Benefits and challenges of moving to headless commerce

Think back to how — and how much — you shopped online 5 years ago and it’s clear to see how quickly the digital shopping experience has changed. Behind the scenes, the technology driving that experience has also been going through a major evolution. In particular, the rapid rise of headless commerce. 

Many traditional commerce platforms were built when digital commerce was still in its infancy, before mobile shopping or public cloud was readily available. While there’s been an attempt to retrofit these big commerce suits to meet the needs of today’s customer, many commerce teams are finding that their legacy software is holding them back. 

Leading headless commerce solutions, which are native to the cloud and built with APIs that let your backend data talk to any frontend “head”, are gaining so much traction because they offer a new level of flexibility when it comes to integrations, omnichannel, and scale. However, like with any new technology, these benefits don’t simply turn on with the flip of a switch. If teams adopt headless commerce without the right resources or organizational changes in place they risk getting tied up in complexities they aren’t ready for. 

In this blog post you’ll learn about :

• 3 core benefits of headless that persuade many companies to make the switch,
• challenges that teams face if the right resources aren’t in place,
• and ways to overcome these challenges.

Traditional commerce suites are designed to have all digital capabilities in one box. This can work great for companies with fairly traditional commerce needs, but for businesses expanding their digital efforts this locked feature box means teams have to compromise on capabilities. For instance, the product management tools in the suite might be top of the line, but the content management and search capabilities you’re stuck with are average at best. 

Modern headless commerce platforms are designed to integrate with other tools. They focus on the commerce services they specialize in and share all functionality via APIs so the services can work alongside other vendor solutions. This gives companies the freedom to pick and mix capabilities that are fully tailored to customer and business needs, an approach known as composable commerce.

The Frontastic API hub provides standard integrations for industry-leading commerce software and takes care of failure resistance, service authorization, and monitoring so your developers can focus on more value-driving projects. 

To get it all out the door, Frontastic provides all parts of frontend delivery and combines, optimizes, and delivers all your services as a Progressive Web App that gives customers an app-like experience straight from their browser.

A key design feature of headless commerce is that it stores data in a neutral way that allows it to power any frontend, or “head”. This has clear benefits for companies who want to explore new customer channels, such as IoT devices or social selling, or in-car commerce, but it also provides the flexibility to create web and mobile channels that set you apart. 

Companies have the freedom to build out sites that emphasize customer relationships like loyalty programs or personalization, they can experiment with new technologies like AR or virtual assistants, or can deliver unique content experiences that drive interaction and boost the brand. With headless, the sky really is the limit.