Meta Leadership Primer: Headless E-Commerce
Over the last 1 to 2 years, headless e-commerce has been increasing in popularity. While we have been seeing this trend among many different industries, the one that is using headless e-commerce more is retailers.
If you check some of the most popular retailers’ websites, you will see that they are now using a different front-end as well as the way their products is showcased is also changing.
But What Is Headless E-Commerce?
Simply put, headless e-commerce is just a different way of designing your e-commerce website. You will have a front-end that doesn’t resemble the traditional e-commerce stores. This way, the retailer has more flexibility in terms of user experience as well as on what he believes it is better to show as the brand experiences and type of content.
When you are using a traditional e-commerce website, your visitors are prompted to see your products. However, when they want to find more information about your business, about the shipping costs, about the sizes or even if they want to see your blog, they need to search for it. And the truth is that, in many cases, all this information is not easy to find.
On the other hand, when you opt for a headless e-commerce, you will use API calls so that you can retrieve the information. This allows you to design your website exactly the way you want in an easier way. After all, you won’t need to rely so much on the back-end code to create the front-end code and vice-versa.
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Measuring The Benefits And Disadvantages Of Headless E-Commerce
Headless E-Commerce Benefits:
- You will be improving performance as well as you’ll have a more simple front-end
- It’s easier to customize
- When you are creating the front-end, you don’t need to worry about the back-end. So, it will be faster for you to launch a brand new e-commerce website
- More flexible in terms of both format and design
- Since only the front-end database and code are accessible publicly, this adds an extra security
- It’s scalable since you can add separate front-end servers. This means that when you need to perform maintenance, there won’t be any downtime period.
Headless E-Commerce Disadvantages:
- Depending on the platform that you are using, you may end up losing some functionality when you are using a headless e-commerce. One of the things that you need to know about headless e-commerce is that there will be some functions that won’t be available when you are working with a separate front-end. These include previewing content changes, page building, among others.
- Instead of one, you will need to maintain two different systems operating. These means two codebases and two databases.
- You may have to use third-party integrations so that you can connect the front-end with the back-end.
- Usually, implementing a headless e-commerce is more expensive than choosing the traditional e-commerce store.
