This is the year of headless commerce. Yes, this was what 2021 was all about when it comes to the eCommerce sphere. The world of retail commerce was taken by storm this year by headless commerce. Businesses and marketers have exhibited great trust and confidence in headless commerce and its potential in improving conversions and engagements.

Let’s get to know a bit more about headless commerce and how you can use it for creating stellar consumer experiences.

A Quick Introduction to Headless Commerce

Headless commerce refers to an eCommerce solution with the help of which retailers can effortlessly utilize the same backend infrastructure for different touchpoints such as mobile app, website, POS, etc. It works by separating the frontend presentation layer from the backend eCommerce functionality of the website. The goal is to unleash creative building opportunities. Splitting the backend and frontend enables businesses to create a customer experience that matches their bespoke needs.

Headless commerce allows businesses to choose a frontend technology with a highly customizable, rich content experience, and a perfect eCommerce solution on the backend for managing their complex retail commerce functionality. Backend developers make use of APIs for delivering content for devices allowing the frontend developers to experiment with the look and feel of the content. Headless commerce creates opportunities for managing site elements such as blogs, forms, products, banners, and a lot more with complete control.

Traditional Commerce Vs. Headless Commerce

Content and experience-led strategy is the heart and soul of headless commerce.

It puts content in the middle of the business model allowing businesses to make the most of SEO strategies for attracting organic traffic. Businesses can utilize powerful content management systems for creating their websites instead of depending on the restricted design capabilities offered by the eCommerce platforms. This strategy works by separating the presentation layer and the eCommerce platform. It makes it easier for businesses to leverage the CMSs, digital-experience platforms, PWAs (Progressive Web Apps), and customer frontend solutions to render a unique customer experience and eventually achieve better branding. The eCommerce platform offers inventory management and PCI compliance and can be linked to additional systems through APIs.

Here’s a quick comparison of traditional commerce and headless commerce

Traditional commerce 

It makes use of a monolithic model. It empowers the IT departments by giving them complete control over the platform.

• High costs of development, sluggish go-to-market-times, and scrubby innovation are the roadblocks of traditional commerce.
• Furthermore, traditional commerce platforms come with a predefined frontend connected to the backend that limits how content is delivered to the buyers.
• These platforms are built for delivering content as native mobile apps or websites.
• The key advantage, however, is that companies get all features packed together which makes setting up and running traditional commerce easy.
• But this advantage itself can turn out to be the biggest demerit of this type of commerce since the frontend makes use of the code for layout, backend database-stores-content, and plugins. As a result, customization is limited.
• That apart, traditional commerce can be built only with a limited number of frameworks as content creators and admins access the CMS via one console.

Headless Commerce

Headless commerce makes use of either commerce-led or content-led strategy, allowing brands to deliver API-driven experiences via front-end solutions, while a commerce solution takes care of everything in the background (backend I mean).

• With the same backend managing all the content, it is easier to introduce new frontends and address the changing market needs. The costs of development are much lesser as compared to traditional commerce.
• Headless commerce does not restrict the content delivery to a particular frontend. Depending on the needs and choices of the buyers, headless commerce allows brands to deliver highly personalized content, payment gateways, and products to kiosks, smartwatches, and other modern destinations.
• Headless commerce offers extreme flexibility in terms of content layout and delivery. There are ample opportunities for customizations – quickly and easily.

If we compare the two, traditional commerce tends to force brands to compromise on the content for achieving agile eCommerce whereas this issue is eliminated by headless commerce – thereby providing brands with beautiful, effortlessly customizable content designs that are supported by functional and flexible commerce solutions. With headless commerce, brands don’t even need to create frontend presentations from the beginning. There’s no design constraint at all – thanks to the APIs.

Why Headless Commerce?

Companies, their employees, and customers can benefit immensely from headless commerce. Some of the most compelling reasons why organizations must adopt headless commerce instead of traditional commerce are:

• Full control over the website’s architecture: As the backend and frontend aren’t intertwined, the content management and delivery application environments aren’t the same. Companies enjoy more control over the site. If you are satisfied with your current frontend solution but wish to improve the backend functionality or vice versa, you have an option to do so.
• Easy to set up and use: Headless commerce is simple and easy to set up, learn, access, and use, so the people running the eCommerce site aren’t stressed out by the additional pressure of going through the steep and tedious learning curve.
• Rich customer experience: Today’s customers want personalization, and they deeply care about the experience they get from the eCommerce sites. They want to see only those products that fit their specific needs at that time. Headless commerce enables such experiences through personalized recommendations and easy-to-use search features.
• Time and cost saving:  Frontend updates are easy and quick whereas backend updates require a lot of time, attention, and skills. Headless commerce, by separating the two, simplifies things and thus helps speed up development as well. With PCI-compliance mitigation, fraud protection, and checkout security, businesses can reduce the risk and pass it on to the SaaS providers – thereby alleviating the IT teams’ load.
• Eases customer acquisition: When brands utilize headless commerce for implementing a content-led strategy, they can attract organic traffic for supplementing paid advertising costs and finally reducing customer acquisition costs.

Who can Benefit from Headless Commerce?

Headless commerce is fast taking over the eCommerce sphere. It is more popular among brands that are experience-focused and sell lifestyle products, brands that depend on native and influencer advertising, and direct-to-consumer brands. Companies that sell through multiple channels, willing to utilize commerce capabilities to their existing CMS can benefit from this strategy.

Headless commerce makes it possible for region-specific channels to be used for sending personalized messages to the targeted audiences, increasing ROI, and boosting conversions.

With headless commerce, companies can overcome the barriers imposed by languages. Content creators can translate their content before distributing it across different channels and audiences.

Headless Commerce – Changing Online Commerce

It will not be an overstatement if we say that headless commerce is going to be the future of online commerce. To stay competitive, brands must market and sell their products through different digital channels, digital touchpoints, and devices – and using headless commerce, they can do this with a personalized, seamless user experience.

With smart devices becoming ubiquitous across households, brands interested in staying relevant must ensure that their products are available for purchase via new touch points such as appliances, smart speakers, and watches. Rapid customization and distribution of content across channels are important today as eCommerce continues to expand at a fast pace. Modern customers look for great and seamless buying experiences across different channels. Thanks to headless commerce, now brands can effortlessly deliver that.

Wrapping up

Headless commerce lets businesses choose any CMS for the frontend while keeping their commerce functionality robust on the backend. By choosing to go headless, retailers can enhance the customer experiences through easy, quick, and timely updates. More options of personalization help boost conversions and improve customer loyalty. With headless commerce, they can reach their potential customers through various touch points – from smartwatches to mobile devices and smart appliances. So that they don’t miss out on a possible sale!

Go headless and see your list of happy customers growing like never before!