💠Headless Commerce | XS’ Issue #16
Headless Commerce Explained Under 1 Minute
Headless Commerce. You may have heard this term tossed around, but you're not quite sure what it means.
Headless commerce is an e-commerce architecture in which the front-end and back-end are decoupled. This separates the presentation layer from the business logic and database.
Headless Commerce vs. Traditional Commerce
The shift to new e-commerce models, such as headless commerce, stems from the market's requirement for flexibility and scalability. Customers want your application's front-end to provide them with unique, ingenious experiences.
What you should be aware of traditional (monolithic) commerce:
Noncompetitive performance
Problems with maintaining numerous frontends
Sluggish maintenance, customization, and development
Scalability restrictions
Now you understand the limitations of the traditional model, but, why would you want to switch to headless commerce from traditional commerce? Headless commerce has many advantages over traditional e-commerce architectures:
Better user experience since the front end can be tailored to specific users without having to change the back end.
Allows for integration of third party payment processing and marketplaces
More scalable since the head and body can scale independently.
Creates a space for content management
More flexible since the head can be changed without affecting the body (and vice versa).
Possible Roadblocks Associated with Migrating to Headless
Don’t wait for a fast and smooth transition if you decide to step on the headless path. This step requires splitting a store’s backend from the front end. Headless commerce aims to cover various touchpoints and ensure a positive customer experience across them. But you need to create UX/UI designs for multiple screens - taking many designers’ and developers’ hours.
It applies to transforming an existing store or building a headless website from scratch.
As you can see, building or restructuring the website for headless commerce requires time, effort, designers, developers, and money. But in return, you get a flexible website that will pay off in the short and long run.
Resources to learn more about headless commerce:
Headless Commerce: How It Will Change Online Sales
A Comprehensive Guide to Headless Commerce
Rounding Up the Stack
Each week, we try to read, listen, and watch tens of blog posts (if not more than a hundred), guides, podcasts, videos, webinars, and any means of content to deliver you the best content from the last week.
These are the content from last week that we enjoyed reading and caught our attention:
Blog Posts
5 E-commerce Trends to Keep Customers Connected With Your Brand
So what trends and technologies should retailers be experimenting with now? Lisa from Contentful talked to experts, did some research, and narrowed the list down to five e-commerce trends:
5 E-commerce Trends to Keep Customers Connected With Your Brand
3 Challenges of Building Customer Trust in a Privacy-Focused World
Building customer trust is vital to the success of any brand. Here's how marketers can increase trust without sacrificing something just as important - privacy:
3 Challenges of Building Customer Trust in a Privacy-Focused World — martech.org
The Impact of Experimentation on Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)
This post will give you insights into how CLS can affect your Google ranking, the pros and cons of experiments server and client-side, as well as organizational and technical considerations to improve your site experience through testing, personalization, and experimentation:
The Impact of Experimentation on Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) — www.abtasty.com
What Is Data Replication and Why Is It Important?
This post will focus on logical database data replication, in which database operations from the source are replayed on the target:
What Is Data Replication and Why Is It Important? — www.fivetran.com
User Behavior Analytics: How to Track and Analyze
Understanding how to track and analyze user behavior will help you make the customer experience your core differentiator:
User Behavior Analytics: How to Track and Analyze — amplitude.com
Podcast Episodes
In episode 99 of JAMstack Radio, Brian Douglas speaks with Sebastian Rindom and Nicklas Gellner, co-founders of Medusa. Their conversation focuses heavily on Medusa, an open-source headless commerce engine, and its use cases, as well as a holistic perspective on e-commerce stacks:
Consider the perfect customer experience without the unfriendly limitations of the physical environment. The metaverse could offer this. VP, Principal Analyst David Truog returns to explain the state of the metaverse and what it means for the future of CX:
Videos and Webinars
SEO for the Modern Marketer: How to Use a Headless CMS to Improve Your Reach
During this webinar, you will learn:
How a headless CMS levels up your SEO game
How to avoid repetitive work and focus on what really matters
Why mobile-friendly websites for SEO are only the beginning
SEO tips for content creators
BONUS Video: REST vs. GraphQL
Guides, Case Studies, and Reports
7 Exciting Customer Experience (CX) Trends to Watch for in 2022
In this trends guide, you'll take a look at some of the most promising CX trends for 2022. You’ll also read how you can prepare your business to take advantage of these trends.
7 Exciting Customer Experience (CX) Trends to Watch for in 2022
Upcoming Events and Webinars
AI, Chatbots, and Personalization
In this lesson, you’re going to get into advanced personalization topics such as Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Chatbots, and how to scale personalization to support many users.
🗓 Monday, April 25, 2022, at 7.30 am PT | 4.30 pm CET
AI, Chatbots and Personalization — www.headlesscreator.com
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That’s it from our side.
Hope you’ll enjoy the content presented above.
Please let us know if you have any questions, comments, or feedback. Don’t hesitate to reach out to us by replying to one of the emails or emailing directly to me via esat@experiencestack.co
And, if you think your friends or colleagues might enjoy reading this newsletter, feel free to forward it to them 🤗
Till next time 😉