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Headless eCommerce

What Is Headless eCommerce?

In a headless commerce platform, users can detach their store back-end functionalities from the front-end. In other words, these functionalities are “decoupled” as explained by Dirk Hoerig when he coined the term in 2013.

What Are The Benefits of Headless Commerce?

The headless commerce approach comes with various benefits, such as:

  • flexibility;
  • swift scalability on the go —which is limited to some extent in traditional commerce;
  • development and ongoing upgrade speeds.

Other advantages of this eCommerce approach include high levels of customization and personalization in terms of themes & visualization.

How Does Headless Commerce Impact Your Customers?

Leveraging headless commerce software means opportunities to interact with your customers more intuitively. For instance, you can change and optimize front-end information on the go every time you have new content.

Most importantly, headless tech approach comes with universal compatibility to ensure that end-users can access your website as conveniently as possible. In other words, this tech is geared towards empowering merchants to define how they want the experience of their customers to feel and look like.

How Does Headless Commerce Work?

Headless technology in eCommerce is a game-changer. The technology leverages API to communicate specific, agreed-upon protocols via multiple frameworks. This also means that the APIs can request information simultaneously from the back-end. Users running their online stores on web services are likely leveraging RESTful APIs. Shopify headless commerce leverages GraphQL as the storefront API.

How Do You Get Started With Headless eCommerce?

Getting started with headless solution is easy if you can get a team of innovative developers and creative designers to work together. While developers build, the designers can focus on creative optimization to enhance customer experience.

Even better, Commerce Cloud Developer Center gives you a public portal, where your developers can learn to build with speed, as well as leverage third-party integrations.

 

RELATED TERMS

Frequently Asked Questions About Headless eCommerce

What is headless architecture?

Headless model or architecture entails combining all eCommerce logic and functionalities in API sets. The back-end powers these APIs to avail them at any front-end channel and enhance customer experience.

What is a headless API?

Headless API is a feature available in traditional CMS systems that allows users to share content in a separate presentation layer.

Is Shopify a headless eCommerce?

Shopify leverages headless tech, which allows the platform’s merchants to integrate third-party applications for building their front end.

What's the difference between headless and traditional eCommerce?

Traditional eCommerce setup has predefined experiences for both the merchant and the customer. On the other hand, headless approach allows merchants to customize their experience as they want.

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