Why Headless Commerce is the Perfect Solution for Omnichannel Support

Mwendwa Bundi Emma
Medusa
Published in
4 min readJun 8, 2022

Headless commerce has become a current trend in the modern ecommerce space. With its myriad of benefits, it is the right and perfect choice for omnichannel support.

An example of headless commerce is Medusa. Medusa is a headless commerce open source platform that provides a lot of ecommerce functionalities including RMA flows, order management functionalities, plug-and-play integrations, and more.

Medusa’s headless architecture makes it easier to choose your tech stack for the storefront and third-party services. Within a matter of minutes, you have your decoupled backend and storefront running and ready for further optimizations.

In this article, you’ll learn more about why Omnichannel support is important in ecommerce platforms and how headless commerce facilitates omnichannel support.

Why Omnichannel Support is Important

According to research done by IDC Retail Insights, merchants using omnichannel retail strategies saw a 15% — 35% increase in average transaction size and a 5%-10% increase in loyal customer profitability.

Traditional forms of commerce were largely based on multichannel and single channels which have largely become outpaced in today’s digital world due to their nature. Single channels opt for one distribution selling point while multichannel commerce has multiple channels that operate separately from one another.

Omnichannel options, on the other hand, focus on creating a unified and seamless shopping experience across all platforms. It offers data synchronization across the channels, whether it is an ecommerce website, social media channels, ad pop-ups, or chatbots.

Omnichannel support allows sellers online and offline to provide a unified shopper experience for all their customers.

A headless commerce architecture provides the chance to build and incorporate fast and responsive storefronts using progressive web applications. With the decoupled backend and frontend, security of your database is guaranteed as well as the fact that changes to either end can be quickly done without affecting the presence of your store online.

Benefits of a Headless Commerce for Omnichannel Support

Tailored Storefronts to Provide a Unified Shopping Experience

With a headless architecture, you are not tied to the restrictions of traditional commerce. The decoupled nature makes sure that the backend runs as smoothly despite changes to the frontend, and developers and merchants have full freedom in how they design the frontend.

This makes it easier to tailor your storefront in relation to your business needs. You have no restrictions to provide the best user experience based on your brand and use cases.

Medusa provides 2 starter storefronts, one built with Next.js and one with Gatsby. You can also create your own from scratch using the Storefront REST APIs.

Quick Integrations Driven by APIs

An API-driven ecommerce future is positively powered by headless architecture in this field. Quick integrations through Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) means the ease and swiftness of building powerful and fast brands through content management systems (CMS), device customizations, third-party sites, and maximizing on IOTs benefits.

This maximizes the user experience (UX) which is a key focus in retaining today’s digital customers.

Check out Medusa’s developer section to see the wide range of integrations available including analytics, content management systems, and bots.

Easily Keep Up with the Ever-changing IoT

Using a headless architecture for omnichannel support means that there are no restrictions on IoT-oriented websites. The IoT world is a fast-changing one and needs close monitoring and adaptation. To stay up to their game, ecommerce sites powered by headless commerce can adapt easily.

This is seen today ranging from automation of inventory and better tracking and logistics as well as automated checkouts, voice assistants, and smart home devices.

Medusa offers the ability to build an IoT oriented site through its shipping architecture and plugins as well as its REST APIs that allow for such integrations

More Personalization

Growth and expansion mean venturing into new territories and business acumen. The ease of custom tailoring your store for different currencies, geographies, and consumer patterns without any limitations makes omnichannel adaptation easier.

Medusa provides a lot of features to facilitate that including multi-currency support. Its headless architecture and open-source nature also guarantee more personalization, customization, and extendability to all of its components.

Improved Performance

When you cater to users interacting with your ecommerce store across multiple channels, you have to ensure that your server can handle it and that you can provide a performant channel for them to access your website through.

A headless architecture, as a perfect solution for omnichannel support, ensures increased page speed and search engine optimization (SEO).

Medusa provides optimized servers for deployment and the use of a static site generator (SSG) and Jamstack websites for the storefront. Furthermore, due to its decoupled architecture, the backend and frontend are not weighed down by one another, thus maintaining a fast ecommerce store.

Conclusion

As a merchant, going omnichannel means leveraging your business to adapt not only to today’s trends but future trends as well. A headless commerce approach poses the right choice for omnichannel ecommerce. Taking into account all the above benefits means increased engagement, profitability, and flexibility.

If you’re interested in getting started with Medusa, check out the quickstart guide to get set up in minutes.

Should you have any issues or questions related to Medusa, then feel free to reach out to the Medusa team via Discord.

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Mwendwa Bundi Emma
Medusa
Writer for

ecommerce Writer and expert LinkedIn: Emma Writer