eCommerce platforms with a headless system are becoming increasingly popular, offering brands more scaling options. One such popular headless eCommerce platform is BigCommerce.
By going headless with BigCommerce, you can enhance your store’s performance and scalability while giving customers a personalized and seamless shopping experience. If you already have a BigCommerce store and are looking to improve it or are considering re-platforming to a headless architecture, this guide is for you.
The buzz around headless BigCommerce will keep growing in the years to come because today’s consumers demand more from the online store regarding buying experience, lower prices, and top-notch performance. Unlike conventional stores, headless BigCommerce separates allow companies to provide a more dynamic and customized user experience by separating the presentation layer from the business logic and data.
Now, without any ado let’s delve into the world of headless BigCommerce! Here, we will explore the meaning, reveal its pros and cons, explain real-life examples, and also demystify the process of switching to a headless architecture, and much more.
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Headless BigCommerce allows you to decouple the frontend and backend of your online store to operate them independently and allows you to build a unique storefront.
[Image Source: BigCommerce.com]
By using BigCommerce as a headless platform, you can connect to any frontend technology of your choice and use APIs to integrate the backend and frontend systems seamlessly.
This approach enables you to build custom functionality to meet your specific business requirements. BigCommerce’s API endpoints can power various aspects of the commerce offering, including product search, content management, billing, and payments.
Furthermore, you can integrate microservices such as API-led CRM integration and ERP integration to streamline customer journeys and handle specific tasks such as payments and cataloging.
A typical headless architecture on BigCommerce can include BigCommerce as the core platform for customer data and admin, a CMS for content management, a search solution such as Azure Search, an order management system like Moltin, and a subscription billing solution.
This way, merchants can leverage the best-in-class technologies to create the optimal eCommerce experience for their customers.
The headless approach in BigCommerce is a powerful solution that allows you to create a completely customized online presence.
It is achieved through BigCommerce APIs, enabling the frontend and backend to communicate and exchange data.
JavaScript frameworks like React or Angular are used to build the frontend of a headless BigCommerce store, and developers can create a custom look and feel for the store without disturbing the backend.
The backend in this headless approach continues to run on BigCommerce’s platform, which provides all the necessary eCommerce functionalities, such as managing products, orders, and customer data.
This headless infrastructure setup of BigCommerce allows for greater flexibility and scalability in developing and maintaining your online store.
With the ability to customize, integrate and automate different areas of your web store, BigCommerce is one of the best headless commerce platforms that can help you quickly create an engaging digital storefront.
By leveraging BigCommerce’s robust API layer, you can easily connect your existing eCommerce system and other third-party systems to create a unified customer experience.
Additionally, with BigCommerce’s mobile-first approach, you can ensure your customers can access the same user-friendly experience on any device. Ultimately, incorporating headless BigCommerce allows you to drive more conversions.
More online eCommerce platforms are investing in headless technologies to improve the efficiency of their platform and provide their customers with a personalized shopping experience.
Recent research by Forbes showed that in 2021-2022 $1.65 billion of funding was raised for developing new headless technologies to make online commerce more enjoyable and easy to manage.
Users nowadays expect a seamless shopping experience and fast-loading web pages. According to a study by Akamai, an improvement of one second in page load time can lead to a 10% increase in conversions. Another study by Google found that 53% of mobile users abandon a site that takes longer than three seconds to load.
These statistics are a clear call why you need to offer a fast and smooth user experience in your eCommerce store. And you can achieve this by going headless with BigCommerce.
The top benefits of using headless architecture on BigCommerce include the following:
Headless Bigcommerce gives you the flexibility to connect to any frontend of your store and create a personalized, unique online store experience.
By decoupling the backend from the frontend, it allows you to customize your store’s user experience in ways that were not previously possible.
It provides you the ability to configure, manage, and monitor your entire ecommerce infrastructure without the need for extensive coding.
This allows you to focus on more important tasks, such as improving the customer experience, increasing customer engagement, and optimizing product sales.
Headless Bigcommerce offers you greater scalability and flexibility to handle increasing site traffic and deliver unified customer experiences across multiple channels.
As your business grows and the number of products, customers, and orders increases, you can scale the BigCommerce backend easily to handle the increased load without impacting the frontend.
This level of scalability and consistency allows you to properly meet your needs and help you to grow your business more efficiently and effectively.
A headless BigCommerce architecture makes your store faster in terms of speed and also accelerates data processing by separating certain parts. Eventually, this reduces the waiting times, improves your website speed performance, and offers a better experience to your customers.
