Headless Commerce Benefits
In modern e-commerce, customers prefer brands that offer unique and consistent experiences regardless of the device they use their services on and attach more importance to them. This means that it does not matter if you choose a smartphone or a desktop computer because the experience you get when using the online store is the same. This is important because, if you follow the customer’s buying process closely, you will find that he often uses different devices before making the final purchase decision.
In particular, if this multiplied experience (with different types of devices) varies and requires a lot of user attention, it may cause him to withdraw from the purchase and leave the site. Therefore, companies that want to meet the expectations of the recipients and encourage them to buy at their website need to ensure a consistent buying process and positive customer experience (regardless of the device type).
The challenge for store-owners appears from the start because traditional e-commerce platforms do not offer consistent UX. They are often stiff and do not provide the flexibility needed for positive and engaging user interaction. For example, platforms offer the creation of a good user interface (UI) and a user interface for a website and then introduce a different, unique mobile device user interface. This brings confusion and discomfort to customers who prefer a unified appearance for each device.
Low flexibility – the traditional approach to e-commerce
Typical e-commerce platform closely connect to the UI level, to create a user-friendly look of the store and CMS or content management system. Through this connection, flexibility in managing UX is prevented identically for each device.
Due to the rigidity of some of the platforms both the page’s intuitive look and the UX cannot change fast enough to keep up with trends in user engagement. In a rapidly changing digital world where customers are inclined to the frequent use of new equipment and platforms, companies should quickly perform A / B testing to easily adapt to current requirements. You must have a strategy to respond to changes and prevent downtime.
In addition, the traditional e-commerce platform does not have the flexibility to share rapid communication (API), data sources, and solutions for external suppliers. Traditional approaches include a series of e-commerce technology that reduces the formation of new application programming interfaces (APIs) for new systems to integrate internal and external systems loosely together.
Headless Commerce, a new approach to e-commerce
Headless e-commerce is changing the way consumers shop and the way developers build shopping platforms. In the headless architecture, the front-end and back-end layers are completely separated.
Headless Commerce is an idea that introduces a completely new approach to creating online stores. Instead of a solution that requires constant change despite meeting expectations, it offers several independent applications. They specialize in their activities and work together in a single integration architecture based on the API Driven Platform. With this combination, your business takes on a different dimension of customer service and you get better results.
The headless architecture separates the content presentation layer from the business logic of the functional layer (existing e-commerce stack, integration, and sales management). This solution provides a platform without a “head” (heddle), which makes it more flexible. It allows customization, personalized shopping experience and freedom of development.
When talking about shopping, you need to consider other aspects than just the shopping cart and the cash register. Headless e-commerce goes one step further and offers shopping for a variety of digital experiences. These include banner ads, social media, movies, catalogs, etc. This approach encourages brands to communicate with their customers on a more personal level. This opens the door to a new era of shopping.
Your Approach to Headless E-Commerce – connection with API
This high level of flexibility in customizing your website can only be achieved through an API-based approach. It’s not enough to simply disconnect the UI and UX from the backend component of the platform because they still can not connect to new third-party apps, channels, and applications.
To explain this phenomenon exactly, you need to take the point of view of the project. For example, suppose we have an e-commerce store project that creates a web application widget that displays customer information about the progress of their orders. So we have:
Data on orders in the e-commerce system.
Stock information in the SAP system.
Customer data in SAP and Salesforce.
Typically, project teams complete the creation of an integration project and create a logical collection of customer data from SAP and Salesforce. They then combine that information with order and inventory data from their legacy e-commerce and SAP systems.
After completing this action to create an Internet widget, an API will be created. Thanks to this, the web application can use the collected information through the API. A good feature of this approach is that the project is completed on time, within budget, and operational. However, an assumption can not be made with such a method. This is an aspect of reuse – this approach is not designed for compatibility and future.
Imagine that six months have passed since the project was completed. The company wants to use the same opportunities through mobile application. A new project is starting and new team members are committed to putting it into practice as the previous team has started working on other projects in the meantime. There is a lot of work for new people. You’ll need to familiarize yourself with the previous information and learn how to access and integrate with SAP and Salesforce. And also how this information is used and used in a mobile application.
This kind of work can be found in many organizations. And yet there is a much better way to approach these types of projects – the connectivity with the API.
API-based connectivity is an integration approach that integrates data, systems, and applications through advanced API management. Thanks to this communication flexibility is gained. You can use any technology to create a positive user experience. All this is based on the consumer’s favorite device whose service you need to maintain in order to strengthen his loyalty and commitment. This allows organizations to reach the assumptions of Headless e-commerce.
API-based communication gives you three levels: system, process, and experience. The system layer provides basic applications and systems via the API. The process layer transfers these APIs and processes them into resources that provide the organization’s business logic. The experience level re-configures APIs from the previous level and presents them to the end user through the application or otherwise.
As you can see, experience levels help you quickly build the right API type. API and process layer API developers do not necessarily rely on centralized SMB systems (such as CRM, ERP, etc.) to understand the dynamics required to interact with these systems. In addition, teams that support such systems can now manage those who access the data and how broad they will be. Thanks to this, the organization can easily reuse resources and ensure an appropriate level of management.
Headless e-commerce – the success story of MuleSoft
Headless e-commerce solutions have brought MuleSoft customers great results. Among them one of the top five toy manufacturers in the world. He wanted to equip himself with the next generation online trading platform to accelerate and increase his income. The MuleSoft solution reduced the time to market for new products from 6-8 months to 4 weeks by reusing resources and APIs. This increased his company’s productivity by up to 300% and enabled him to overcome competition. In addition, thanks to the new solution, the company has established direct relationships with its customers. This is excellent evidence that modern solutions, including the headless e-commerce approach, are worth using.
