What is Headless Commerce?

Nandini Singhal
3 min readMar 9, 2022

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What is Headless Commerce?

Headless Commerce

The eCommerce sector is always on the move. So much so that it has been one of the very few who witnessed growth rather than loss during the infamous 2020 pandemic.

With new ways for consumers to interact, navigate, and checkout, such as IoT (internet of things), companies have to think long and hard for different ways to put forward content and products.

This is where headless commerce kicks in. We’ll go over headless commerce today and talk about its various aspects.

What is Headless Commerce?

Headless commerce has to do with how your eCommerce platform delivers content. It essentially stores, organizes and puts forward content without needing a front-end layer.

In many cases, the front end/head are templates or themes of a platform. Headless commerce removes the ‘head’ from your platform, leaving you solely with your backend layer.

Headless commerce is suited for the age of IoT devices, where they can show their required content on any device. Here, front-end developers can focus on presenting content and design things accordingly.

This also enables developers to make use of APIs and provide content such as blogs and products to any device’s screen.

Difference between Traditional Headless Commerce

So, how different is headless commerce from the traditional way of doing things? Three main factors help distinguish the two.

1)Front-end Development:

Typically, to make changes to any website, front-end developers need to edit the entire front-end layer, database, and code.

Headless commerce doesn’t require the need to engage in all of those activities since the front-end is out of the picture. The developer(s) can perform an API to make changes in headless commerce. However, this does cause the developers to start from scratch.

2)Customization:

In most cases, traditional platforms have a pre-set user experience that isn’t very open to customization. Headless commerce contains no front-end layer, which helps developers design your whole platform’s user experience.

Right from the very beginning, they have access to better control of the user experience on your platform.

3)Flexibility:

The traditional way of making a change in design is editing coding layers, which are buried deep in the backend layer. This is because the front-end and backend code is connected tightly together.

With headless commerce, there is no front-end, which allows developers to make any changes much more easily.

What are the advantages of Headless Commerce

1)Say goodbye to bulky work:

For eCommerce platforms, this means you can display your products, testimonials, blogs or other content on any channel. For all we know, refrigerators might display product ads down the line. Also, you don’t need to restructure your entire platform for another channel.

2)Stay Updated:

With a more accessible and more efficient design, you can stay one step ahead of your competitors and put out regular updates to your platform. This can include the overall design or the user experience.

When should you consider Headless Commerce?

If you wish to integrate your brand with other platforms quickly, you should start considering headless commerce as an option.

Platforms such as Shopify and Magento enable businesses with headless commerce services and download third-party apps to facilitate integration with other channels such as social media.

Overall, even if you wish to market your products more quickly on a larger scale, headless commerce should be on your checklist.

Conclusion

Well, that was all about headless commerce. Headless commerce’s ease of use, efficiency, and flexibility is optimal for eCommerce companies. If you have an eCommerce platform of your own or are a developer, headless is one of the best options you can have at your hands. While drawbacks do exist, it may be only time till we can overcome them too.

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Nandini Singhal
Nandini Singhal

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