You may utilize Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) from BigCommerce to turn your eCommerce website into a static asset. This implies that the website’s content is supplied over a network rather than a server, which results in quicker loading speeds. You can see a noticeable increase in speed by utilizing PWAs, giving your clients a faster and more seamless shopping experience.
Choosing headless BigCommerce means you are free to customize your store as per your requirements. Whether you want to change the colors, layout, fonts, or anything that matches your brand persona, it is possible. Moreover, you can also implement AI-driven marketing tools to personalize the shopping experience based on your ideal audience.
Salesforce headless commerce also separates the front end from the back end. Therefore, changes made to the front end will not impact the backend architecture of the website.
You may easily incorporate third-party tools and services to improve the operation of your store with headless BigCommerce. You have the freedom to select the ideal tools for your business requirements, whether that means integrating with well-known marketing platforms, payment gateways, or delivery options.
This implies that by integrating with a variety of other services, you may quickly increase the functionality of your store and improve efficiency. Being able to integrate third-party solutions gives you the flexibility to scale and adjust your store more effectively, which will make online experience easier and more efficient for both you and your customers.
Being a new player in the headless space compared to other platforms, BigCommerce also has some limitations. You must know about these and understand how to manage these limitations.
Building a headless commerce platform requires significant technical experience and resources to connect and integrate various microservices. It can be challenging for businesses without dedicated development teams.
Solution: Additional resources and development efforts required. You can solve this issue by seeking the help of professional BigCommerce development agencies or hiring dedicated development teams with the expertise to build and maintain a headless commerce platform.
With headless architecture, you will lose the ability to use some of the native features available on the BigCommerce platform that come out of the box.
Solution: To overcome this issue, you need to weigh the pros and cons of headless commerce and decide if the benefits outweigh the potential loss of some native features. You can also use plugins and apps to fill in the functionality gap.
Due to the need for additional resources, development effort, and additional cost for integrating different microservices, headless commerce can be more expensive than traditional eCommerce platforms.
Solution: To address this, you can plan your headless commerce projects carefully, prioritize your needs, and budget accordingly. Also, using cloud-based services can help in reducing infrastructure costs.
Having distinct frontend and backend systems to maintain makes headless BigCommerce more difficult to manage. This may result in more complexity and perhaps challenges when arranging upgrades and troubleshooting.
Solution: To solve this, think about putting in place strong project management tools to improve organization and communication, and spend money providing your team with thorough training on how to operate and maintain the various systems involved. The workload associated with managing several systems can also be reduced and procedures can be streamlined by making use of automated deployment and monitoring solutions.
The customization choices available during BigCommerce checkout may be limited, making it more difficult to personalize the process to meet your unique requirements. This can cause your consumers’ checkout experience to be less efficient, which could affect conversion rates.
Solution: Consider utilizing third-party checkout systems that provide greater adaptability and customization choices. Furthermore, make the most out of BigCommerce’s API features to interface with third-party checkout options that better meet your company’s needs.
BigCommerce offers flexibility for you to go headless. You can use one of the following methods to migrate successfully to headless architecture.
You can choose to go headless with BigCommerce by building your frontend yourself, but it does require some technical expertise and resources.
This option provides you with the greatest degree of control over your frontend but also requires a high investment of time and resources.
If you choose the DIY approach, it’s important to clearly understand your frontend design needs and choose a technology stack that is suitable for your business. You’ll also need to develop a detailed migration plan that outlines the steps you need to take to move to headless commerce, including a timeline, budget, and resources required.
If you face any challenges during the process, it’s recommended to seek the help of a professional BigCommerce development agency.
Taking the help of an agency to implement BigCommerce headless API can simplify the process and ensure a smooth transition. An agency with experience in headless commerce can provide expertise and resources to help you navigate the technical aspects of migrating your store.
Here are a few things to consider when working with an agency:
Evaluate their experience: Look for an agency with experience in implementing headless commerce and BigCommerce specifically, as they will be better equipped to handle the technical challenges of migrating your store.
Assess their methodology: Review the agency’s approach to migrating to headless BigCommerce, and ensure that it aligns with your business objectives and budget.
Evaluate their communication and collaboration: The agency should be able to effectively communicate and collaborate with your internal teams throughout the migration process.
Check their portfolio: Review their past work and case studies to understand the kind of projects they completed and the best practices they follow.
