What is Headless E-Commerce?
Exploring the Headless E-Commerce architecture along with its benefits.
Background
Headless e-commerce can be traced back to the evolution of e-commerce platforms and the changing landscape of digital experiences. Below factors led the architecture of e-commerce applications into headless.
- Rise of Multichannel Experiences such as web, mobile app, chat, etc.
- Advancements in Technology such as Augmented Reality, chatbots, voice, etc.
- Demand for Flexibility and rapid Customisation in User experience
- API First, Microservice and Cloud adoption
What is headless e-commerce?
Headless e-commerce refers is an architectural approach in which the front-end presentation layer and the back-end e-commerce functionality are decoupled or separated.
In a headless e-commerce, architecture handles the core e-commerce functionality, such as inventory management, order processing, and customer management. APIs enable the front-end to retrieve data, perform actions, and interact with the back-end e-commerce system. This separation allows businesses to choose and utilize different front-end technologies, frameworks, and devices while leveraging the underlying e-commerce infrastructure.
Architecture
The typical architecture of headless e-commerce will look like below:
Adoption
Big players such as Adidas, Nestlé, Shopify are successfully adopted headless e-commerce while Amazon, Alibaba, and eBay are still in transition.
Benefits
- Flexibility: The front-end can be developed and updated independently from the back-end, enabling faster innovation and experimentation.
- Personalization: Headless architecture allows for more personalized and tailored customer experiences by leveraging customer data and integrating it with various marketing and personalization tools.
- Omni-channel capabilities: With headless e-commerce, it’s easier to deliver a consistent shopping experience across multiple channels, such as web, mobile, voice assistants, and IoT devices.
- Scalability: The decoupled architecture enables scaling each component independently, allowing for better performance and handling high traffic loads.
- Third-party integrations: Headless e-commerce makes it simpler to integrate with third-party services and tools, such as CMS (Content Management Systems), payment gateways, or analytics platforms.
Popular open-source platforms
Below are some of the most popular open-source and production-grade platforms that are used to experience headless e-commerce very quickly.
Saleor: Saleor is a high-performance, modular, and open-source headless e-commerce platform built with Python and Django. It offers a GraphQL API, allowing developers to build custom front-end experiences. Saleor is known for its scalability and extensibility.
Sylius: Sylius is built with Symfony, a PHP framework. It provides a flexible architecture and supports headless e-commerce through its API. Sylius focuses on extensibility and customisation, allowing developers to create unique shopping experiences.
Magento: Magento is a widely used open-source e-commerce platform with a large community. While Magento provides a traditional monolithic architecture, it also offers headless capabilities through its GraphQL and REST APIs. Developers can build custom front-end experiences using Magento as the back-end.
