Purpose

The purpose of this document is to introduce the Headless Commerce system and its benefits.

What is Headless Commerce?

In its simplest form, headless commerce is the decoupling of the presentation layer (frontend) of an eCommerce from the backend such that both are able to function independently. This decoupling is achieved by using APIs to expose core backend functionalities.

Why Headless Commerce?

Today, customers are consuming context from various channels and touch-points. Gone are the days when customers primarily needed to visit a website to buy online. With the rise of smartphones and the Internet of Things (IoT), customers can now shop from multiple channels like IoT devices, progressive web apps (PWAs), social media platforms, mobile apps, smart assistants, smart TV, kiosks, and many more. By decoupling frontend from the backend - user interface, social commerce, mobile apps, IoT, and many more – can be changed or updated individually, without interfering with the backend. Data is available to separate frontend applications via API calls and the backend runs invisibly in the background.

Benefits of Headless Commerce

• Unlimited Channels and Touchpoints: With API first Headless Commerce, integration with the new channels and touchpoints becomes easy, economical, and quick.
• Innovation and Engaging User Experience: With traditional monolithic Commerce, making user-centric changes to your website requires both a front and backend transformation. But with headless commerce, all the frontend/app developers have to focus on is user experience, personalization, and consistency without having to worry about changes to the backend.

• Easy-to-Manage Integrations: Headless commerce not only includes providing API support to the frontend, but it also includes communication between various components (like ERP, WMS, OMS, CRM, POS, etc.) via APIs. This will reduce the complexity of the integration and its maintenance.

• Business Agility & less time to market: Companies must be able to respond quickly to new market opportunities by constantly releasing new features. In traditional commerce, each component is tightly coupled with another which makes changes a complex task. But with Headless commerce different components communicate via APIs, which make changes to one component easy without having to worry about changes to other components.