By working with a reputable agency, you can leverage their expertise and resources to smoothly migrate your store to headless BigCommerce with minimal disruption to your business.
Using Frontend-as-a-Service (FaaS) to go headless with BigCommerce is a convenient and cost-effective option that can simplify the migration process.
FaaS providers offer a pre-built frontend already connected to BigCommerce’s APIs, allowing merchants to quickly and easily move their store to a headless architecture.
FaaS can be an efficient and cost-effective way to migrate to headless BigCommerce. But it provides the least control over the frontend. You’ll have limited customization options, limited integration capabilities, and limited control over the technology stack. So, it is important to carefully weigh the advantages and disadvantages of FaaS before making a decision.
When considering a headless commerce solution for your business, it’s essential to consider some key factors to make an informed decision. Here are some points to consider:
Check the platform’s flexibility: When selecting headless commerce platforms, choose one that’s flexible enough to meet your ever-changing needs. Whether you need custom integrations or are looking for an all-in-one solution, there are plenty of options.
You must research each one thoroughly and check their features closely before deciding which one will work best for you.
Check out Security: From the security perspective, the first thing to consider is whether or not the platform can handle PCI-compliant checkout without sacrificing flexibility. If so, then this should be marked off your list of requirements.
Additionally, look into authentication protocols like OAuth and SAML that will allow users access while keeping their data secure. Lastly, consider if the platform has additional features, such as tokenized payments and fraud protection, that can boost security further.
Check Built-in Capabilities: You must check built-in capabilities such as real-time shipping information and order statuses. This will ensure that your customers are always aware of their current status throughout the entire buying experience.
Consider Your Business/Revenue Model: You must also look for the business/revenue model when you migrate to headless commerce. For example, if you operate a business with a complex pricing structure, such as subscription-based models or tiered pricing, you’ll want to ensure that the headless commerce platform you choose supports these pricing models.
Similarly, if you sell products with many variations, such as size and color options, you’ll want to ensure that the platform you choose supports easy management of these variations.
These points will help you understand what to expect and what to consider in advance while deciding whether headless commerce is the right fit for you and your business.
Cocktail Courier is an eCommerce store that delivers cocktail ingredients and mixers to customers. By using headless BigCommerce, this site obtained a beautiful design and improved site speed. Apart from that, they also improved the shipping options.
Four Pillars Gin is a maker of premium gin based in Australia, known for its focus on distilling gin with an Australian flavor profile and using Australian botanicals. With headless commerce abilities they designed a horizontal scroll feature to display their products with high-quality imagery.
Black Diamond Equipment is a manufacturer and retailer of outdoor equipment specializing in climbing and skiing gear. They used BigCommerce headless API to create a stunning hero section and product pages with videos without slowing the website speed.
Ted Baker is a luxury fashion brand based in the UK, known for its formal wear and fashion accessories, such as clothing, shoes, bags, and jewelry. With headless commerce, they improved their customer experience by grouping product categories in grid form. They also enhanced their blog page.
Just Sunnies is an eCommerce retailer that offers a wide range of sunglasses from various brands and a selection of prescription glasses.
This website presents customer reviews in a carousel format to attract new potential customers. Improved page loading speed allows customers to browse more products in less time.
Gorewear is a sportswear and streetwear brand; they offer a wide range of clothing, such as t-shirts, hoodies, and pants, as well as accessories like hats and bags. They are known for their bold, eye-catching designs that combine athletic and streetwear influences. The measuring charts and a product video give their product page a unique identity.
We hope this ultimate guide gives you an in-depth view of how to build a successful and secure headless BigCommerce store and leverage the many benefits it can bring.
With this information, you can now understand why it is so popular and how to implement it for your online store. And you now know the powerful options for customizing, managing, and scaling your store through BigCommerce’s APIs and other solutions.
If you need professional help with headless infrastructure setup or building an entirely new BigCommerce headless store, you can contact WebDesk Solution, a top BigCommerce development company with immense experience in this field.
When customers go to checkout, they are redirected to a checkout page that BigCommerce hosts. This checkout page is designed to be highly customizable and can be integrated into any front-end experience using APIs. The checkout flow is managed by the BigCommerce backend, ensuring that all transactions are processed securely and reliably.
Headless BigCommerce can be used for various use cases, including creating custom front-end experiences, integrating with existing CMS or CRM platforms, building mobile apps, implementing advanced personalization and localization features, and streamlining complex workflows for B2B or enterprise customers.
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