World’s most innovative brands use Shopify Plus for headless commerce.
Headless eCommerce is a situation where the front-end of a site is detached from the eCommerce platform which is the backend. The ‘presentation layer’ (the front-end) is separated from the commerce layer (the back end). Therefore, a retailer can get more flexibility in designing rich content and user experience for his store now.
This headless approach suits different businesses in different ways. For example, the way content driven website is redesigned is totally different for the one that is product heavy. So a Shopify Expert or Shopify Agency will need to identify the necessary use cases for effective eCommerce website redesign or Shopify store set up.
In this approach since the Front end doesn’t have to make a call to the Backend there is less time wasted in fetching data. It uses API calls to retrieve information instead – this, in turn, allows web developers to customize/redesign their Shopify Websites with lot more ease.
Why Headless, and Why Now?
Amazon is at the leading front showing us the true value of incorporating a headless commerce platform. A study reported that 60 percent of consumers want an Amazon Prime-like service — but can’t achieve it through traditional eCommerce solution.
The Shopify stack for headless commerce
Build fast, headless storefronts with a React-based framework built by Shopify, for Shopify. From pre-built components and starter templates, to hooks and utilities that map directly to Shopify’s APIs, Hydrogen gives you the tooling you need to accelerate development. Then deploy with one click on Oxygen, our globally distributed hosting solution. Deliver performant storefronts wherever customers shop.
Headless Commerce Right for all D2C?
The choice to go headless isn’t an easy decision to make. While there are benefits, such as improved independence of development teams, there are a number of challenges.
Headless sites typically rely on JavaScript technology for much of the site functionality. While it can give a great user experience, it has challenges for search engine bots, SEO, and other web technologies.
Essentially, running a second platform is not free, either technically or from a usage perspective. If your IT capacity is not sufficient, or your business process is not flexible enough, headless commerce may not be right for you.
Integrating a completely separate UI layer with your backend commerce services can be more difficult than expected. Usage of standard commerce services is usually straightforward. Then, to get the most benefit and not have business users jumping between multiple tools. You want the UI layer to leverage customer information, including activity and commerce data, to present the best experience. That data either needs to be shared between the commerce platform and the UI platform, or query/used as needed. Either way, it is a more complex integration effort and can extend deployment times and costs.