We have entered the year 2022 and there are still continuous evolvements in the e-commerce industry. No doubt that these developments are obvious in this industry as it is giving revenue of around $933.30 billion every year. Now, you can imagine what this industry will look like when it will become fully mature.
Definitely, it would be brighter!
But no business can sustain with good marginal profits if it is not evolving with the latest trends and technology that can improve the functioning of the stores and deliver a better customer experience. Currently, the e-commerce industry is losing its head and this thing is being commended by a lot of online retailers.
Headless commerce gives many benefits to online retailers such as improved website speed, more personalization options, etc. But to develop a headless commerce store you will require an e-commerce platform that supports headless commerce. Fortunately, there aren’t one but 7 e-commerce development platforms among which you can choose. In this article, we will go through these 7 options and find which can be the best option for you. But first, let’s know more about headless.
What is headless commerce?
When the frontend layer of the e-commerce website gets decoupled from the backend layer then it is called headless commerce. By this decoupling, the frontend is now not completely dependent on the backend interface and thus the web developers can easily make changes without disturbing the customer’s experience. In short, the CMS on which the e-commerce store is built will deliver & manage the content without using any front-end layer.
If you want to know more about headless commerce and how it can help your e-commerce business then please go through this article: Headless Commerce is the Future of E-commerce: A Complete Guide
Headless Supportable E-commerce Platforms:
As we mentioned above, there are 7 e-commerce platforms to consider for your headless store. These are:
- Adobe Commerce Cloud
- Salesforce Commerce Cloud
- Commerce Tools
- Shopify Plus
- OroCommerce
- BigCommerce
- Shopware 6
We will go through each of these platforms in detail.
1. Adobe Commerce Cloud:
First, on the list, Adobe Commerce is the most promising e-commerce platform for building a headless e-commerce store. It provides many tools that make headless architecture easy for your e-commerce store.
PWA Studio:
This technology delivers an app-like shopping experience on every device. You can easily build progressive web app experiences and let you use integrated content tools such as Page Builder. By developing PWAs of your e-commerce store you can deliver an app-like experience using web development technologies. PWA Studio gives the option to develop the frontend in ReactJS connecting the Magento with intensive use of GraphQL APIs.
GraphQL APIs:
Adobe Commerce cloud comes with GraphQL APIs out of the box. These APIs make the development of headless commerce very easily.
It allows you to develop the frontend on different technologies such as ReactJS, VueJS, AngularJS, etc. and connect it with your Magento backend using GraphQL APIs. Similarly, you can also utilize these APIs for the native mobile app development and Point of Sale (POS) development for your online store.
Server Optimization and Maintenance:
While using Adobe Commerce Cloud, you will be exonerated from the responsibility of server maintenance or hosting. It will be managed by the Magento team. You don’t need to set up any separate server for your store.
Thus, your e-commerce store will run with the best performance and speed. The Magento will be responsible for its server, CDNs, performance, and other related issues.
All these reasons make Adobe Commerce Cloud one of the best CMS for developing a headless e-commerce store.
2. Salesforce Commerce Cloud:
If you want to develop a flexible headless commerce store with a high level of agility and innovation and without adding a ton of risk or operational burden then Salesforce Commerce Cloud is one of the best choices. It offers a flexible headless commerce solution with scalable commerce APIs by which you can separate the back-end services from the front-end customer experience. Thus, you can inject any new functionality at any customer touchpoint – Instagram, Facebook, Video games, etc.
Salesforce Commerce Cloud gives you modern infrastructure and highly efficient development tools for better productivity and business users get innovation to drive growth.
It has a very robust and deep e-commerce system and offers features for generally mid-range to enterprise-level online businesses. You can find a plethora of APIs to match which are highly powerful and comprehensive. They have also rolled out a new breed of cutting-edge modern APIs following the recent acquisition of the top-rated API platform Mulesoft. Such an extensive set of APIs make increase the time to go on board, but it is worth it. Salesforce has also acquired popular PWA service Mobify, which rebranded as PWA Kit and Managed Runtime. It fleshes out their headless commerce offering and gives you an out-of-the-box PWA platform so you can hit the ground running.
3. Commerce Tools:
Commerce Tools comes with a highly extensible and flexible APIs suite by which you can create unique and engaging customer experiences across infinite channels. This e-commerce platform is based on MACH principles and lets you customize customer experiences as per your business requirements.
