E-commerce businesses are always looking for ways to give their customers the best experience possible—and there's no better way to optimize that customer journey than with headless commerce.
If you're unfamiliar with what this term means, don't worry—we'll walk you through it in this guide.
Headless commerce offers a variety of advantages over traditional commerce platforms. So, if you're an e-commerce business owner who wants to stay ahead of the curve, read on!
What Is Headless Commerce?
Before we dive into the benefits, let's start with the basics—what is headless commerce?
In simple terms, headless commerce is the separation of front-end customer experiences from the back-end system used to store and manage product data, process orders, and carry out other tasks.
Instead of using the same platform for both the customer-facing website and backend functions, headless commerce gives e-commerce businesses a backend foundation that can be easily integrated with a variety of front-end solutions—usually via API(s). This expands the number of channels, devices, and experiences that can be used as customer touch points.
Examples of Headless Commerce Platforms
Marzipan
Marzipan is a headless commerce platform that helps e-commerce businesses build compelling (and profitable) customer experiences.
It provides a foundation for businesses to build on top of, with a powerful API-first architecture and tons of built-in tools—including:
- Segmentation & Analytics
- Order Management
- Product Management
- Discounts & Rewards
- Messaging
- Memberships
And much, much more!
Magento
Magento (now called Adobe Commerce) is a popular e-commerce platform that supports headless commerce.
It offers an API for integration with third-party content management systems and digital experience platforms, allowing e-commerce businesses to create seamless experiences across multiple channels.
Shopify
While Shopify used to be a traditional commerce platform, the e-commerce giant now supports headless commerce. Like Magento, Shopify provides access to an API that can be used to create integrated experiences across multiple channels.
Now that we've covered the basics—let's move on to the seven benefits of headless commerce for e-commerce businesses!
7 Benefits of Headless Commerce for E-Commerce Businesses
1. Sell Anywhere
When you use an API-first headless commerce solution like Marzipan, you're able to sell products on any website in minutes.
Think of it this way—with a traditional e-commerce platform, you're limited to selling on the one website that powers it. But with headless commerce, you can sell on any website, app, or device. All you need to do is integrate Marzipan's API with your desired website.
Plus, we also offer pre-built web components that make this process even easier. Just copy and paste the code into any website, and you're ready to start selling.
2. Best-of-Breed Approach
Traditional commerce platforms have a list of supported tools. Don't like what you see? Too bad—you're gonna have to live with it.
With headless commerce, you have the freedom to tailor every piece of your tech stack to the unique needs of your business rather than relying on the tools that are provided with a given platform. This “best-of-breed” approach allows you to create a super-stack that far outperforms traditional e-commerce models.
3. Improved Performance & Scalability
Ready for a surprising stat? A 1-second increase in mobile page load time can increase mobile conversion rates by 27%.
Let's put that in context with an example—your e-commerce business currently has a conversion rate of 1.65%, and a 2-second improvement in page load time increases that rate to 2.18%. If you have an average order value of $100 and see 500,000 visitors annually, you might be looking at an additional $265,000 in sales.
But how can you achieve that kind of improvement? Headless commerce!
When you separate the front-end customer experience from the back-end functions, your website is no longer bogged down by the additional code and functions that drive the back end. This makes your website faster, more responsive, and easier to scale as you win more traffic.
4. Streamlined Management
Gone are the days when you had to manage two different systems—your e-commerce platform and CMS. With a headless commerce solution like Marzipan, you can easily connect your CMS and e-commerce platform under one roof, streamlining the process of managing both.
And since you’re using APIs, it’s super simple to connect other marketing tools to your commerce platform. This opens up the potential for direct data pipelines and drastically reduces the amount of effort required to make data-driven decisions that impact your bottom line.
5. Increased Security by Default
Headless commerce solutions don't rely on a monolithic platform to manage both the front-end customer experience and back-end functions—and that means they're more secure (by default) than their traditional counterparts.
With traditional e-commerce platforms, exploiting one part of the system could potentially give hackers access to all parts of it—including sensitive customer data like names, credit card numbers, addresses, etc.
With headless commerce, each component is completely separate. That means each component would need to be compromised individually for an attacker to gain access—making it much less likely.
6. Personalized Experiences
Personalization is key in e-commerce. Customers want (nay, expect) experiences that are tailored to them—whether that’s rewards or recommendations. With the right headless commerce solution, you can easily create personalized experiences for each customer that visits your website or app by putting the data they’ve given you to work.
Take Marzipan, for example. You can use our all-in-one commerce platform to set up personalized product recommendations, create dynamic shopping experiences, and offer discounts and rewards to your biggest fans.
By creating these personal experiences for customers, you can increase sales by 10-15%—drastically increasing your ROI. Plus, if you’re able to impress your customers, they’re more likely to send their friends your way!
7. Long-Term Flexibility
Last (but certainly not least), headless commerce solutions offer you more long-term flexibility than traditional e-commerce platforms. As your business grows and evolves, you can easily modify and update the various components of your stack without having to reconfigure a single platform.
Plus, if one component isn't working for you, it's easy to switch it out for another without disrupting the rest of your stack. This level of flexibility allows you to quickly adapt and evolve in response to changing customer needs and preferences.
Future-Proof Your E-Commerce Business With Marzipan
Headless commerce is the future of e-commerce businesses. It allows for greater flexibility, scalability, and control, while also reducing costs and increasing the speed of innovation—that’s way too many benefits to overlook!
Marzipan is a headless commerce platform that's designed to make it easy for you to create and manage your online store. With Marzipan, you can quickly build out custom end-to-end solutions that are tailored to your unique needs.
Plus, with a range of built-in tools Marzipan cuts down on the need for third-party tools and services.
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