With an estimated 12–24 million ecommerce sites worldwide and $6 trillion in predicted sales in 2024, the eCommerce business is booming. As a result, a typical issue raised by many store owners is how to improve the online buying experience in order to attract more customers.
And the headless Magento approach is a popular choice among Magento store owners. If you’re still perplexed by the term “headless”, then read on!
WHAT IS HEADLESS MAGENTO COMMERCE?
HEADLESS COMMERCE DEFINITION
Being known as “the future of eCommerce”, a question is what headless commerce is. You can find the answer below!
Headless is an eCommerce architecture approach, this mentions that the frontend (presentation-driven) and backend (functionality-driven) of a website are decoupled.
In more detail, Headless Commerce helps create superior CX by separating the presentation layer (with which the user interacts or a CMS-powered template) and the functional layer (the technology that makes everything work) of the system.
Headless allows backend developers to deliver content quickly to any screen via API requests and retrieving, meeting one of the most important needs of modern marketing: enticing website visitors with personalized content across many channels at each stage of their journey.
WHAT IS HEADLESS MAGENTO?
Magento is one of the most common eCommerce platforms with more than 250,000 merchants worldwide. Traditional Magento architecture is a monolithic design, meaning the frontend is created on the backend. This means that for each backend, there is just one frontend design, which is proportionally shown on multiple screen sizes.
Meanwhile, with Headless Magento, one backend can be linked to several frontends and vice versa. Without the dependence, your website performance is more effective. Designers, developers, and marketers collaborate on a platform to deliver new and personalized experiences more quickly, resulting in higher conversions.
HEADLESS COMMERCE VS TRADITIONAL COMMERCE
Traditional commerce brings many benefits and provides the necessary basic features for Magento websites. However, it’s not enough!
With the increase in customer demand for the online shopping experience, eCommerce store owners need a solution – Headless Commerce. In the table below, let’s see how different traditional and headless Magento commerce are!
| Traditional Commerce | Headless Commerce | |
| Architecture | Monolithic architecture It’s a merged system with the site’s frontend and backend tightly connected. | Decoupled architecture It contains 3 independent parts: the frontend, the backend and API as a method to deliver information from the backend to the frontend |
| Flexibility | Less flexible If the front-end developer wants to change data or experience, they must adjust all including the database, frontend, and code. | More flexible The front-end developer can create a customized user experience as business wishes without changing the database. |
| Time to launch on the website | A little It takes a couple of hours to add the final change (product photos, brand colors, and site copy…). | Longer It takes a few hours to create the ideal front end and put it into action. |
| Compatibility | The site doesn’t always appear precisely on different devices. | Work well with all devices. |
| Control | The architecture and technology chosen are influenced by a variety of factors because of the lack of APIs in the initial setup. | The available APIs in this approach may readily integrate with existing systems, allowing entrepreneurs to select their ideal technology stack. |
| Target experience | Provide a predefined user experience for both end users and administrators. | Allow defining the exact experience business wants for customers and administrative users. |
HOW HEADLESS MAGENTO COMMERCE WORKS
Headless Magento Commerce functions well thanks to the combination of 3 crucial technologies: API, Backend systems, Headless CMS. Below, we’ll go over how each technology works.
API
API is the main component of headless architecture as a bridge to deliver the information between the backend and frontend and any third-party services.
The ability to connect via APIs eliminates the need for specialized frameworks. As a consequence, teams may avoid relying on a particular programming language or technology.
When a consumer interacts with a frontend, requests are sent from the frontend to the backend application layer. This allows the following backend operations to communicate with one another.
BACKEND SYSTEMS
Your web store’s backend systems contain all databases and microservices. The available features are:
- Inventory management: keeping track of goods following the supply chain that helps other applications get real-time information about product availability.
- Order management: the program uses APIs to interface with other apps to deliver order data or status updates.
- Cart and checkout: customers can pick and choose what they want to buy, and secure payment methods record their information.
- Product information management: other parts of the headless system use product data (SKUs, titles, descriptions, and images) to ensure data consistency everywhere.
- Customer relationship management: collect customer information to use for analyzing and creating a better shopping experience.
HEADLESS CMS
Any form of back-end content management system in which the content repository “body” is detached or divorced from the presentation layer “head” is known as a headless CMS. Content stored in a headless CMS is delivered via APIs to various frontends as multiple devices.
BENEFITS OF HEADLESS MAGENTO
OMNICHANNEL SALES AND MARKETING
Instead of being bound by a single template, you may customize each sales channel’s experience. By including your items in blog articles, you can also make content shoppable. APIs make it simple to incorporate any number of channels without slowing down your system.
Furthermore, Headless architecture also enhances both customer satisfaction and website performance indexes (traffic, time on page, bounced rate…).
PERSONALISED CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
For each touchpoint, marketers may build custom content and presentations. The optimized displays are pulled to the user using headless APIs, providing a wonderful experience regardless of device or channel.
Retailers extending their companies to new areas, for example, may seamlessly incorporate new payment methods that are favored in the region without disrupting existing payment systems or waiting for their platform to integrate more payment gateways.
SPEED UP PAGE LOADING TIME
The backend and the frontend are independent of one other by using Headless architecture. The data is delivered quickly to display on various devices without causing performance issues.
Furthermore, developers may operate on any system component without affecting your site’s performance.
FLEXIBLE WITH ALL BUSINESS SCALES
An eCommerce website of a big business can face overload traffic in each sales season. It implies that website performance is not good enough.
The problem is solved with Headless architecture. Headless allows you to easily add extra bandwidth to carts and payment systems during busy periods while also scaling down when traffic is light.
FASTER DEVELOPMENTS AND UPDATES
Headless has one more advanced benefit compared to traditional architecture.
In a typical monolithic structure, each change in how data is presented to clients requires developers first comprehend the entire framework. Any adjustment to one system might cause the other to fail, bringing the entire system to a standstill.
However, if your website uses Headless commerce, there is not necessary to understand all systems because each part is not dependent on the other. For example, with front-end developers who understand the APIs, and the interface to the backend, they can make whatever modifications or improvements they want. Similarly, API support allows backend developers to add additional features. This process is more effective and quicker.
IMPROVE SECURITY
Because of the system’s flexibility, businesses can swiftly deploy security upgrades when they’re needed.
Additionally, the API as a method to deliver data is often in the read-only mode, reducing the risk of malicious attacks even more. Because the framework in a headless design is decoupled, minor flaws in one component will not compromise the security of the entire system and can be fixed with good management.
WHO SHOULD USE HEADLESS MAGENTO ARCHITECTURE?
There is no specific stipulation about who uses or doesn’t use Headless Magento commerce. However, there are several cases that which using this architecture will make your website more outstanding:
- Scaling company with market expansion: These businesses must discover and market their goods through a variety of channels. It’s challenging to maintain product data uniformity across all front ends. In this situation, headless architecture will save both time and effort.
- Business with heavy content: How crucial it is to bring a smooth user experience! Content is required to be consistent in the design, and the arrangement of each part on the different devices.
- Others: Store owners who wish to integrate commerce into an existing CMS, companies who seek to engage with a SaaS provider to decrease their IT and developer workload.
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