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Future Proof your Digital Commerce with Headless Commerce

21 Apr 2022

Mike Patel

Future Proof your Digital Commerce with Headless Commerce

If you are looking for a way to future-proof your online business, stay ahead of the curve and quickly meet the evolving needs of your clients, you do not need to look any further.

We know that if you’re in eCommerce, you are more than aware that keeping pace with emerging experiences and everything in between isn’t easy, yet it must be done. But keeping pace, unfortunately, often means constant required updates to the design and back end of your system.

Many a times you update your store to a new trend just for it to finish, and the whole world has already moved on, which is beyond frustrating.

But that doesn’t have to be a permanent staple of evolving with the trends.

Headless commerce has already proven itself to be the most effective way to keep any business at the forefront of clients’ needs with flexibility and agility– even through the muck of Covid-19 and its challenges.

What is Headless eCommerce?

In its most basic form, headless commerce is a separation between the back end and the front end of an eCommerce application.

That architecture gives brands the pure freedom of expression to build however they want, but also whatever they want to and perhaps most importantly, it allows brands to enrich their customer’s experience.

Another staple of headless commerce is the integration of experience managers, APIs and also tools like Mulesoft and Heroku. Plus, the importance of information technology (IT) partners.

These resources are an integral part of every company’s innovation strategy, experiences for engaging customers, delivering value through new functionality and staying ahead of expectations/ needs. Brands can deliver API-driven experiences through a CMS, DXP, application, device, or custom front end.

Now that we have the understanding of what headless commerce is let’s talk about its counterpart – Traditional eCommerce

What is Traditional eCommerce?

The basic or traditional eCommerce model is what many brands still use. It is also what is referred to as a monolithic model.

When businesses were evolving in the eCommerce landscape initially, monolithic systems were the only choice for eCommerce. These all-in-one platforms only provided a one-size-fits-all solution to launch an eCommerce website.

There are two big downsides to this monolithic model that slow down innovation and progress within your organization.

Here’s what to know: The monolithic strategy has slow go-to-market timelines and very high development costs. That, yes, delays innovation. However, it also forces you to pay a higher price for a slower return that may not even pay off once you receive the finished product.

So, you probably see how headless eCommerce is better than traditional eCommerce, but what are the other benefits that you can look forward to possessing? Let’s take a look.

Benefits for those who switch to headless eCommerce

There are several benefits that come neatly packaged with headless eCommerce. You run the chance of missing out on all of which if you choose to stick with a traditional, monolithic eCommerce experience.

That said, here are just some of the many that you can look forward to taking advantage of.

● Innovation through fast web development

With headless eCommerce, brands can test new technology, which is a massive advantage.

Because the front end is separated from the back end, every developer is free to create as they want to, instead of being chained to the confines of a traditional CMS– not a bad deal.

The front end of most eCommerce websites is basically the face of what customers see.

But with headless eCommerce, you’re allowed more flexibility in content delivery because you can connect a DXP, CMS or Internet of Things device that is designed for creating content. You can then it’s an easy process to swap out the front end without affecting the backend operations.

So basically, as soon as a business introduces new content to its front end, those updates are made nearly instantly. Whereas sites made with traditional eCommerce architecture, on the other hand, can sometimes take minutes or even hours to register and appear the same across all user experiences.

● Ease-of-use for developers

Another benefit of headless eCommerce is the allowance for developers to build familiarity and maintain flexibility.

It can sometimes be overlooked, yet, both of those are essential for many developers to produce the highest quality results.

It also enables brands to choose the eCommerce platform that works best as the engine for their store while still working with the front end of their choice, whether that’s a CMS, a DXP, a PWA or a custom solution.

In short, both developers and the business as a whole are granted the freedom that they didn’t previously have.

● Higher conversion rates and lower customer acquisition costs

As many businesses evolve and modernize their advertising, they steadily pay more for their own marketing efforts. That means customer acquisition costs are rising.

No matter what the size of your business, you don’t want that to happen. Keeping customer acquisition costs low is one of the key fundamentals to running a business.

That’s where headless eCommerce can save the day by being an effective solution to that problem.

It can lower those rising costs by giving your brand an alternative and engaging mode of advertisement through your experiences, resulting in less reliance on paid advertising.

Headless eCommerce isn’t only for you.

At this point, you are most likely starting to see and appreciate all the benefits that headless eCommerce can bring to your table. However, that’s another point we want to address. Headless eCommerce does not only benefit you. That’s one of the best parts.

You see, you may be excited about pumping more updates out both faster and easier before, but think about how excited your customers and employees are.

Your employees can easily make changes to the experience without having to learn a truckload of additional skills or work with three other members of the staff. In turn, that saves everyone on the staff time and leaves them with a chance to direct that energy somewhere else, which again saves on costs.

As far as your customers go, you don’t have to worry about them ever having an outdated experience again. You can rest assured that when it comes time to deploy an update, you can make it quickly and have it on their screen instantly.

Plus, with the new freedom that your company has, your departments are finally able to get creative! They don’t have to worry about how long it will take to implement something. They can see where the designs take them then have it up in no time, which can lead to your business standing apart from the mix.

In conclusion…

However, with the world-changing as quickly as it is, and your business constantly investing its resources towards updating the site or managing advertisements, you can’t afford to wait anymore.

A solution to all of your eCommerce problems or concerns is only a step away. You’ve seen the benefits. Make the move – ensure that you don’t let the opportunity pass.

Learn more about it today.

Mike Patel

Mike Patel is a digital marketing enthusiast, innovator and President of a leading Digital and E-commerce Development Agency in Dallas, Texas. Mike holds a BS, Computer Science degree from Wayne State University and is a key player in the E-commerce development and digital marketing industry since 2004. The scope of technology in his extensive experience of more than 15 years ranges from Magento, Shopify, BigCommerce SEO (Search Engine Optimization), PPC (Pay Per Click) management, E-commerce SEO, Google Shopping Ads and more.