Headless e-commerce is known for its flexibility. It allows brands to determine the website experience they want their customers to have and then implement it. This is a significant change from traditional e-commerce solutions, where companies have to search through templates to find something suitable.
It can be hard to know where to start when you have nearly limitless freedom to create the perfect headless site. To help, we’ve put together a list of different ways brands are implementing headless.
Key Takeaways
- Headless makes new software integrations simple, so your company can stay at the forefront of technology trends. This means you’ll never fall behind your competitors.
- You can expand to global markets with ease, headless technology enables you to house multiple international versions of your site all within one back end, and the front end isn’t templated, you can design a unique customer experience that caters to your audience’s preferences and encourages more purchases.
- Making any major change to your website requires a lot of consideration and research. While it’s clear that headless commerce opens up many new and profitable opportunities, it does require an initial investment of both time and money.
4 Ways Brands Are Implementing Headless E-Commerce
Many brands have already embraced the new technology that enables headless e-commerce. Learn how the four companies below implemented headless to create profitable new websites.
1. Yeti Cycles: In-house Site Control
Yeti Cycles’ original website was extremely limited by the traditional e-commerce model. It was difficult for the team to launch new products because making changes to the site’s front-end was complicated and time-consuming.
“Any change we wanted to make required development work. This extra step was costly and prevented the internal team from having control over our site updates,” says Kristi Jackson, Yeti Cycles’ director of marketing.
The traditional solution also didn’t allow Yeti Cycles to create the immersive customer experience the company was aiming for. The company decided to move to a headless solution to gain more control over the site’s content and provide a better customer experience with a site that operates seamlessly between the front end and back end.
Yeti Cycles now has a website that’s modern and eye-catching. It provides a rich brand experience and powerful functionality, such as enhanced product pages, better merchandising, and the ability to cross-sell products. Customers can now find a brick-and-mortar location easily or place orders online.
The easy-to-use headless solution also means the team can maintain this impressive website without help from a developer. This saves money and enables it to make changes as soon as the need arises rather than being at the mercy of a developer’s schedule.
Yeti Cycles’ headless e-commerce website also provides in-depth analytics and tracking. With this data, it can understand customers’ habits and preferences better when it comes to the website and make informed decisions for future e-commerce initiatives.
2. Skullcandy: Scalability for Fast Growth
Skullcandy is an audio lifestyle brand with a target audience that craves new technology and exciting discoveries. To stay relevant, the company’s website has to keep up with its customers’ cutting-edge tastes.
Skullcandy’s traditional e-commerce solution didn’t provide the adaptability, usability, and superior customer experience it was seeking. The site was so difficult to manage the team routinely had to hire freelance developers to complete updates. This added to the cost of maintaining the site and made it nearly impossible to add content quickly, such as new product pages.
Jenny Buchar, Skullcandy’s director of digital experience and operations, explains why the company was drawn to a headless approach: “One of the most attractive things about BigCommerce was learning that our non-technical team could configure our global stores’ checkout, taxes, shipping, and payment types with simple preset selections.”
Initially, scalability wasn’t high on the Skullcandy team’s list of priorities when searching for a headless platform. However, it’s proven to be invaluable as the brand has seen explosive growth since launching the new site, with a 104% increase in traffic. Because the site is headless, it was simple to scale up transaction volume to keep everything running smoothly.
3. Rubik’s: Global Markets and Customer-centered Design
Rubik’s is the company behind the Rubik’s Cube, the instantly recognizable toy that’s been popular since the 1980s. The company was looking to upgrade to a headless e-commerce model after years of using a traditional, template-based solution that the team found frustrating, inflexible, and difficult to use. Its goal was to expand to global markets and focus on direct-to-consumer sales.
Speed and modern product page functionality were necessities for the new Rubik’s website. The headless platform it chose allowed the company to create a fast-loading site with product pages that enable image zooming and rich media tutorials that show how to solve the company’s challenging puzzles.
In addition to providing site visitors with a fast, customer-centric shopping experience, the new headless website enabled Rubik’s to expand into more global markets. It launched multiple international versions of its landing pages that display the content and prices in the local language and currency.
The new-and-improved website has enabled Rubik’s to double its conversion rate, increase the average order value by $6.37, and reduce the bounce rate by 20%.
4. Complex Networks: 3-D and Augmented Reality for Virtual Events
Complex Networks is an entertainment company that caters to Millennials and Gen Z, so it’s essential for its website to keep up with the latest trends in technology.
In 2020, the company had to cancel a live event due to the pandemic. Complex Networks decided to move the event online and used a headless solution to create a deeply engaging digital experience utilizing 3-D and augmented reality technology.
Virtual attendees were able to shop, play video games, and engage with brands. The virtual event was an immense success, with more than 3 million minutes of audience engagement.
A headless e-commerce platform was crucial to the success of the company’s immersive shopping and entertainment experience. A traditional, monolithic approach to the website wouldn’t have supported the innovative direction Complex Networks wanted to take its virtual event.
What Are the Benefits of Headless E-Commerce
- Headless makes new software integrations simple, so your company can stay at the forefront of technology trends. This means you’ll never fall behind your competitors.
- Because the front-end isn’t templated, you can design a unique customer experience that caters to your audience’s preferences and encourages more purchases.
- Headless solutions can integrate with easy-to-use content management systems, allowing your team to handle site updates with ease. This saves time and eliminates the costly expense of hiring a developer.
- You can expand to global markets with ease. Headless technology enables you to house multiple international versions of your site all within one back end. Your site displays automatically in the user’s local language and currency.
- A headless solution adapts easily to any device your customers may use. Your site won’t lose any speed or functionality when viewed on mobile.
The benefits of headless e-commerce are many and varied, ranging from increased purchases to “future-proofing” your brand’s website.
How Do You Know If Your Brand Needs to Go Headless?
Making any major change to your website requires a lot of consideration and research. While it’s clear that headless commerce opens up many new and profitable opportunities, it does require an initial investment of both time and money.
Ask yourself these questions to help you determine if it’s time for your brand to go headless.
- Do you rely heavily on third-party contractors to make changes to your site? If so, a content management system (CMS)-controlled headless site may save you money in the end by making it easy for your team to do the work themselves.
- Is the back end of your site held together with the digital equivalent of duct tape? Forcing integrations into a traditional site can slow it down and lead to a poor customer experience.
- Are you looking to expand to global audiences? A headless solution makes it simple to display content in a user’s local language, convert pricing to local currency, and process international payments.
- Has your traditional website delayed product launches or time-sensitive promotions? If so, your website is hindering your company’s growth, and it’s time to go headless.
Take some time to think about the answers to these questions. If you find that your site is holding back your business, start evaluating different headless e-commerce providers to find the best one for your needs. You can also explore the sites featured in this list to get inspiration for the design and functionality you want for your new headless website.