Launching a Storefront for Headless Commerce with Salesforce B2C Commerce
Going headless requires trusted APIs to integrate core commerce functionality with a decoupled web storefront and any other front-end apps.
Salesforce recently released B2C Commerce APIs as the new starting point for all Commerce Cloud headless projects. This release improved API-performance and enhanced developer efficiency to make building and integrating commerce experiences in a headless environment simple.
Offload Storefront Operations
Building and maintaining a web storefront from scratch is often a blocker to going headless because there are so many considerations when it comes to a storefront for headless commerce. Salesforce has outlined many of these, including:
- Content Delivery Network
- Scaling
- Caching
- Resilience, redundancy, high availability, and disaster recovery
- Middleware and operating system configuration
- Networking
- Serviceability
- Security
- Bot detection/mitigation
- Load testing
- Penetration testing
A storefront for headless commerce solution removes this blocker by offloading these operational pieces so that your team can focus on customizing the experience to differentiate your brand.
Mobify’s storefront for headless commerce integrates directly with the new Salesforce Commerce APIs to access the commerce functionality and render it within a Progressive Web App experience across mobile, tablet, and desktop. At the same time, it provides the operational infrastructure to build, run, and evolve a storefront in a headless environment.
Optimize Storefront Performance
Speed is critical when it comes to the online shopper experiences. Not only can performance impact SEO, but 79% of consumers who are dissatisfied with website performance are less likely to buy from that site again.
Leveraging modern web technology for your web storefront is a good place to start. Progressive Web Apps provide app-like speeds and page transitions to ensure both real and perceived page speed improvements. On top of this, the Mobify storefront adds in several layers of caching to reduce the number of API calls that need to be made to Commerce Cloud. Fewer API calls mean faster performance.
Performance tracking is also key to catch and fix any issues that do arise. The Mobify storefront’s automated monitoring tracks performance across both the front-end and back-end so that you’re alerted of any performance bottlenecks, and have the ability to trace them. Without this knowledge, you’re leaving money on the table.
Empower Teams
In a headless approach, the web storefront brings together all the functionality from the backend applications in a customer-centric way. This layer is designed for the customer.
Meanwhile, the backend applications are designed for the user. They enable teams to operate the various aspects of the ecommerce storefront — so they should continue to serve that purpose in a modern architecture. The right headless commerce set-up will empower teams to continue to work within these applications and won’t disrupt their processes or workflows.
For example, a merchandiser would continue to work within Salesforce Commerce Cloud to make all their changes and updates to pricing, products, and sales. Just as a marketer would continue to work within the content system, personalization platform, and multivariate testing tool. Changes would be pushed live and automatically exposed on the storefront via the APIs. This helps eliminate interdependencies between teams and increase efficiencies.
Meanwhile, product managers and UX designers focused on the front-end could quickly make changes to the customer experience independent of the data and APIs. This supports operational workflows that are based on the needs of front-end teams and their stakeholders and allows them to constantly test and optimize the front-end independent of what’s going on in the backend.
Going Headless with Salesforce B2C Commerce
A storefront for headless commerce is the only self-contained web storefront that includes all the components you need to build, run, and evolve an ecommerce storefront for a headless architecture with Salesforce B2C Commerce. It gives you confidence in one of your biggest revenue drivers and the flexibility to create customized experiences that differentiate your brand.
To learn more, download the Salesforce Edition of the Guide to Storefronts for Headless Commerce and visit Mobify on AppExchange.
