Headless commerce is a method of separating the front and back ends of your commerce platform. This approach splits your ecommerce website from the rest of the platform (order management, analytics, routing, and more), separating the experience layer on the front end from the commerce base. Your commerce platform can operate separately, giving you more flexibility to meet your customers’ needs.
Here are five ways that headless commerce can help you and your business succeed, both today and long into the future.
Seamless integration
In more traditional infrastructures, the front end is predefined, and the back end is usually locked within a branded solution suite. With a headless platform, since they are decoupled, one can be independently developed, upgraded or replaced without the need to rip and replace. Many retailers waste valuable time and money trying to connect their omnichannel commerce platform with their existing systems.
This is where an API-based platform can help. An API-first solution lets you easily integrate your platforms, making the connection process easier. A headless commerce system that has a complete API surface can easily fuse with third-party platforms and connect to customer experiences on the front end. It would be like fitting a square peg into a round hole.
Scalability and security
Headless commerce makes scalability simple. By using a headless commerce system that decouples the front end from the back end, it’s easier to alter your business based on your immediate needs. The back end can output what you need and promptly deliver it to wherever you need it. It’s also simpler to generate engaging front end customer experiences. As absorbing volume peaks becomes strategic in time of crisis, this ability provides sufficient manoeuvrability to serve customers when others can’t.
In the case you want to penetrate new regions and markets, you might encounter specific regulations or requirements that are not currently met by your existing system. Instead of deploying a dedicated environment, you can choose to extend your headless platform accordingly, benefiting from the micro-services architecture. It will speed up the process of growing your business into new areas.
Furthermore, in a networked environment, it is a good idea that you keep the business systems as separate as possible to limit unwanted access. Head commerce being natively designed to work with different system, a breach in all systems at the same time is less likely, especially when data becomes more and more valuable.
Competitive edge and innovation
Headless commerce allows retailers to differentiate themselves from competitors by considering new formats for stores, working on experiential retail, fulfilling order from anywhere. In the short term, it is often an easier path to choose a traditional ecommerce platform that seems to offer a global solution. Along the way, the monolithic architecture will turn out to bring more challenges than it can solve.
Your customers are all individuals—they don’t all need the same thing and they don’t all want the same thing. A headless commerce system gives you the flexibility you need to create unique customer experiences and ensure your customers walk away satisfied.
Consistent look and feel, outstanding deliverables across all touchpoints will convey your core value and help create a differentiated offering in your market. Think of voice recognition, data-based suggestions, blockchain, virtual fitting rooms… The API-first approach provides the ability to add these new features. No matter where or how customers interact with your business, they’ll remember and eventually come back.
Meet customers’ expectations
Consumers have high expectations, and those aren’t going down anytime soon. Online consumers, especially the newcomers have particularly high standards:
- flawless browsing on the online store
- efficient and straight to the point buying journey
- track where their package is at any time
- being able to talk to someone for questions for updates or changes
- interact though apps, online portal or through social media
With headless commerce, you will be able to deliver on these benefits more easily. Consumers buy from retailers they trust. By exceeding their expectations, there is an opportunity to nurture long lasting loyalty.
Minimize risks
By adopting a headless architecture, retailers can minimize the effects of future shocks and stresses. Headless commerce empowers retailers by giving them flexibility—they can integrate the best applications and adapt to benefit from top-notch benefits:
- best-in-class last mile experience partnering with shipment companies that can handle seamless home deliveries
- reliance of all channels throughout seasons thanks to better omnichannel operations and transactions
- ability to quickly implement safe retailing by implementing procedures aiming to protect customers, employees and shipment partners
Headless commerce also reduces dependencies on individual technologies and limits the risk of failure. It minimizes the impact on other systems by compartmentalizing the different functions of your commerce ecosystem.
Succeed with headless commerce
Want to learn more about how headless commerce can help your business succeed? Read our IGA case study, which details how Orckestra helped IGA reach the top of the online grocery industry with its cloud-based commerce technology. We also have a Thrifty Foods case study that explains why Thrifty Foods chose Orckestra’s commerce platform and how the system helped the companysucceed.
You’re also welcome to contact us at any time. Our team of experts is always available to answer your questions and help you get started with your own headless journey.
