The users buying behavior and the way to purchase have significantly changed in the past years. The need to obtain detailed information about a product or service before making a purchase has grown enormously – especially with high-priced products. Users read reviews, search for a suitable blog, data sheets or a success story. Some may even want to talk directly to service staff about the product. There are more and more sources of information that can make a decisive contribution to the purchase decision. A simple online shop can often not meet this need for different sources and information due to limited functionality. An e-commerce platform, on the other hand, does! You can be particularly agile and flexible with a Headless commerce platform.
What is a Headless commerce platform?
Times ago users nearly exclusively used the desktop PC for online shopping. Back then the classic back-end-/front-end-principle was absolutely sufficient and practicable. Nowadays there are more and more devices, each with different requirements. A commerce platform can not look exactly the same on both smartphones and desktops. It has to be responsive and user-friendly for every device and also offer an uniform customer experience. Headless commerce makes this possible and, contrary to the name, is anything but headless!
«Headless» describes the front-end being decoupled from the back-end. This approach is known as «composable commerce». Interfaces between the two parties are programmed to ensure a smooth exchange of data. This provides an infinite number of design options for the various end devices at the front-end. You can make changes in the front-end quickly and flexibly without touching the back-end. Of course, all peripheral systems such as ERP and CRM, CMS or the product catalog can be connected.
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Classic online-shop vs. commerce-platform
Classic online shops like Shopify or Magento are about briefly introducing a product, possibly showing customer ratings for the product, offering the option to purchase, providing a shopping cart, maybe also offering a newsletter registration and a few more small features – just the classic online shop functions we all know.
A commerce-platform offers more than these standard functions. You can consider it as an all-in-one-solution for a comprehensive shopping experience. All channels that can be important for a purchase decision come together here. With just a few clicks, the user can find the information sources that he currently needs. For example, a blog, social media channels, a product configurator, the online community, a live chat or many other channels can be connected. This diversity on just one platform is a big advantage. Here the user gets all the information they need to make a purchase decision and does not have to use other channels or platforms where they could end up with the competition.
