10 Incredible Benefits of Headless Commerce

Feeling skeptical about the benefits of headless commerce? This article will cover what headless commerce is and explore how it can help your business.

From phones to wearable devices, consumers are shopping from everywhere.

Traditional commerce platforms don’t stand a chance against ever-changing consumer behavior and demands.

So if you’re wondering how to stay relevant in this dynamic technological era, a headless commerce approach is your answer!

Feeling skeptical about the benefits of headless commerce?

This article will cover what headless commerce is and explore how it can help your business.

We’ll then explore a handy solutio n that can help you go headless.

This Article Contains

Let’s get started!

What’s Headless Commerce?

Headless commerce is the separation of a platform’s frontend (the interface that customers interact with) and backend (the behind-the-scenes infrastructure that facilitates sales).

So how does a headless commerce approach work?

A headless commerce solution is powered by an Application Programming Interface (API) that helps the front and backend platforms communicate and share data.

While being separated, the backend will continue to conduct all of the technical activities of an eCommerce solution without being linked to a front-end delivery platform. Shopify Plus, Magento commerce, and Salesforce commerce cloud are some popular headless platforms.

The result?

The separation of the two layers allows you to change the front end without affecting the backend. This results in an agile, adaptive, and consistent eCommerce platform that caters to changing consumer needs.

Still not convinced?

Let’s find out how a headless platform can help you.

10 Important Benefits Of Headless Commerce

Here’s how investing in a headless commerce platform will help you:

1. Delivers An Omnichannel Experience

As buyers go omnichannel, you need to identify channels most used by your target consumers and develop your eCommerce brand presence there.

Yes, you can go omnichannel with a traditional eCommerce platform.

However, it may get a little stressful with the functionality you’ll have to add and track for each channel.

Headless commerce architecture solves this problem by providing an API-driven system that empowers you to create a consistent brand experience across multiple channels.

It lets you transform any digital platform, like a mobile app or a website, into your online storefront.

And the best part?

You can handle these multiple omnichannel platforms from a single backend platform, including your mobile apps, web browsers, kiosks, and more.

For example, if you’re an online retailer, your customer may stumble upon your Instagram store, check out the product on your web app, and place an order through the mobile app.

2. Supports Agile Marketing

Agile marketing requires companies to identify emerging trends quickly and run tests to optimize their eCommerce systems according to changing customer behavior, giving them the best shopping experience.

This might take months in a traditional eCommerce system, as developers will have to modify both backend and frontend applications.

Meanwhile, a headless commerce solution enables marketing teams to try out new marketing trends and apply suitable changes to the front end without affecting the backend.

Developers can now integrate new tools into headless commerce platforms and experiment with new marketing ideas as well as customer experiences in a few days.

For example, Amazon’s headless platform rolls out updates every 11.7 seconds to continuously improve customer experience. It also helps them prevent outages caused by lengthy updates.

This way, a headless approach saves time and money, uses more advanced tools, and helps businesses stay ahead of the competition.

3. Unlimited UI/UX Control

User Interface (UI) refers to the menu bars, colors, and buttons users interact with. Meanwhile, User Experience (UX) is how a user feels when interacting with website content.

For maximum customer satisfaction, a headless commerce system lets you adapt dynamic UI/UX changes without disrupting platform stability and user experience.

It lets you:

Optimize applications for a faster and better customer experience.
Test tailor-made solutions for new target audiences.
Implement a highly responsive user interface.

As a result, you can add new UI/UX features to your frontend layer without revamping the entire eCommerce platform.

4. Higher Conversion Rates

Headless commerce platforms allow a great deal of personalization, such as:

Personalized recommendations.
Customer loyalty programs.
Quizzes or questionnaires for discounts.

Such methods create an exciting customer experience that motivates users to keep coming back for more.

Additionally, with headless eCommerce, you can educate users about your products, build relationships, and then turn potential customers into loyal clients. This is a cost-efficient way of customer acquisition compared to other expensive means, like advertisements.

Here’s an example: Sand Cloud saw a whopping 43% increase in conversions when they went headless with Pack’s composable commerce frontend. This allowed Sand Cloud to test multiple products to gauge their users’ responses, helping them cater better to customer needs.

5. Faster Time-to-Market for New Features

Once you set up a headless eCommerce architecture system, it’s easier to:

Replicate new commerce functionality across multiple channels.
Optimize content (via a headless CMS) for search engines.
Connect to a central data storage source.

Since the frontend is decoupled from the backend, developers can work on innovating on both layers simultaneously without waiting for the other to finish.

The result?

A headless platform takes an eCommerce brand to markets quickly and implements feature updates faster than traditional commerce systems.

6. Unlimited System Scalability Opportunities

Unlike traditional e commerce platforms, headless eCommerce future-proofs your platforms by letting you innovate each commerce functionality according to changing technological trends.

Here are some other ways a headless commerce system can guarantee scalability:

Usage increase: A scalable headless commerce solution should be able to accommodate increased traffic as your business grows.
Flexibility: As both the frontend and backend are different layers, custom features and tools can easily be added and edited to both. Most headless eCommerce systems can add to the existing data model instead of rewriting it. This offers more flexibility without changing much of the backend functionality.
Financial scalability: As transactions and order volumes increase, cloud-based infrastructure costs should also decrease. This allows you to update and develop multiple business channels cost-effectively.

