Ecommerce sites are a big thing these days. Mobile and social ecommerce provided new revenue streams for companies, expanding the industry.
Still, customer expectations stay the same regardless of how they shop. At the end of the day, they want a personalized and great shopping experience. So, how can ecommerce stores meet these expectations?
They can turn to a technology like headless ecommerce. This lets them enhance user experience while providing content for customers’ channels and devices.
What is Headless Ecommerce?
Headless ecommerce is an ecommerce solution that decouple the front end from the back end of an ecommerce store.
Meaning the “head” is the front-end part of your site, the one that users see and interact with. Now, this is separated from the back-end part, which includes payments, checkouts, subscriptions, etc.
Headless platforms let you plug the entire back-end system into your chosen front-end system. Both of these systems work independently without affecting each other. Thus, you get a headless solution that allows you to provide a better user experience while gaining more flexibility.
Read More: Headless Ecommerce Platforms: The Key Things To Know
In this post, we’ll walk you through the ways how you create a market-dominating headless ecommerce site:
1. Learn about headless architecture
In a nutshell, a headless system offers a variety of solutions: headless CMS, headless front-end, headless commerce platforms, and headless search or payment.
It’s actually part of a bigger approach called composable commerce, wherein most ecommerce businesses have the freedom to pick the right set of technologies and incorporate them into a unique composition that fits the needs of their business.
2. Select the suitable technology stack
When you make an ecommerce website, picking the right ecommerce tech stack can make or break your business. It’s important to think of all the ecommerce architecture and technologies you want before placing them together in your stack.
Your front end helps you develop a user-facing section of your ecommerce store. Your front end is built so that your customers will love your platform.
Front-end development often includes some of the most well-known and cutting-edge technology for designing websites:
- CSS
- HTML
- JavaScript
- HAML, PUG, and SASS can also be used for front-end development
Meanwhile, the back end is the unseen server-side component needed for the front end to perform properly. It usually contains information from the application, the database, server, and interactions between these three forms create a stable foundation for the front end’s functions.
- Databases
- Frameworks
- Programming languages
- Servers
3. Plan your architecture
Technology is constantly evolving, and headless ecommerce allows you to keep up by adding commerce functions to every new touchpoint of the channel. It has built-in agility and flexibility, making it easier in customizing customer experiences and interfaces.
Whether you’ve already established yourself or starting out, you must know what your options are, whether headless, commerce-led, experience-led, or a mix of that, so that you can find what’s right for you.
4. Develop the front-end
Most front-end developers are limited by the constraints on front-end design. They need to learn how to adapt to these limits, putting in more effort, filling out the gaps, what tech stack can be used in which situations, and so on.
With a headless approach, most front-end developers are independent of all of these predefined front-end technologies, allowing them to create front-ends in ways they see fit. This gives them more control and flexibility in their development over time.
5. Build the back-end
The ecommerce back-end is usually a headless system that is built differently. Unlike a tightly coupled system holding commerce, cart, and order management functions in a single structure, the back-end system can be built via modules.
This approach removes any complex dependencies, which allows sites to adapt to changing needs minus interruptions.
6. Implement APIs
Adapting the API-first approach is key to every headless commerce strategy. It serves as a means for applications to interact with the back-end business logic of ecommerce sites.
APIs are vital to the success of this architecture since they can be utilized in managing products, customer data, and order processing. Through a headless commerce strategy, APIs are the backbone that allows different channels and devices to communicate with ecommerce platforms.
7. Enable third-party integrations
Enabling third-party integrations ensures additional services for an ecommerce site. Not only do they improve the performance of the initial solution by letting an ecommerce site run efficiently, but they can be used to enhance performance and decrease the costs of building and to manage an online store.
Here are examples of third-party integrations:
- Analytics tools
- CRM
- Payment gateways
- Social channels
- Shipping modules
8. Implement SEO best practices
Whether or not you’re using a headless CMS, adapting general best practices helps you boost your site’s SEO.
You must provide relevant content to users, pick keywords wisely, and ensure that your headlines help readers find the right section.
Search engines want to ensure that users get the best results for their searches.
Thus, when crawling your page looking for specific search terms, they’ll check what other pages are linked to yours, whether it has “domain authority” and is seen as a trusted source of information.
9. Implement analytics and tracking
Data-driven insights allow you to understand your customers’ behavior so that you can optimize your business decisions.
By leveraging this data, you can develop a personalized experience that helps boost customer engagement and sales. This data also allows you to identify channels that underperform, along with the connections between these actions and results.
10. Continuously test and optimize
If done well, A/B testing lets you improve your customers’ shopping experience, creating better click-through rates, and conversions, generating greater loyalty, and a lot more.
If you want to make the right changes and bring in more traffic, A/B testing is one of the best ways to guide you in the right direction.
Over to You
So there you have it. Undoubtedly, headless ecommerce will continue gaining traction, making it the go-to approach for brands and retailers who can use numerous elaborate ecommerce channels.
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