Headless - the future of e-commerce
We have been working with our own Headless implementation since 2017. During these 7 years, we see an evolution technologically and in the awareness of the business. An awareness that builds more and more trust in the concept. Today, I'll tell you what we've learned over almost a decade of working with headless.
What should you know about headless?
Headless is the architecture of an e-commerce system (not just e-commerce, but for the sake of context I use e-commerce specifically). It assumes the existence of an application that interacts with the user.
In other words, there is an application that has a UI (interface). What is displayed, on the other hand, comes from other applications/systems and the information is retrieved via an API. What does this give us?
Advantages of headless
Headless has many advantages, the most significant of which are:
- speed: because it does not fire up a whole monolithic application and the API needs fewer resources to run, headless is and will always be faster. In an environment where speed is important, this is a very important advantage.
- no obsolete technologies: monolithic applications, unlike headless, do not tend to use modern technologies. This matters because new technologies and programming languages are more optimised.
- faster time to market: with headless, you will more quickly combine several systems or tools into one cohesive ecosystem. Monolithic applications will require more time and effort to maintain integration. Headless, on the other hand, is integratable in principle.
Disadvantages of headless
It is not the case that headless is without disadvantages. Here are some of them:
- headless is usually more expensive to build.
- headless requires quite a change in the perception of the product development process. The teams involved in building the requirements and implementation programme need to understand the concept of headless.
- building headless requires a whole new set of competencies. Typical teams dealing with monolithic applications will not have an easy start. Something that is available in monolithic, in headless usually needs to be built.
Advantages of headless in e-commerce
A powerful e-commerce ecosystem requires the integration of multiple tools and systems. No one uses their own analytics platform, they just integrate Google Analytics or Adobe Analytics.
Few outsource the creation of a landing page on a shop to the IT department. Marketing has modern content management tools (CMS) such as builder.io. With these, the time from idea to publication drops dramatically.
These and many other examples such as PIM, DAM, all these tools are integrated into your e-commerce. With Headless, you are assured that everything works quickly, even when the systems are a dozen/something. But that's not all.
With Headless, you can even have a mobile app at no cost. All thanks to PWA. Of course, this app will not be fully like a native app. But it will be available immediately. If it turns out that customers actually need a native app, there is nothing stopping you from building it. Until then, the PWA will perform its duties.
Summary
Choosing to go headless is a strategic decision. The benefits of correct implementation more than cover the investment. With changing technology, headless offers a flexible environment. Especially when it comes to the dynamics and potential of implementing business requirements.
The monolith cannot boast such a performance.