Commerce Tools gives you a comprehensive e-commerce functionality out-of-the-boox and lets you tailor the experience to take your business to the next level. It is a modern and language-agnostic platform to improve productivity. Apart from headless commerce, some of the features that make this platform recognizable are Catalog management, Unified Cart, Order Management, Machine learning, Merchant centre, Developer Tooling, etc.
4. Shopify Plus:
Shopify Plus is a leading e-commerce platform after Magento and WooCommerce. It has been designed for globally oriented e-commerce companies or for those who have ambitions to grow beyond borders. It is also one of the best headless e-commerce platforms. Using headless you can overcome the simplicity of the native Shopify theme editor and it will give you multiple benefits.
In Shopify, we are mostly used to adding new features in the store. With Headless, you have to connect services such as Nosto, Klevu, and Yotpo directly to the front-end by building integration to their APIs. It is a significant task and relies on the services you are using presenting their own high-quality API.
5. OroCommerce:
OroCommerce is another product of the leadership team that also developed Magento and now is more focused on the B2B industry solutions. But it is not just limited to B2B and you can customize it for any industry say B2B, B2B2C, B2B2B, and B2C e-commerce stores.
The inventory management features of OroCommerce lets you conduct multi-website and multi-warehouse management. You can personalize catalogues and adjust pricing as well.
You can take your brand to the web and mobile with a platform that supports both headless e-commerce as well as traditional e-commerce. It works on open-source philosophy and has a huge active community that is also very supportive.
You can also keep your e-commerce and ERP in sync with OroCommerce. It also integrates with CRM apps like Salesforce and ERM apps like SAP seamlessly.
6. BigCommerce:
BigCommerce is a highly customer-focused e-commerce development platform and is developed in a way that your storefront is rendered by WordPress but the backend is powered by BigCommerce. You can customize each step of the process and the tool bridges the content and commerce effortlessly.
BigCommerce has also made it easier for companies to use its functionalities in a headless environment. The developers can deploy third-party systems such as PIM to make up your backend stack and help in preventing issues experienced by systems on which resources are shared.
In BigCommerce, there are many reasons to go headless, as if you want to add new functionality it can be achieved through plugins, or it is a big headache to run time A/B tests on the interface, and if some changes are made then something in the analytics will break, but all these issues are overcome by headless.
Decoupling the frontend and backend of BigCommerce and integrating with a platform like GatsbyJS or NextJS is the best way to achieve a Google-friendly performance. There are many other benefits of using BigCommerce as your headless solution such as:
- Improvement in site security
- Out of the box PWA functionality
- Increased Conversion Rate
- Improved Performance
- Highly Creative Blog
- Plugging in New Services
- Split Testing
- Lose the Templates
- Unique Branding
7. Shopware 6:
Shopware 6 has also gained a lot of popularity in the e-commerce ecosystem and now this e-commerce platform has also opened its arms for headless commerce. It is a robust e-commerce development platform highly popular in European countries and is used for building a headless environment. Taking a flexible API approach, it allows you to handle several e-commerce complexities easily and effectively. Providing robust eCommerce features advocates API first approach and flexibility.
Now since we have gone through the available headless platforms, let’s find out which is the best platform to go for headless and why.
Which is the best option for headless?
In our opinion, currently, if you want to adopt headless architecture then no other platform than Adobe Commerce Cloud you should go for. Although the other platforms are providing amazing features and functionalities, Adobe Commerce Cloud aces over its competitors in many ways. There are many in-built features and tools that make the headless approach fully leveraged by your development team and make profits. The other reasons are:
1. GraphQL APIs:
There are in-built GraphQL APIs that allows you to create headless e-commerce easily. You can choose any frontend framework (e.g. AngularJS, ReactJS, or VueJS) as per your requirements and connect it with the backend using GraphQL APIs easily.
2. PWA Studio:
PWAs are Progressive Web Applications that are built using web development technologies but provide a native mobile app-like interface. The users don’t need to download the app and can run it on browsers of both Android and iOS smartphones. Adobe provides you with PWA studio which is a framework that you can use to develop a PWA app for your online store.
3. Low costing:
While using Adobe Commerce Cloud, you don’t have to pay anything extra for hosting or server services for your store. You neither require a separate server for your store.
Wrapping Up:
At Ceymox Technologies, the best e-commerce development company in India, we are having expertise in developing headless stores from scratch. We recommend Adobe Commerce Cloud due to its so many benefits that make any other platform less competent. We can develop an e-commerce store from scratch with advanced features and functionalities and a captivating user interface. Let us know your requirements.
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