7. Lower Operational Costs

Typically, traditional e commerce platforms require an entire IT or development team to work on a single layer. Meanwhile, a headless platform allows you to deploy experts to work on each new channel and layer simultaneously, reducing overall IT costs.

For example, a development team can develop and fix bugs, while the content team can work on creating an engaging blog with walkthroughs simultaneously.

A headless commerce system is also low maintenance and has reduced costs post-launch.

Why?

The flexible platform offers customizations, allowing businesses to start small and then grow their e commerce platform as the business grows.

This way, brands can build a custom headless eCommerce platform with reduced build time, updates, and low maintenance – helping them save on IT and other related operational costs.

8. Easier SEO Optimization

If you plan to dump traditional commerce systems for an agile headless eCommerce solution, you might have one big question:

Will it hurt the SEO your eCommerce business has been building consistently for years?

Here’s the thing: eCommerce websites need to evolve to keep up with the constant market changes and Google algorithms to have a competitive edge over its competitors.

A headless commerce solution makes this possible by letting you easily change features like information architecture, HTML, or microdata tagging, to optimize your eCommerce store.

The lightning-fast headless websites also routinely outperform most traditional commerce platforms. It lets you run tests and optimize multiple platforms simultaneously at rocket speed.

How does this matter?

Site speed is a critical factor Google considers when determining ranking results!

You can also integrate headless commerce platforms with a superior content delivery system via APIs to deliver content faster, reduce server load, and lower network latency.

For example, Public Rec struggled with their traditional eCommerce platform that had multiple products and a slow-loading site. This was fixed by a new headless storefront, developed by Pack using Shopify Plus. Post-headless, Public Rec saw a 52% load speed improvement

9. Fewer International Barriers

Most headless commerce platforms also offer multi-language and multi-currency management, which helps you sell your products globally.

For example, a person in the UK buying a product from an Australian web app can view and buy products in GBP. Meanwhile, in a traditional eCommerce platform, you may need to set up storefronts in every country you wish to expand to.

10. Easy Integrations

All headless architecture systems, by definition, have an API. This makes it easier for a headless solution to integrate and communicate with other platforms when compared to a traditional commerce platform.

You can add your eCommerce store to any new device, expand your marketing opportunities, and reach out to more customers faster. And all this would only take a couple of hours instead of days.

Here are a few benefits of using integrations in a headless solution:

Integrate between multiple platforms, from CRMs to ERPs, easily.
Each system can be updated independently of the others.
Establish a single source of truth for all your headless eCommerce business channels.
Consolidated backend that connects multiple tools from marketing to resource planning.

However, before you decide to invest in a headless e commerce platform, remember to ask yourself these questions:

3 Key Questions to Ask About a Headless Commerce Platform

Here are some questions to ask about a headless commerce platform before going headless:

1. Does it offer a simple user interface?

Due to multiple products and growing catalogs, brands often fail to deliver a user-friendly interface. The headless commerce platform you choose must simplify your frontend layer, speed up your site, and offer a user-friendly interface for creators and end users alike.

2. Does it offer tutorials and demos to get you started?

The headless approach can often be a confusing concept to grasp for newcomers. So it goes without saying that your chosen platform must have effective product information management with necessary demos, blogs, and tutorials to help you adapt quickly.

3. Does it integrate with your required tools?

Integrations are an essential aspect of headless architecture. You need powerful tools to develop a fast, feature-rich online store that enhances user experience. Ensure that your choice of platform offers superior integrations.

For example, Pack is a frontend service provider with powerful built-in integrations like Shopify Plus, fabric, Stamped, etc. All you need to do is connect with them and build your store!

So which headless platform should you go for?

The Answer to All Your Headless Commerce Questions: Pack

Although going headless is an excellent idea for your business, building a frontend, and managing and scaling your headless eCommerce platform all by yourself might be a little stressful.

But your worries end with Pack — the perfect Front-end-as-a-Service provider!

Pack offers you an incredible composable frontend solution that gives your business:

More admin control for content management, landing page building, and component reusability
The ability to build complex features more efficiently with React!
An open framework to integrate new and modern technologies
A scalable workflow and developer experience
Complete control for custom design experiences

Some of the composable commerce front-end’s unique features include:

Product grouping for complex catalogs
Product bundling for bundle management
Pre-integrated Shopify checkout, accounts, third parties, and more
Documentation for knowledge sharing

Ready to take your eCommerce platform to the next level?

Get in touch with Pack and build your feature-packed headless storefront today!

Build a Scalable eCommerce Store by Going Headless!

Your eCommerce business can no longer survive with just a slow, unresponsive eCommerce online store. To keep up with the dynamic world of eCommerce, you’ll need the full force of a powerful omnichannel online presence.

The solution?

Headless commerce.

With a faster, more flexible, and feature-rich framework that headless architecture offers, brands can get better results and scale to greater heights.

However, building an eCommerce storefront from the ground up can be quite challenging.

That’s where Pack comes in!

Pack’s Front-end-as-a-Service offers a composable front-end for maximum freedom and adaptability.

Contact Pack to build a seamless, headless shopping experience for your customers!