Headless ecommerce solutions
Traditional ecommerce systems have limitations that can slow time-to-market. Explore how the benefits of headless commerce can solve your challenges, future-proof your tech stack, and keep you competitive.
8 minute read
Traditional ecommerce systems have limitations that can slow time-to-market. Explore how the benefits of headless commerce can solve your challenges, future-proof your tech stack, and keep you competitive.
8 minute read
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While a “traditional” or “monolithic” commerce solution provides front-end (product descriptions, customer reviews, etc.) and back-end (inventory management, shipping, etc.) functionality in a single, all-in-one platform, we will explore how this can also create major drawbacks that a headless approach is designed to overcome. Let’s take a look at how the best headless ecommerce platforms empower brands to future-proof their tech stack, lower total cost of ownership, and create more agility to deliver the customer experience consumers will prefer over the competition. There are four core reasons why monolithic ecommerce systems can — and for many ecommerce businesses today, still do — cost an excessive amount of time and money: Ecommerce businesses that want to migrate from a monolithic to a headless ecommerce solution should consider the following best practices: Understand your ecosystem: Analyze how the headless ecommerce solution will be positioned alongside your existing systems in your tech stack, such as a CRM.
When e-commerce emerged as the go-to customer experience for consumers, it created a glorious new world of user-friendly digital storefront possibilities. However, it also led to complexities for ecommerce businesses that needed more flexibility to scale when needed and systems to store, organize, manage, and deliver its array of product catalog, pricing, and omnichannel digital experience content.
Headless ecommerce solutions solve these problems. While a “traditional” or “monolithic” commerce solution provides front-end (product descriptions, customer reviews, etc.) and back-end (inventory management, shipping, etc.) functionality in a single, all-in-one platform, we will explore how this can also create major drawbacks that a headless approach is designed to overcome.
Let’s take a look at how the best headless ecommerce platforms empower brands to future-proof their tech stack, lower total cost of ownership, and create more agility to deliver the customer experience consumers will prefer over the competition.
There are four core reasons why monolithic ecommerce systems can — and for many ecommerce businesses today, still do — cost an excessive amount of time and money:
Fortunately, that is not where the story ends. In response to these obstacles and limitations, a categorically superior type of platform is taking the lead: headless ecommerce solutions.
As the term suggests, headless ecommerce platforms decouple the two main elements in the platform: the front end (customer-facing, content delivery application), and the back end (content management system or digital experience platform). Notably, the back-end system in a headless ecommerce solution does not have a built-in presentation layer. Instead, brands can deliver content to various ecommerce sites and touchpoints using application programming interfaces (APIs).
Conceptually, the “head” in “headless” refers to user interface, referring to the consumers. A headless ecommerce solution allows developers to access back-end functionality through APIs, and create a virtually limitless array of user interfaces — and deliver any customer experience they wish.
As discussed, making changes to a monolithic commerce solution is typically costly and risky, and makes subsequent changes in the future even harder. This is not the case with headless ecommerce solutions, as changes to the front-end frameworks do not require changes to the back-end system.
This flexibility significantly accelerates time-to-value, since ecommerce businesses can focus immediately on doing what it takes to deliver an outstanding omnichannel experience.
This flexibility also enables ecommerce businesses to scale and extend services as desired or required. Surges on the front-end experience (such as during “Black Friday” or some other high-traffic event) do not negatively impact or bog down back-end operations.
Headless architecture makes it easy to integrate new technologies and extend ordering options to suit new channels and support a customized best-of-breed strategy that meets business needs. What’s more, teams can continue using many of their existing and familiar monitoring tools and systems, which makes integration and adoption even simpler.
We have already discussed that headless ecommerce solutions are easier and faster to change than monolithic solutions, which translates into significant labor cost savings. However, there are additional cost advantages of a headless ecommerce platform that are important to highlight, including lower total cost of ownership (TCO) and increased conversions.
Headless ecommerce systems can be deployed as a SaaS cloud-based solution, which eliminates the need to purchase and maintain expensive on-premises hardware and hosting. Plus, while both monolithic and headless commerce platforms are typically license-based, headless solutions are usually based on the number of users. Since the server (which is housed by the vendor) can support an unlimited number of users, adding users is straightforward and affordable.
Conversely, monolithic solutions usually have a core licensing model, which is based on the total number of computer cores that the server can run on vs. how many users can be added. This can pose a significant cost obstacle for scaling, since to support growth it is necessary to purchase and maintain expensive hardware, along with additional licenses.
Furthermore, both monolithic and headless ecommerce solution vendors typically release new versions throughout the year. With a cloud-based headless solution, these updates occur automatically. However, with an on-premises monolithic solution, ecommerce businesses must spend time — which also means they must also spend money — constantly reviewing and rewriting elements of their customized code, in order to ensure that it works with the updated versions. If they fail to perform an update, then they will become ineligible for support.
The inherent flexibility and agility of headless ecommerce solutions enables businesses to deliver a unique omnichannel customer experience to various touchpoints, including mobile apps, online stores, IOT devices, social media, and other ecommerce platforms. This has been found to improve customer experience, which is a fundamental part of increasing conversion rates (as defined by ushering customers forward along the ecommerce experience journey).
Ecommerce businesses that want to migrate from a monolithic to a headless ecommerce solution should consider the following best practices:
Be assured that if you choose a leading and reputable vendor, then you will receive ongoing implementation support (before, during, and after) to help you take the shortest path to value, and maximize results and ROI.
We have all heard the advice “less is more”. Well, when it comes to ecommerce, going (head)less is a proven and powerful way to cut costs, save time, and reduce complexity, while driving more customer satisfaction, competitive advantage, and sales.
Ultimately, the question that ecommerce businesses that are still using a monolithic solution need to answer isn’t “should we possibly elevate to a headless solution?”, but rather “how can we afford not to elevate to a headless solution as quickly as possible?”