Four Reasons to Switch to Headless Commerce
I launched my first e-commerce website in 2010. It was an epic journey. We used a big tech monolithic solution. What struck me the most was the simplicity of deploying a full e-commerce platform (front-end and back-end), while struggling in maintaining the e-commerce site and keeping up with the ongoing customers expectations.
A couple of years later, I experienced ‘Open Commerce’ solutions where the paradigm started to shift: there was a need for decoupling front-end, e-commerce functions and back-end parties. This led to the emerging of Headless Commerce architecture around 2015, which is today, the right model to adopt for mid-size to big businesses, and even for scale-ups.
In the following diagram, you will get an overview of the different elements that compose a headless commerce architecture. I will then list four reasons why you should switch to headless commerce.
- Scalability & Flexibility
You will be able to plug/unplug new components and modules both from your frontend and your backend. For example, if you want to migrate from a CRM solution to another, it will be easy for your to connect your customer DB to your new CRM because of your customers APIs.
On top of this, because all your e-commerce functions are accessible by APIs, it will increase the scalability of your site (volume and velocity)
2. Developers and Partners expansion
Headless commerce architecture will definitely allow you to expand your partnerships and 3rd parties network since you will be able to rely on your tech stack openness to benefit from a win-win partnership. You can unlock new opportunities by leveraging external actors mixed with your own tech stack. Learn more about Open Ecosystem APIs here.
3. Omnichannel
Decoupling your front-end from your back-end will clearly activate endless touchpoints such as your own website, e-retailers, apps, AR/VR, social commerce, live shopping and many more. Why? Simply because your e-commerce platform doesn’t have an architecture that embodies exclusively one unique front-end.
4. Time to market
Because of the big flexibility you get with headless, you can now better react to new market trends and activate up-to-date customer experiences.
You can even deploy in parallel different touchpoint (website, app, social commerce, etc.) without heavy dependency between them and the back-office.
