Headless Commerce: What You Should Know (Part 1)

Is transitioning to a new fancy headless content management system worth the shot for your online store? Let’s find out in our series of posts on headless commerce. In Part 1, we explain the fundamental concepts of headless architecture, such as front-end and back-end, headless CMS, monolithic CMS, and more.

What is Headless Commerce?

Headless commerce (or headless e-commerce) is a term used to describe a set of practices and principles for building online stores according to what’s known as headless architecture. It’s an approach to build web sites by separating the front-end customer experience from the back-end functionality.

Headless architecture allows businesses to deliver seamless shopping experiences across multiple platforms, from websites to mobile apps and even smart devices. Headless online shops also enable founders to introduce changes more quickly and choose from a broader assortment of UX tools.

To sum it up, headless commerce refers to online shops applying the principles of headless architecture to the development of user interfaces. Headless architecture, in turn, is a type of website architecture that enables higher performance and greater flexibility in website development.

Before we dive into how and why e-commerce websites benefit from headless architecture, let’s look closer at the concept itself, and how it is connected with traditional, or monolithic, website architecture.

Headless Architecture vs. Monolithic Architecture: What’s the Difference?

When discussing this topic, things inevitably get technical, so please don’t worry if the concept isn’t immediately clear. We’ll walk through it step by step.

Headless architecture is a type of website architecture that emerges when the site is built with a headless content management system (CMS).

When a website uses a “traditional” (non-headless) CMS, the back-end and front-end exist in a unified infrastructure—in other words, they are interconnected by default. What the website looks like depends on the capabilities and limitations of the back-end, and vice versa.

To better understand how “traditional” websites with unified back-end and front-end operate, let’s look at an example.

Imagine you’re attempting to purchase a ticket to a concert of Taylor Swift on a popular reseller platform like Ticketmaster Resale (which is in essence an online shop). The website and seat selection appear fine at first glance. But the ticket in your cart disappears before you check out.

What happened?

The back-end, which must track real-time seat availability (stored in a database), buckled under pressure due to a surge in traffic. All while the website’s front-end was intact.

These two sides of a website are usually developed using different tools, programming languages, and skills. That’s why it’s hard to coordinate between them, especially in pressing situations like a traffic surge.

A website built on a monolithic CMS requires effective communication between the two teams and between different development layers.

In contrast to the traditional CMS, a headless CMS allows the developer to build the back-end of the website separately from its front-end. Instead of offering a built-in frontend, it only provides a backend that serves content via an API, enabling developers to connect it to any frontend or platform.

It’s called “headless” because, previously, the front-end was considered the “head” of the website (the part that faces the user).

In headless websites, developers focus on setting up the content, while the front-end is flexibly adjusted. This setup allows for variability as to the front-end frameworks used, and, in turn, a broader choice as to how to present the website to the customer.

Wait, but these two sides should be connected still, you might ask.

Yes. When operating in a headless environment, the back-end and front-end are connected through a dedicated API (application programming interface) layer. This arrangement allows the front-end to pull and push content from the headless CMS in real time, enabling consistent user experiences across multiple channels, including web and mobile.

⏸️ Let’s pause and explore how it applies to reality.

Imagine you have one monolithic system (e.g., WordPress) that powers your website, and you also have a completely separate mobile app.

If you want to post the same announcement (same text and images) across both, in a monolithic setup you typically have to manage that content specifically for the website within WordPress and then transfer it manually to the app.

Why? Because the monolithic system is designed primarily for one front-end—your website.

By contrast, in a headless setup, you’d store the announcement text and images in a headless CMS, and both your website and your app would pull that exact same content via an API. You only update it once in the headless CMS, and any number of front-ends—web, app, or otherwise—are updated automatically.

Why is Headless Better Than Monolithic?

It may not be universally better. It’s not as if monolithic is a landline phone and headless is the smartphone that nearly replaced it.

Headless is the winner when you need flexibility and speed. By separating the back-end from the front-end you can efficiently push content to any channel—be it a website, mobile app, or even a smartwatch interface (yes!). 

“[With Wordpress] you get started a lot quicker, but then if you want to do something more custom, it gets so incredibly annoying,”—points out Niklas Fischer, a website developer and agency founder.

And everyone who has ever tried to build a site on Wordpress will definitely share his pain!

In the next parts of our series, we will speak in more detail about the advantages and limitations of headless, as well as about the best and worst use cases to implement it.

