European eCommerce Industry is faling in love with Headless Technology

  • 2022-05-06

To understand headless commerce, think about a website like the human body. It has a front-end or presentation layer that can be seen and interacts with customers. That's the head containing all the visual elements of your eCommerce site. Your content management system or eCommerce platform resides in the back end and contains product information, pricing, availability, stock levels, and other data.

The front-end and back-end are linked by an API (Application Programming Interface), which allows them to talk to each other. A traditional website would be a whole person with face and body intact, while headless commerce is just the torso (the body) without the head but with all its limbs intact.

Headless technology is a way of separating your front-end and back-end development. The front end is where the customer interacts with your site or app on the front end, and the back end is where product data and the like lives. 

It's all powered by APIs (Application Programming Interfaces), which are a way of communication that allows different programs to talk to each other. It allows creativity with how you display your products, making it easier for customers to buy things from you. For example, adding products to your cart by scanning them with your phone. This new way of doing business has proved quite popular across Europe.

Why European Ecommerce Industry is in love with Headless technology

Headless sets itself apart from traditional eCommerce platforms by separating the front end from the back end. It allows you to use a front-end headless commerce technology to render your store's website while giving you complete control over how that website looks.

You get a flexible and scalable solution

You can create unique customer experiences as unique as your brand, making your business ready to adapt and scale with changing behaviors. The headless tech allows you to test new technologies, channels, and concepts to quickly give your customers more of what they love about the brand. With no limitations on the front end, it gives you a lot of flexibility in building features on top of the core platform.

Headless commerce gives online retailers the flexibility and speed to deliver to their customers the best possible shopping experience. It also helps them keep up with their competitors and ensure they use the latest technology. 

You get a lightweight solution

A headless approach offers a facilitatory experience for customer-facing developments such as personalized recommendations or product finders without impacting site performance or disrupting existing functionality. Headless commerce removes the data overload by decoupling back-end systems from front-end systems and delivering smaller amounts of data through APIs. It helps ensure seamless interaction between different customers' devices while providing them with an optimal shopping experience.

You get quick time to market

Headless commerce has revolutionized the process of customization by allowing companies to manage content and applications independently from one another, thus reducing development cycles significantly and making them more reliable at the same time. It is easy for merchants who want rapid deployment but do not want their back-end tied up tightly with other services such as payment gateways or shipping providers. This type allows businesses to create customizations easily without impacting their website performance or stability so they can deploy updates faster.

The Growth of API-based commerce

One of the biggest eCommerce trends in recent years has been the growth of API-based commerce, also known as headless commerce. Headless commerce is a form of eCommerce architecture that separates the front-end user interface from the back-end platform. With headless commerce, the front-end and back-end layers are decoupled and run independently from one another.

Benefits of Headless Commerce for eCommerce Stores

Headless commerce offers you the flexibility to build on any technology stack and provides consistency of user experience across all app channels. It's especially important for brands with multiple audiences. It enables them to cater to their unique needs, from millennials who shop via mobile apps, Google Home, and Amazon's Alexa devices to baby boomers who make purchasing decisions in-store and place orders by phone.

While headless commerce allows you to leverage your eCommerce platform's APIs to build your own experience, it also enables you to use any front-end platform without worrying about integration issues. Since most of the platforms are open source, they are more flexible than traditional eCommerce platforms that require additional licenses. As a result, headless commerce helps reduce development costs while accelerating delivery times.

Headless commerce offers the freedom to build an omnichannel experience using any programming language or framework without worrying about the underlying technology. A business can introduce a new feature by modifying the front-end and publishing it on its website. 

As for performance, since the back-end is separated from the front-end, businesses can easily scale up their websites and web stores. Another advantage of headless commerce is that since both (the back-end and front-end) are decoupled, there is no need for ongoing maintenance.

Wrap Up

The European eCommerce industry's love for headless technology is a trend attracting attention as businesses consider the benefits of this approach. Not just a buzzword, the headless architecture allows you to decouple the back-end of your website, where all the content is stored, from the front-end, or the way it looks to visitors. It opens opportunities for marketers and developers alike, who can now work together to create a tailored customer experience that matches brand expectations and delivers ROI.