As consumers hold the maximum power due to access to different types of datasets, their behaviors and choices are often subjected to fast-paced changes. What seemed to be in trend a few years back in the ecommerce industry won’t be the same now. Besides, most consumers prefer to gain more knowledge about the businesses, products, and other aspects of the market and then make a well-informed decision. So, it is imperative for ecommerce businesses to implement radical approaches that can help them to improve user experience, deliver outstanding performance, and adapt with dynamic shifts and trends.
This is where headless architecture comes into the play. It not only allows developers to come up with an agile, lightweight, and modular website or web app but also paves ways for innovation, faster time to market, and better deliverables. But what exactly this new concept of architecture is or how it is usually implemented. To shed more light on this matter, we have discussed headless architecture in detail here.
What is headless architecture and what are its components?
Every website or web app comprises two layers. The first layer is the frontend, which handles the user interface directly visible and accessible to the users. It comprises several components, like product pages, shopping cart, payment or checkout page, and more. The base layer of any website is the backend, consisting of business logic, database integrations, third-party plugins, and others. It is this layer that controls all the functional workflows, calls the process services, processes database queries, evaluates user actions, and so on.
In headless commerce, the website architecture has a decoupled form. To put it in simpler words, the backend and frontend layers are decoupled from one another, ensuring there is no rigid integration between these two. The communication between the layers are maintained through different service APIs that streamline the overall interaction and decrease the response time.
How does headless architecture work?
Since the frontend and backend layers are decoupled from one another in headless architecture, the entire communication is maintained through RESTful APIs or Application Programming Interfaces. These act as the intermediary channel that establishes communication between the two layers as well as other third-party websites or platforms without having to perform data fetching activities or evaluations manually.
To understand it in a better way, the working of the headless architecture has been explained below.
- First, the user takes an action at the frontend, like requesting for a product list through a search query or clicking on the shopping cart to see the total value.
- The frontend layer sends the request through service APIs to the backend layer. Each workflow is managed through a specific API, like catalog API, shopping cart API, and many more.
- Once the backend layer receives the requested JSONs, it evaluates the same and renders the pages accordingly. If there is any data involved, the backend process service fetches the entire dataset in an organized manner and stores it in the form of JSON responses.
- After this, the JSON responses are sent to the frontend layer where the specific components evaluate the same to render the concerned page.
- In the last step, the frontend layer displays all the required information on the UI as response to the user actions taken in the first place.
What are the benefits of implementing headless architecture?
- Higher flexibility: With the backend and frontend layers being decoupled, it is easier for developers to choose a customized tech stack for digital commerce. As a result, the components can be developed in a better way with no interdependency on one another.
- Scalable infrastructure: Since the headless architecture has decoupled backend and frontend layers, both can be scaled at any time with ease. Additionally, deploying these changes on the go won’t affect the server uptime negatively.
- Personalized experience: The APIs can be customized easily as per the business requirements to ensure the communication between the layers or any third-party platform becomes more streamlined. This offers a higher degree of personalized experience to the users, thereby heightening their satisfaction limit.
- Faster time to market: With reduced interdependency on one another, it becomes easier for developers to release the website or web app to the production environment. Besides, most components are reusable and can be expanded, thereby reducing the overall faster time to market.
What challenges can one face with headless architecture?
There are certain challenges developers might face while implementing headless architecture in the ecommerce website or web app.
- Since the backend and frontend layers are decoupled, the architecture becomes more complex. So, developers need to be highly skilled to handle the technical complexities and solve the issues that might arise with the beta version.
- The development costs will also increase with the headless architecture. So, businesses with small budgets might not be able to integrate headless commerce well with their website or web app.
Conclusion
In this article, we have discussed the preliminary facts about headless commerce and how it propels an ecommerce business towards digital transformation. However, it is to note here that with headless integration, there will be numerous complexities that need to be handled beforehand to avoid risks and failures.
