Headless e-commerce VS traditional e-commerce

competition is growing rapidly, as are customer expectations

excellent user experience

headless e-commerce

traditional e-commerce

What is headless e-commerce?

concept

decoupling of the front end and back end

API (Application Programming Interface)

traditional CMS

Advantages

• Possibility of integration with any system (e.g. Shopify, Saleor) without needing to build an online shop from scratch.
• Significant improvement of the user experience thanks to the flexibility of front-end design.
• Minimal risk of the shop breaking during technical changes.
• Making changes (such as resolving performance issues or implementing new features) is faster than with traditional e-commerce sites.
• The headless approach can be applied to any online shop, regardless of how content-heavy it is or how many integrations it uses.
• It is easy to make day-to-day changes, test new solutions and features, and optimise the shop.

Examples of headless e-commerce platforms: BigCommerce, Magento 2 Commerce, Saleor, Selz, Shopify Plus…

JAMstack in headless e-commerce

• JavaScript
• API
• Markup

JAM

What is traditional e-commerce?

the front-end and back-end layers are not separated from one another

the traditional approach generally involves using predefined templates

The larger the database or the number of products, the more difficult and demanding it is to maintain and optimise the entire platform.

Advantages

• Adding content via an intuitive administration dashboard is relatively simple and quick.
• Built-in themes, standard templates, and useful plugins.
• Modifying basic settings such as theme colours or typography does not require programming skills.
• One technology / solution to maintain instead of two.

Examples of traditional e-commerce platforms: Open Source Magento, OpenCart, PrestaShop, Shopify, WooCommerce…

Headless e-commerce VS traditional e-commerce: what are the differences?

Adaptability and flexibility

• Headless e-commerce

Front-end developers love the freedom offered by headless e-commerce — the possibilities for making changes are limitless.

• Traditional e-commerce

it is not possible to make changes to the front end without also modifying the back-end code.

Front-end development

• Headless e-commerce

headless e-commerce gives front-end developers the freedom to create a user experience from scratch

• Traditional e-commerce

Any change to the visual appearance of the shop also requires modifying the code, the database, and the front-end platform

Personalisation and customisation

• Headless e-commerce

there is no front-end layer to customise — it must be built from scratch.

• Traditional e-commerce

basic settings such as colour palette or typography are relatively easy to modify, even without programming skills

Is it possible to migrate from a traditional e-commerce site to a headless one?