As ecommerce grows, merchants begin to require more flexible and scalable solutions to meet customer demands. A headless commerce approach has become a popular option for businesses aiming to offer more customized shopping experiences across multiple channels. 

By separating the frontend from the backend, headless setups allow for greater agility in adapting to trends and building unique user interfaces. However, like any system, it comes with its challenges. In this blog, we’ll break down the pros and cons of adopting headless commerce for your ecommerce site so you can better choose which type of ecommerce solution will work best for you. 

What is Headless Commerce?

As digital storefronts grew in popularity, retailers faced challenges keeping up with quickly changing market trends. With frontends and backends tightly integrated on a single platform, it took time to implement quick, meaningful changes to the technology stack and store architecture without completely changing providers. 

Headless commerce was a fix for these issues. Rather than having a monolithic architecture where the entire digital experience of your store runs on one platform, headless architecture introduces more flexibility by decoupling the frontend from the backend. 

Instead, accessing a store’s backend through APIs allowed for a complex backend while still maintaining a flexible frontend that could keep up with trends and create memorable customer experiences. 

Headless commerce solutions are generally some of the most flexible setups you can build for ecommerce, but they can also be some of the most expensive.

Popular headless backend providers include Shopify, Magento, BigCommerce, etc., while frontends are often built with JavaScript with frameworks such as Next.js, and Vue. 

What Does Headless Architecture Look Like on Shopify?

Shopify merchants looking into headless commerce architecture have two major options for their online store. Here’s what you need to know: 

Hydrogen and Oxygen

With Hydrogen and Oxygen, Shopify’s headless stack, merchants on Shopify Plus can quickly set up their headless store and enjoy the ease of use and flexibility that Shopify is known for. Hydrogen is a React framework that enables developers to build out custom storefronts, while Oxygen is the hosting platform for your Hydrogen storefront.  

To get started with headless Shopify, developers can add the Hydrogen/Oxygen channels through the Shopify App Store, push their codebase to GitHub, and connect their GitHub repository to Shopify through the admin with the Shopify GitHub App. 

The Hydrogen channel will watch your repo for changes and will deploy on Oxygen with each update. This makes the process of building and managing your headless Shopify store flexible, fast, and intuitive. 

In addition, since Hydrogen and Oxygen are Shopify technologies, they’re already included in your Shopify license, so there are no extra costs for going headless through your existing Shopify plan. 

Vercel

Vercel, a boilerplate Next.js-based theme that also requires heavy customization, is another option for merchants weighing the pros and cons of headless commerce. In this case, Vercel also hosts the frontend. It’s considered one of the best headless commerce platforms besides Shopify’s for its ability to enable users to build ultra-fast and scalable websites.  

Vercel is also happy to partner with traditional ecommerce platforms like Shopify, BigCommerce, Wix, and more. It allows other platforms to fork their repository and connect to others as well. This means that you can choose to host your frontend on either Shopify, Vercel, or anywhere else you’d like.  

Vercel is a great option for users who prefer Next.js as a coding language or prefer to do server-side rendering. The downside to Vercel, however, is that using it will cost you more than if you simply went with Shopify’s Hydrogen/Oxygen combo. 

What Drives the Additional Costs in a Headless Project?

As we mentioned earlier, creating and maintaining headless ecommerce platforms is often more expensive than traditional monolithic setups. Unfortunately, that’s simply the price you’ll need to pay if you’re looking to build truly unique and future-proof shopping experiences and user interfaces for your customers. 

Generally, there are three main reasons why ecommerce businesses end up paying more for headless ecommerce functionality:

1. Frontend developers need to code like backend developers: The codebase for headless commerce is much more complex than it is for monolithic setups. To manage routing, data sanitization, error boundaries, and security, you’ll need to work with a highly skilled development team, which comes at a cost.

2. Frontend app integrations often need to be custom-built: In addition to the added cost of complex development, setting up analytics/reporting tools and integrating features can add time to the project, also increasing costs.

3. Search Engine Optimization (SEO):  To ensure search engines can crawl and index content, server-side rendering (SSR) or static-site generation (SSG) needs to be implemented, which requires additional development work, hosting resources, and ongoing maintenance. These added layers for handling dynamic content while maintaining SEO-friendly pre-rendering can result in higher costs.

While pricier, the benefits of progressive web apps and highly customizable storefronts are still very much worth it to many ecommerce merchants looking to build stores that run well and convert. 

Pros/Benefits of Headless Commerce

As mentioned above, a headless setup is a step above the monolithic ecommerce platform of old. The separation between the frontend and backend of an ecommerce store makes it easier to make changes to either side faster, allowing for more scalable systems. This improves your store’s user experience while allowing merchants to implement and integrate with modern technologies with less friction.  

Headless architecture can also improve page load times, making it easier to meet today’s customer expectations, which require everything to be as quick, efficient, and easy as possible. 

Since the front and back ends of the store are separate, headless setups also make it easier to run multiple channels off of one backend. For example, a merchant can use the same backend they use for their website for a new mobile app without starting from scratch every time. 

Cons of Headless Commerce

While your front and backends are split and connected via API in a headless setup, there are still limitations to how flexible your tech stack is since you’re still tethered to what your ecommerce backends and frontends offer. For example, adding new services, like implementing a BOPIS program or incorporating different payment processing tools, would be challenging for a store with a headless setup. 

While more flexible than a monolithic store, headless setups require extensive technical expertise to modify your store's front and backends. Significant coding changes can be time-consuming and require careful planning and skill to ensure that nothing breaks while adding or removing features. This is due to the need for more coordination between the frontend and backend. 

Additionally, as broken down above, another con can be found in the costs of the time and skill level necessary to build, manage and maintain headless setups.

Should You Go for a Headless Build?

When considering your options, you really just need to decide whether you don’t mind trading higher costs for flexibility. The scalability of an API-driven headless ecommerce build means that you can pivot and grow with the needs of your business and the market, but at the same time, this can result in higher build and maintenance costs. 

If your operation is large and complex, requiring multiple integrations across different systems, headless might be the solution for you. A smaller ecommerce operation with a straightforward product catalogue might not really benefit as much from the high cost and amount of work required to build and run such a setup. 

Like any other investment you make, the decision to build a headless website should be driven by a careful analysis of the ROI. List the benefits you will enjoy in exchange for the increased flexibility, and then look into whether or not there is a monolithic way to enjoy those same benefits at a lower cost. 

Conclusion

Deciding whether to adopt a headless commerce approach comes down to balancing flexibility and cost. While headless setups offer high levels of customization, scalability, and faster user experiences, they also demand higher development costs and technical expertise. 

If your ecommerce website requires frequent frontend changes and scalability across multiple channels, headless commerce might be the right choice. However, the added expense and complexity might outweigh the benefits for smaller operations. Consider your long-term goals and budget before making the leap.

Whatever your business requirements are, as a Shopify Plus Partner Agency, we at Blue Badger are available for all your headless — or not — needs. From integrating all your systems to developing custom themes for your store, we offer everything an ecommerce business needs to meet customer expectations and thrive in this always-changing industry. Contact us today to learn more.