Digital Commerce is growing exponentially since its inception. According to a report published by Statista, global online sales are expected to reach USD 3.45 Trillion by the end of 2019 which is 13.7% of growth compared to the preceding year.
While on one side, the statistics clearly throw optimum light on the future of commerce, on the other, it reflects tough competition industry participants will be facing in the near future. Having said this, it will be vital for brands to serve their audience with integrated and personalized shopping experience. Besides this, keeping a track of changing customer expectations. Be it B2B or B2C, the buyers today expect a seamless experience across all touchpoints and channels.
The same trend has poked the online retailers to give a second thought to their strategy. This is where ‘Headless Commerce’ comes in the picture.
What is Headless Commerce and How it works?
As the name suggests, it means commerce without heads. However, to understand this better, it is crucial to first learn what is head and body of commerce.
Putting it in simple manner, a commerce head is its front end and the body is its back-end. While front-end is what you see on your laptop/mobile, the back-end is responsible for capturing orders, PCI Compliance and payment processing.
Summarizing it whole, you can create the front-end design using any technology like Drupal (content management & product showcase). And platforms like WordPress and Magento 2, Shopify and BigCommerce for back-end layer (payment processing).
Here’s a quick chart to show how Headless Commerce works:
Reasons that make Headless Commerce need of the Era
1. You Need Content
Narrating a story is the fundamental aspect for current buyers and a headless methodology satisfies this need by making it simple for organizations to consistently mix business and substance usefulness all through the experience. By straightforwardly getting to both through an API, they can be uncovered on the decoupled front-end anytime in the client venture.
2. Embrace Agility
With old website design that is not effectively refreshed, brands can't move rapidly enough to stay aware of client desires. Therefore, they lose deals and hurt their client maintenance endeavors simultaneously. Headless trade enables brands to remain dexterous.
3. The Rise of Channels
With the expansion in selection of different channels (like cell phones, voice assistants, chatbots and social platforms), marks current need to consider headless trade as a major aspect of their computerized change in the event that they need to remain significant. Today, clients collaborate with brands through different touchpoints. Brands can't stay aware of new channels except if their front-end is decoupled, which makes it simple for them to stay aware of the pace of channel expansion.
As indicated by Joe Cicman, Senior Analyst from Forrester, there is a three-section arrangement that rotates around headless business:
- Grasping the API economy: There can't be a solitary merchant. Rather, we need APIs to interface different arrangements.
- New engineering: There should be a structure set up that additionally stresses the significance of computerized understanding.
- Touchpoint-skeptic design: Any touchpoint ought to be bolstered for a consistent encounter crosswise over gadgets and channels.
Now that we have an overview about headless commerce and the way it works, let’s have a look at some of the benefits that it comes with.
Benefits of Headless Commerce
1. As Personalized as You Need
It gives you the opportunity to make tweaked UX and shape your image's personality without adhering to predefined layouts. As per a report share by Salesforce, 80% of clients state the experience an organization gives is as significant as its items and administrations, and 67% of clients state their norms for good encounters are higher than ever. Isolating the front-end and back-end enables organizations rapidly concentrate assets on client experience without affecting basic business frameworks.
2. Opportunity to Analyse
As to UI, you can analyze without the hazard to risk the entire system. For instance, on the off chance that you might want to A/B test explicit pieces of your business sites, attempt to manufacture an Alexa aptitude or a quick and sparkly PWA, you can make a few mistakes in the process without influencing the back-end tasks. Conversely, with customary trade arrangements, you regularly need to change front-end and back-end code in order to keep the application up and running.
3. Speed and Agility
Speed and agility, both are highly essential for brands that need to remain focused in the consistently evolving world. Headless Commerce empowers you to adjust rapidly to showcase changes, to actualize new UX changes and add new usefulness without changing the back-end rationale. A solid engineering that ties UX and the center makes moderate and unbending associations. Generally, organizations stall out because they can't stay aware of the pace of progress in their market.
4. It’s Flexible
Headless Commerce isolates the front-end and back finish of a site enabling brands to refresh their client confronting content layer without intruding on their business foundation. Satisfying the requests of present-day clients who wish to have progressively web-based shopping abilities at the front-end that is anything but difficult to use, exceptional and consistent, while at the same time a back-end that is fit for the inexorably unpredictable transactions.
5. Scalability
Normally, front-end and back-end can be separately scaled. Regardless of whether the front-end gets a great deal of traffic, this doesn't influence the back-end in that capacity, since they are just approximately coupled. This eventually gives your commerce a stabilized availability and reduced operational cost.
Wrapping Up
Headless Commerce is designed to take online businesses to new heights. While it has so many benefits coming with it, just like any other technology, it also has few cons like higher cost of implementation, missing marketer-friendly environment and support. Being a relatively new technology, it is important that before embarking your journey to adopt headless commerce, you take some expert advice and eventually plan the boulevard ahead.