What is a Headless Commerce platform?

What is a Headless Commerce Platform?

A completely headless eCommerce solution will progress a retail eCommerce model, by decoupling the front-end and back-end solution.

By this, we mean that the eCommerce user interface that a shopper will see does not need to be built upon the same code as the administrative back end. Instead, business leaders or IT administrators can select from an infinite choice of ready-to-go APIs to pair their solution to.

This benefits a business in four main ways: Security & Site Speed; Data Analytics; Administrative Freedom, and Time to Market

Security, Site Speed and Less Down-Time

Headless commerce architecture offers a lower risk of a website slowing down or going offline completely, as in most cases there are simply fewer lines of code available to break. A break in code of traditional system can cause a chain of reactions from which any number of website errors could spring from.

A business can be more guarded from this by introducing API gateways into a decoupled microservices style solution. In addition, this reduces the number of applications needed for an internal or expensive external development teams to design, create code for and then test.

Data Analytics

Ecommerce experiences can often hinge on small details easily missed by the human eye.

Perhaps a less obvious benefit of an API-led technology stack would be the addition of smart data. Often when partnering your website with another service or progressive web app for a particular function, that service will provide performance analytics within the bundle.

This can unlock a raft of previously unconsidered statistics for data analysts, marketers, or senior leaders to consider when in the service discovery stage of research.

Administrative Freedom

From a backend perspective, a headless solutions offer far greater opportunity for customization. This can help a small team of administrators or decision makers tailor their offerings to shoppers in a plethora of ways, perfectly matching their customer promise and desired customer experience.

In addition, whole departments can shave time off their regular duties by AI-driven microservices. Consider the time taken to copy a customer record from a traditional eCommerce system into a separate CRM. With a headless API, services communicate information at the desired point of data entry (such as payment).

Time to Market Speed

Headless Commerce is fast. Not only in its user experience, but also in its deployment. Typically, Naveo Commerce can launch its Connected Commerce solution for grocery eCommerce within a matter of weeks. This is far longer than it would take for any in house development team to design and create.

– Click to demo our fantastic headless Connected Commerce solution

Monolithic vs Headless Systems: What’s Difference?

A monolithic system will have a presentation layer coupled or fixed to its backend operation.

This works well for smaller online businesses with low daily transactional sales. However, when it comes to industries such as fast-fashion or grocery, profit margins are slim, and competition is high. Therefore, the slightest advantage in online customer journey can swing user experience towards a competitor.

In this environment, data is key. However, even if data is available to marketers and analysts to use, monolithic architecture is not easy to change from an operational standpoint.

Within the monolith, a requested change can lead to expensive overhaul which may even require a system down time due to the intricacies of coding breaks.

Monolithic applications are weighted down by improper load balancing which can be smoothed out by a microservice architecture.

In a microservice architecture, individual services can easily be updated with new functionality. This happens without interfering the system and with less risk of down time.

How Naveo Deploys Headless Commerce to Revolutionize Grocery eCommerce 

Naveo’s Connected Commerce solution is a revolutionary product within retail ecommerce. Particularly suited to the grocery market, with its many pitfalls and particular concerns around in-store picking and delivery. 

Two of our customers, Salling in Denmark and Co-op UK, have requested forward-thinking strategies to tackle new concerns around online grocery fulfilment to mirror the strategies of their in-store customer promise. 

Co-op UK

For example, Co-op UK considered their place in the UK market as a top-up style provider for groceries missed off on the big weekly shop. With this in mind, they wanted to use their network of local shops in order to create a network of delivery hubs. 

– View Co-op UK & Naveo Commerce Case Study

Salling (Denmark’s largest grocer)

Whereas Salling wanted to create one massive dark store warehouse to act a centralized hub for their customers within the Copenhagen area.