What are Some Examples of Monolithic and Headless CMSs?

The world’s most popular CMS Wordpress is considered a “monolithic” platform—it handles content creation, database operations, and rendering of the front-end, all in one system. Another popular monolithic CMS is Squarespace.

Traditional CMSs essentially dictate their own rules for how the front-end and the back-end connect. While this may sound like a limitation, it is precisely this feature that democratized website creation by removing the need for coding. Part of WordPress’s success as a website creation platform is that it makes building websites easy and approachable for anyone, thanks to the way it unifies the front-end and back-end into one system.

In contrast, headless CMSs—such as Contentful, Strapi, or Sanity—separate the content repository from the presentation layer.

What’s in it for E-Commerce?

Headless architectures are especially popular in e-commerce due to the following:

▶︎ Headless simplifies multi-channel experiences. E-commerce brands often sell across multiple channels—web, mobile apps, social platforms, kiosks, and more. With headless, all these front-ends can pull content and product data from the same back-end via APIs.

Mobile e-commerce is here to stay. It’s a shopping format welcomed by many consumers. For example, Europe’s main fashion destination Zalando received a surprising 89% of visits to their platforms from mobile in 2021, after several years of growth in this segment.

▶︎ Performance and scalability are easy to manage. A separate front-end can be optimized for speed, delivering a faster customer experience that helps reduce bounce rates. Meanwhile, the back-end can be scaled independently as traffic or inventory grows.

With BoxHero inventory management software, you can:

• Automate stock updates to prevent overselling or stockouts.
• Track real-time sales data to make informed restocking decisions.
• Simplify warehouse operations with barcode scanning and intuitive product categorization.
• Enable multi-user collaboration so your team can manage stock efficiently.

Most importantly, you can integrate with your existing e-commerce platforms through the BoxHero API!

Here’s what BoxHero looks like on the inside:

Stay ahead of demand and optimize your inventory management with BoxHero today! Sign up for a free trial here or click the button below.

▶︎ Faster interactions are possible. Teams can update the user interface quickly (e.g., A/B testing new designs or copy) without risking interruptions to core commerce operations like payments or inventory management. This also potentially means shorter approval cycles for changes and faster time-to-market.

▶︎ Headless commerce is future-proof. As technology evolves—new frameworks, devices, or channels—the headless approach simplifies adoption. You can plug in new front-ends or channels without reworking the underlying commerce logic.

What are Some Examples of Online Stores Built on Headless?

We would like to reiterate what we’ve mentioned earlier: Headless CMSs don’t have a frontend—only a backend. There are no obvious visual indicators of a website built on a headless CMS because they can take on various designs and structures (which is one of the key reasons developers choose headless in the first place).

The easiest way to find examples of headless-based websites is to visit the "Case Studies" section of any headless platform. We looked through the case studies of Contentful, Strapi, and Sanity. Here are some online shops that transitioned to headless with the help of these platforms:

1️⃣ Mejuri is a modern fine jewelry brand that has been in the market since 2015. Mejuri empowers customers with stylish, ethically sourced jewelry while leveraging cutting-edge technology, such as Sanity, the headless content management platform.

2️⃣ Bash is South Africa’s leading shopping and lifestyle platform, offering a seamless multi-brand e-commerce experience with over 500+ brands and 40,000 products. Bash uses Strapi to create a single consolidated e-commerce platform.

3️⃣ On is a Swiss-based sportswear brand revolutionizing performance footwear and apparel by combining cutting-edge technology with sustainable design. On.com migrated to Contentful several years ago.

Conclusion

If you’ve ever dreamt of a way to create and manage your e-commerce business flexibly—without needing to loop in the engineering team for every single button adjustment—then headless commerce might be just right for you.

This approach applies headless website architecture to e-commerce development. The content is stored and managed in the backend, while the frontend is connected via an API. Not only can you choose any frontend framework to present your content to users and customize the UX down to the finest detail, but you can also reuse the same content across different platforms, such as smartphone apps, websites, and tablet apps.

In this article, we explained the key concepts and mechanisms of headless commerce. In our upcoming articles, we’ll explore the benefits of headless architecture for e-commerce in more detail. 

• What are the signs that a headless website might move the needle for your business?
• How can you evaluate the costs of the transition in advance? Are there ways to simplify the transition process?
• In which cases could such a migration be potentially harmful?

Stay tuned for the answers in our blog!