Headless ecommerce is the way forward for ecommerce. This is often where we’re staking our claim here at Enginess. And therefore the reason we’re so confident is because there are no alternatives. Traditional ecommerce solutions, while functional, evolved during a world of single- or dual-device design. Basically, they were built when the foremost portable you bought was a Dell laptop.
Contrast that to our current reality, where the web of things is rapidly shifting from academic to practical, and it becomes clear we’d like a far better thanks to sell online.
That’s where headless ecommerce comes in. Let’s determine why.
What is Headless E-Commerce?
Let’s get on an equivalent page.
Headless ecommerce may be a different architecture for managing a web store.
Traditionally, the front-end and back-end of an internet site were tightly coupled. This meant that the experience of the customer, the admin / publisher, and developer were all connected. The advantage of this approach was you’ll make extremely modular experiences. That is, you’ll build something on the rear end, which creates a selected experience on the front, which cascades right down to the customer journey. this might then be duplicated as required.
Headless ecommerce disconnects frontend and backend development, instead running everything through an API layer. While this provides up the templated, modular approach, it means you’ll create any customer experience you would like on the front and easily fire an API call to urge the backend data you would like.
So why would anyone want this?
Glad you asked.
Headless Simplifies Data Management
As systems become more complex and data becomes more of a differentiator for companies, it becomes more important to unite disparate systems. Take, as an example, a serious retailer. They could have a CMS database, an internet site database tracking user engagement, a CRM, an ERP, and online and in-store inventory systems.
Getting all that connected so you’ll display the proper product to the proper person at the proper time, with a functional call to action, may be a mammoth undertaking if you’ve got to wire all of them together.
Headless ecommerce means you don’t need to integrate those systems with one another . you only need to plug them into an API layer and write simple programming logic for the front for when to call all . By going via an API, it massively reduces the mixing effort required.
Headless Enables Custom Experiences
Customers can now shop from anywhere, which suggests ecommerce must be everywhere also. However, it’s way easier to create a functional front experience once you don’t need to worry about rear implications. Headless ecommerce frees up publishers to create the way their customers want, instead of restricting them to a selected module, pre-determined by hard-coded connections between the customer experience and therefore the company database.
Headless E-Commerce is Scalable
With headless ecommerce, you’ll build dozens of front experiences that each one link to an equivalent rear data. For instance, you would possibly have 10 different versions of an internet page showing a selected product, spread across apps, in-store kiosks, websites, and social media stores. goodbye as all of them fire an equivalent API call, you simply have one version of that product within the rear. This makes maintaining large catalogues much easier over time.
Headless ecommerce also means it’s easier to extend system complexity, either via new front experiences or rear solutions. you can simply connect new products to your overall tech stack and pass your new data to the API layer without fear about cross-integrations.
What’s Next
Companies are dangerously on the brink of writing omni-channel cheques their systems can’t cash. That is, they’re promising the vision of a unified, seamless customer experience while not being capable of scaling their delivery thereon promise. albeit traditional ecommerce works for now, it won’t work forever.
Headless ecommerce may be a fundamentally different approach, and one that’s inherently scalable as IoT takes hold and channels, devices, and experiences proliferate.
Who knows, maybe tomorrow someone will invent a far better ecommerce solution. But immediately, in our mind, headless is the only plausible option.
