Headless Commerce: The New Era Of B2B & B2C eCommerce
By Chris Shutts, Logik.io
For the past two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, businesses failing to adapt to an agile digital marketplace took a brutal economic hit. Yet during this time, those that thrived in the e-commerce environment proved their success and continue to grow. In 2021, retail e-commerce sales increased by nearly 14% and reached more than $900 billion just that year.
Many retail companies are still recovering from COVID-19 disruptions that resulted in significant economic loss. However, they can look to the continued growth of e-commerce as a prime indicator of future success and future opportunity. One of the most efficient ways to capture the opportunity that eCommerce presents for both B2B and B2C companies is through headless e-commerce. The benefits of headless e-commerce, especially when it comes to the flexibility of experience businesses can deliver, extend well beyond traditional digital customer solutions and allow future development as technology improves.
Flexibility Vs. Rigid
Buyer preferences and trends are changing more rapidly than ever. The experience that buyers expect when buying products on your site today is different from it was 2 years ago, and will no doubt be different 2 years in the future. To future-proof your business, and improve your ability to consistently adapt to changing buying preferences, flexibility is the name of the game.
There are two big downfalls of traditional e-commerce that makes it a potentially unreliable bet for the future: lack of flexibility and common performance issues.
But first, it’s essential to level set on what makes headless commerce different from traditional e-commerce.
While it may sound over-simplified, headless commerce means having a separate frontend layer, known as the “head,” and the backend layer, or its “body.” Whereas traditional e-commerce means the front end and back end interlocked with each other where customers use the site’s frontend to request information and then get a response from the corresponding backend.
This traditional e-commerce operating system offers two primary points of risk:
- In the traditional approach, if one part is down, the entire online store is usually inaccessible.
- As buyer preferences change, technology evolves, and new experiences are expected, your rigid system limits alternatives for future design changes or new features and makes customizations to your experience difficult. The inflexibility holds you back from future success.
High Speed And Performance
Whereas traditional e-commerce is tied down to one permanent frontend interface and a dedicated server location, headless commerce utilizes application programming interface functions to allow the backend to communicate with a wide array of applications and platforms.
Further, headless commerce uses a Content Delivery Network that sends content to customers from the nearest server, significantly shortening the loading time. This approach surpasses the speed and performance of traditional e-commerce sites that are static and use pre-built files versus repeatedly building new files.
Because of the technology’s build, the presentation layer of a headless commerce platform is naturally faster. Built-in automated processes like code splitting help to create the enhanced speed and versatility that headless commerce makes possible.
Easy Personalization & Customization
Personalization and customization are top priorities for buyers in any industry, B2B or B2C. To win customers, companies selling their products online must offer configurable, customizable experiences that cater to buyers' wants and needs, and allow them to discover the products they ultimately want.
For businesses selling products in a crowded industry, this form of customization of experience can dramatically set them apart from competitors. The headless approach allows companies to have complete control and freedom over their commerce design and experience which can lead to higher conversion.
Further, headless commerce’s customization capabilities are especially beneficial for businesses with multiple niche products and unique user needs. Headless systems give companies the power to easily add or adjust even highly specialized features to their line of products or services, taking them well beyond the solutions typically available online.
The more complex a solution is sought by the shopper, the more beneficial headless becomes for them and their provider.
Any Customer Anywhere
Headless architecture gives businesses the ability to personalize each customer's on-site experience. Headless can gather, store and readily apply visitors’ demographic data to personalize every customer interaction, making for a much faster and more vibrant shopping journey. Overall, this translates to less shopping friction and better conversion rates for the business.
The API-first nature of headless commerce also allows greater user flexibility since it can connect the business’ backend resources to anything with an internet connection. This offers limitless potential for omni-channel marketing, which is shown to increase order amounts and improve conversions by 25%.
Through the power of headless commerce, businesses can reach customers consistently on any device, including digital assistants, wearable tech, or anything connected to the IoT.
A Marketer’s Dream
An often-overlooked benefit of headless commerce is its impact on marketing. Google rewards higher search results to the fastest, easiest to scan, and most secure websites. These web features can be more quickly achieved using headless commerce. Since high search engine optimization is the most critical KPI a marketing team measures, they will look at headless commerce as their right-hand man.
Most headless commerce platforms also make marketers’ jobs easier when managing content, specifically adding or editing landing pages.
A Supercharged eCommerce Stack
Headless commerce allows businesses to mix and match their tools and methods for creating the best shopping experience for their customers. This approach makes it easier to have a comprehensive, customized technology stack that doesn’t slow down the website. It also allows new options and benefits to be added or altered in real-time without threatening the customer with any disruption. That’s simply not possible in traditional e-commerce.
These options include progressive web apps and hybrid apps that work across devices through web browsers and can be screen-saved for easy access and features similar to a native app. PWAs boast fast loading speeds that improve page performance by 50%.
Another customer option where headless surpasses traditional e-commerce is product configuration. Product configuration delivers self-service buying options at every stage of the sales process. It’s an appealing attraction for both B2B and B2C transactions.
Future-Facing
The pandemic has significantly changed how businesses function, and it’s supercharged what route they travel in the digital transformation. Yet customers are not waiting for companies to come to them. Like e-commerce, customers are evolving in their willingness to shop for products and choose what to buy.
Businesses looking to expand their e-commerce presence can benefit from using a headless approach over a traditional e-commerce solution. Flexibility, speed, performance, and personalization are a few of the most attractive features where headless leads.
For companies with highly customizable products attracting customers whose buying habits range across channels, headless e-commerce delivers nimble and consistent solutions. Its ease of use in real-time product management and ability to meet future needs makes it the preferred choice in this expanding era of e-commerce.
About The Author
Chris Shutts is cofounder and chief executive officer of Logik.io. He also cofounded and sold the CPQ pioneer BigMachines to Oracle. Previously, Shutts was business unit manager for Case New Holland. He has a bachelor’s and master’s degree in mechanical engineering from MIT and two mechanical design patents.