Headless eCommerce 101: What It Is And Why You Should Care
Let's start with the basics. Headless eCommerce refers to an architecture where your product data and inventory are stored separately from your website.
This approach allows you to scale your business much faster by using multiple channels to sell products, such as mobile apps or third-party marketplaces like eBay or Amazon.
This is a concept that has been growing over the recent years along with other concepts like single-page applications. It's driving the move from static, heavy web pages to dynamic, resource efficient web applications.
What is headless eCommerce?
Headless eCommerce is a term that refers to an application architecture where the presentation layer (the front end) and data storage are separated from the business logic.
This means you can use any framework or technology stack for your front-end if it's compatible with your headless API.
So, it’s easier to build websites in multiple languages.
Also, you can use React Native or VueJS on iOS and Android devices while maintaining a single codebase written in JavaScript with NodeJS or Rails servers running on AWS Lambda services behind them all.
Why is headless eCommerce becoming so popular?
With the advent of smartphones, it's easier than ever for customers to browse and buy products on the go. That means that companies need to be able to quickly load their websites and apps with data from a backend system while still maintaining a consistent user experience.
In contrast, traditional eCommerce platforms require an additional step: Loading a front-end interface via AJAX calls before users can interact with any content or functionality on your site or app.
Hence, headless CMSes solve this problem by providing an API directly from their backends so that developers don't have to worry about loading anything separately from their primary application codebase (which can sometimes get messy).
How to get started with headless eCommerce
As with any business venture, the first step is choosing a platform. The best headless eCommerce platforms offer a variety of features and can be customized to meet your needs.
Moreover, make sure to work with a development team that knows how to build out complex eCommerce sites so they can get started right away.
What’s next?
Once your headless eCommerce platform is in place, it's time for hosting and CMS selection.
Headless eCommerce vs. full-stack eCommerce platforms.
Headless eCommerce is a better way of building eCommerce sites. It's different from full-stack eCommerce platforms, which many businesses and startups use today.
Headless eCommerce is a framework for building applications focusing on different parts of your business process, like payments or marketing automation.
Fortunately, you can integrate these services with any existing platform or application you have in place today--including Magento, Shopify, and Squarespace.
Do you feel the need for speed? Ow!
Headless architecture was built for speed, flexibility, and scalability for shopping experiences at scale, so it's quickly become a go-to solution for enterprise brands who want to innovate in online commerce.
"Headless" is often used for software architectures that don't require a front-end framework such as Angular or React.
In addition, headless eCommerce refers specifically to an API-centric approach where developers can access the product catalog data directly through RESTful APIs (or other web services) instead of having to request content from an HTML page served by a server running PHP or Ruby code.
The benefits of headless eCommerce
Headless eCommerce is becoming increasingly popular among retailers because it lets you create a scalable, fast, flexible shopping experience at scale.
Full-stack platforms may be the way to go if you're looking for an all-in-one solution that includes everything from payment processing to shipping management.
However, if all of those features are handled by other systems in-house (or through third parties), then a headless architecture should align with your needs.
To summarize
Headless eCommerce is a hot topic, and for a good reason. It's an exciting time to be in online retail.
The headless architecture allows eCommerce owners to focus on what matters most--their customers--and build experiences around them.
This makes sense because all businesses want to sell more products and services, but they also have different goals regarding what those experiences look like.
Not to mention, the best part about this model is that it allows for ease of implementation and agility when it comes to launching new sites, as well as no single point of failure and scalability to a nearly infinite number of products.