About this article

What is headless commerce? Headless commerce is hot. Many ecommerce companies wonder if it is the next step for their online store. But what is headless commerce exactly and for whom is it interesting? In this article we will take a closer look.

How does a traditional ecommerce platform work?

If this article has triggered your interest, you are probably familiar with various ecommerce platforms, such as Shopify, Magento, WooCommerce or Lightspeed. All these platforms have a backend in which you manage the products, customers and orders of your store. The products are sold at the front end of the platform. This frontend is also called the storefront. It is this storefront that your customers find in Google, where they shop and are enticed to pay for products. An important part for the success of your online store.

So roughly speaking, an ecommerce platform consists of two parts that form your complete online store: the frontend and the backend.

From the early beginnings of ecommerce, online stores have been shaped by these two parts. Within an ecommerce platform such as Shopify, we call this a monolithic System. Monolithic means that both the frontend and the backend together form one whole within that ecommerce platform.

In addition, ecommerce platforms often offer useful apps. These can be apps for reviews, SEO or marketing services for example. These apps, together with the frontend and backend, are also fixed within the ecommerce platform and thus part of the monolithic system.

What is Headless Commerce?

Headless Commerce works differently. Unlike the monolithic system, the frontend is not locked within the ecommerce platform. With headless commerce, you cut the frontend, or the storefront, apart from the backend. This is possible because we use an API (application programming interface) from the ecommerce platform. You can see an API as a collection of communication lines from the ecommerce platform, with which we can communicate from the outside. For example, we can get products from Shopify using Shopify's Storefront API.

This API allows us to develop a storefront separately from the ecommerce platform. The backend will stay the same, just as it was. So store owners can continue to manage their products and orders as they are used to.

This also applies to many of the apps offered within the ecommerce platform. We can now choose to integrate these services directly in the storefront, because many services also offer an API. Since you are not tied to the ecommerce platform anymore, you will get a lot more freedom in choosing the right service.

With headless commerce, the storefront has a central position. By using APIs we can integrate all kinds of services, including the ecommerce platform, in the storefront. You are no longer bound to the frameworks of an ecommerce platform.

What are the benefits of headless commerce?

The biggest advantage is without a doubt scalability. When developing your storefront, you are no longer bound by the boundaries of the ecommerce platform. This means that you will no longer be restricted in your growth. Imagine that your online store needs an extension, but this is technically not possible within the ecommerce platform. The growth of your company will probably stall. With headless commerce you don't have these restrictive boundaries. You can scale up whenever your company needs to.

Headless commerce has many advantages over a monolithic system. Let's list some of them:

• Scalable

• Lightning fast page speed

• Fast Time To Market

• Very good technical SEO

• Easy mobile app integration

• Headless CMS

• Creative freedom

• Wide range of API services

Should you go headless?

We could answer this question with “it depends on your needs”. However, we won't. We think that every ecommerce company should go headless today. The advantages are so much greater than with monolithic systems and important: you will keep in charge. The storefront runs separately from the ecommerce platform and will be much more scalable. With headless commerce you have a solution that can only ensure your future and therefore your growth.

Shappo

Is there no disadvantage at all? Maybe one: the price. The development of headless commerce requires a lot of knowledge. You need skilled programmers to develop a headless storefront. This can easily cost several tens of thousands. And we think this is a shame, because headless commerce becomes unreachable for many ecommerce companies as a result.

That's why we developed Shappo. With Shappo we can develop headless Shopify storefronts at much lower rates. Rates that are at or below the level of a monolithic storefront. We think that it is smaller ecommerce companies that benefit a lot from headless commerce. After all, they still have to grow. Once they grow, Shappo allows us to further scale the storefront. Without limitations. With Shappo, we want to give every company the opportunity to grow to the maximum with this technology.

Let’s start growing

Interested to know how headless commerce can help your company? Please feel free to contact our team.