Within the last few years, customers have quickly changed the way they do their shopping, especially after the pandemic. There has been a boom in the number of IoT devices available and the average time spent on e-commerce websites and apps. The options for customers are now not limited only to a few big-size shopping sites. The market has expanded, and so has the need for sellers to meet the challenges presented by a growing market.
Due to this, e-commerce platforms are dealing with a good challenge in meeting customer demands. To solve this challenge, enterprises are adopting headless commerce. Its popularity has helped them expand their e-business platform options. Those that have implemented this new technology are reaping the following benefits.
What is headless commerce for business?
Headless commerce is a technology that focuses on separating the e commerce storefront from the eCommerce back end. Traditionally, business owners use one software that delivers all-in-one solution.
The front end is what is called the head. This is the part of the software through which customers interact with the specific business. It displays product pages, category pages, buttons, images, provides navigation, and much more. The back end on the other hand is the main driver of an online shop where all the data is stored. It contains all the business logic.
Headless commerce separates the head from the back end. To make this happen, an API is sandwiched between the two ends, making them independent. Whatever happens in the head doesn’t affect the back end. Due to this, the business owner gets multiple benefits.
Better front-end development
Dynamism is required if a business person wants to remain competitive in today’s business world. They must keep adding features that help customers interact better with their business. One of the best ways to achieve this is to develop new themes using different technologies.
Traditionally, developers would entirely rely on pre-defined themes attached to the platform’s backend. That meant every time they improved the front end, they had to improve the backend too. Without this, the programming in the front end would not communicate effectively with the backend.
With headless commerce, this challenge is no longer experienced. Programmers no longer rely on the front-end coding of the platform. They can think outside of the box and use other technologies to create a friendly front-end platform. This gives developers a higher level of flexibility and dynamism when developing front-end applications.
Enhanced integration
Headless commerce allows applications to interconnect easily through API. This helps to create a seamless connection and data transfer. When there is enhanced flexibility between applications, constraints are eliminated, and data utilization models are broadened, thereby encouraging better integrations.
You can think about headless commerce in terms of a motor vehicle. Under traditional commerce, this would represent the entire/complete vehicle. It gives a business person limited possibilities for improving the vehicle. If all other parts are removed, and business persons remain with the engine only, their possibilities increase. They can modify the vehicle’s body the way they want without modifying the engine.
The engine, in this case, is the backend, while the rest of the vehicle is the front end. The business person can shape the body as they want, change the position of the headlights, colors, switches, steering, etc. The purpose of doing this is to make the driver’s/ passenger’s experience better.
The best omnichannel experience
Customers nowadays shop using different devices. They can shop from their PCs, mobile phones, and laptops, use chatbots, and many other channels. They also connect to businesses from multiple platforms like social media, websites, blogs, marketing platforms, online advertising agencies, e-news media, etc.
When most traditional e-businesses want to reach out to customers from any device or platform, it becomes difficult. They have to keep modifying their content to become compatible with every device. This process takes more time which could lead to loss of business.
With headless commerce, the developers can create a fresh digital marketing channel anytime. Considering the current tough competition, a business that can add a new digital channel to its existing one gets a better advantage.
Dynamic improvement of the online brand
E-commerce stores must keep improving all the time. The e-store owner needs to understand how dynamic the market is and adopt newer strategies often. If they fail to change with the trends, the e-store owner can easily be pushed out of the market. Due to this, business owners need to constantly evolve their businesses.
They might want to change the way products are displayed in the e-front store. They might want to add a new catalog. They could still want to rebrand and change their logo. This is possible due to the great advantage provided by headless commerce. When the back end is separated from the front end, e-store owners can continually refine their appearance without having to disrupt the backend.
Greater speed
With traditional e-commerce, the information is shared from the backend and into multiple front ends like smartphones, computers, and other IoT devices. This makes the entire process less streamlined and slow. When the process drags itself too much, many customers might abandon their searches and look for a faster platform.
Headless commerce eliminates this challenge. It delivers content through multiple APIs and thus creating a streamlined process. It doesn’t matter which device the customer is using or the platform they are shopping from.
Better customer experience
Every improvement made on any front end is to improve customer experience. No business person can afford to lose hard-earned customers. One of the issues that would drive both existing and potential customers away is poor customer experience.
It is tough spending a lot of money to advertise and gain customers. Headless commerce helps business people to create a better customer experience. Due to this, they retain their existing customers and can win many more new ones.
If a business person wants to test different versions of a product, they can try out the testing in the front-end business environment only. If the product proves to work, this is the only time they can modify the backend. This creates a more agile application that is flexible to any modifications.
For example, a business could be accepting payments in multiple currencies. They could also be transacting in multiple languages. It is easy to swap between currencies or languages without disrupting operations.
