.

BigCommerce lets eCommerce businesses create exceptional shopping experiences with a powerful commerce engine. Here are some of the reasons that make BigCommerce the go-to platform for headless commerce solutions:

CX is the new UX

BigCommerce is always at the forefront when it comes to embracing technology and changes. The platform understands the importance of delivering truly impressive customer experiences and the BigCommerce headless commerce engine supercharges the customer experience. Here’s all that makes the difference:

• API-driven experiences
• Flexible content management system
• A full suite of integrated solutions
• Powerful digital experience solutions

One BigCommerce account for multiple eCommerce stores

Since BigCommerce has got the presentation layer decentralized from the commerce engine, it enables you to run multiple stores across various front-end solutions with the ease of using a single account.

• Build compelling digital experiences across multiple platforms with BigCommerce’s powerful APIs
• Enhance your business efficiency and reduce the bottlenecks with a fully integrated suite of headless commerce solutions from BigCommerce

Headless commerce is the future – Are you future-ready?

Gone are the days when customers demanded only high-quality products in exchange for their time and money. All that customers expect today are experiences – compelling, captivating, and thoroughly engaging experiences. Headless commerce powers your website with robust features and solutions to build a dynamic shopping experience on your eCommerce website. If you want to bridge content and commerce and make them seamlessly integrated for better digital experiences, headless commerce is your solution to go after. Wanna know how to maximize your performance, efficiency, and capabilities with headless commerce solutions? Get in touch with our experts. The Commerce Shop has a rich history and proven track record of helping a number of businesses with adept eCommerce solutions.

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