How Can Headless Commerce Help Your eCommerce Business Adapt?

Benefits of Headless eCommerce 
Adopting headless commerce will give online brands many advantages, including the following:

• Faster speed: Headless commerce detaches the presentation layer (front-end), from the commerce functionality and background process layer (back-end). This means that the content that the people see loads faster and gives them a more seamless experience altogether. Studies show that improving loading time by just 0.1s can improve conversion rates by almost 8%. Therefore, adopting headless commerce will fasten up your website and increase your conversion rate.

• More flexibility: With the help of headless architecture, you can easily implement a lot of customization, which was not possible earlier or seemed very hard. Also, making changes and updating is a far less time-consuming task for headless commerce websites. Whatever changes you need can be made in the front end without the developers having to change the back-end coding, which makes this system more flexible. Just keep in mind that out-of-the-box platform plugin implementation is not possible as for those we need to build the front-end part.

• Better security: This is one of the most important features of headless commerce, as security is a major concern when working with eCommerce platforms. Due to the headless architecture, your backend server and admin portal endpoint itself is not known to the outside user. Therefore, it is less prone to attack. Also, the same can be restricted to be accessed from office IP only, making it even safer.

• Omnichannel Experience: The buyer journey is becoming increasingly more complex. Data shows that almost 74% customers use multiple channels to initiate and complete transactions. Moreover, over 76% buyers choose different eCommerce channels, depending on the context.
  Hence, every device and touchpoint needs a different visual and flow to keep the users interested throughout the purchase journey. With headless commerce, we can create different interactions at different touchpoints with the same backend and give customers the same seamless experience, whether it is Website, Mobile Web, Mobile App, POS, Kiosk, etc.
  Moreover, the development and maintenance cost of multiple channels reduces drastically as the backend remains the same and we can even re-use some parts of the frontend.

• Improved Customer Experience and Personalization: The wants and needs of the customers are constantly evolving. Customers these days want to have a personalized experience even while shopping. This includes features like customized shopping preferences, recommendations, and promotions that are personalized for the customer based on their previous purchasing history. A headless architecture ensures that you have the option of tuning the front end of the website to match the taste of the customer. This creates a stronger and more special bond between you and your customers.
  
  
• Faster Go to Market: You can make rapid changes and innovate swiftly without affecting the entire website. This is possible because your backend and frontend are no longer tightly tied and you simply have to focus on upgrading the frontend. Therefore, this means that as soon as consumer technology changes, you can keep up with the demand and offer new transactional touchpoints without having to re-deploy your entire eCommerce platform.

Which are the Most Suitable Businesses?
But before diving into headless commerce, you need to consider a few more things. This, albeit a great alternative, is a pretty big commitment. So here are a few things that you need to keep in mind before you try to implement this system into your website. 

• This system initially will require more money and manpower to be implemented. So for smaller companies without much budget or connection, this can be pretty ambitious. In the future, the system will allow much faster adaptations but it is also a huge commitment and needs ongoing maintenance. This is best suited for medium-sized businesses with multiple brand plans, wanting to expand within a multiple-platform, seamless structure.
• If you are looking to provide your customers with more personalized content as well as an omnichannel smooth viewing experience, then you can implement headless commerce in your website. For example, a DTC brand or a brand relying on native advertising and influencing should opt for headless commerce as it can help them to implement their content and experience-led strategies.
• Moreover, headless gives you the ability to have more customized products, therefore, those who are already selling or planning to sell custom products should consider this as a top choice.
• You should adopt this system if it coincides with your long-term business goals. It allows more developmental freedom and creativity. But be sure to analyze all your long-term goals before you implement this system. If you are a retailer working with several similar brands and want to maintain brand functionality across multiple platforms and verticals, headless commerce is the way to go.
• The effective implementation of headless commerce solutions will need you to analyze the complexity of your pre-existing eCommerce website and how much it can improve the sales channel agility. Do the research and find out if your website needs more advanced designs, personalizations, and cross-channel listing management. If you want to manage multiple sales channels and touchpoints, deploy immediate changes to enhance customer experience, then headless commerce can be a great option. This will help you find out more about the implementation of headless commerce and what it will do for your website in the long run. 

Headless Commerce Success Stories
Many retailers and brands often adopt the headless system because they are confined by the monolithic systems.

• To gain more sales from their mobile-dominant consumer segment, Nike wanted to implement a mobile-first eCommerce website. This required them to optimize every component, including the visuals and CTA’s to suit mobile screen interaction. Hence, to streamline experiences across all the pages, they implemented React SPA combined with Node.js backend for frontend (BFF). Gradually, Nike started capturing more market share than their competitor Adidas, turning them into a market leader.
• Lancôme, the French luxury perfumes and cosmetics house, realized the potential in Headless Commerce for providing their customers with a much more enhanced user experience. Therefore, they went ahead and switched to Progressive Web Applications. As a result of adopting the headless approach, Lancôme saw a 17% increase in its conversion rate.
• There are many other brands like Burrow, Bosch Power Tools, and more that have adopted this system and created a unified experience-led system for customers across platforms.

Conclusion
Even a few years ago, monolithic eCommerce websites were a pretty good fit for most online shoppers. Because even 12 years ago in 2010, not even 5% of all sales happened online. But as the days are going by, everything is becoming faster. People want a tailored, smooth, and customized experience that suits their personal tastes and needs. Headless commerce is a step in the right direction as it enables brands and retailers to give their customers a seamless experience unbothered by the restraints of channels. No matter what device your customer is using, with headless, you will be able to give them a seamless experience everywhere.