Having taken over the digital world by storm, headless commerce has provided marketers the tools to merchandise and personalize the customer journey. The innovative architecture behind headless decouples the front end and back end of your eCommerce shop to empower more effective content distribution while maintaining rich back end solutions. We’ve broken down the four major benefits of headless; Speed, Flexibility and Adaptability, Customization and Personalization, and Omnichannel in the diagram below.
The Benefits of Going Headless
Headless has changed the way we implement commerce solutions and manage content, and that’s why we at BORN have developed the SMOC framework to help break down how we approach a headless implementation. SMOC relates to four concepts; Security, Microservices, Omnichannel, and Cloud-Native that we structure our headless implementations around.
It’s critical that we consider security during a headless implementation when there are so many pieces being connected to one another. Securing both sides of content and commerce data in your solution is one of the processes we don’t find adequately covered in traditional frameworks – for us here at BORN, it remains our number one priority.
Ensuring effective cybersecurity for your commerce begins with effective fraud and cart solutions to prevent hackers from abusing your eCommerce functionalities. Headless solutions also conceal CMS functionality via layer abstraction, affording a level of privacy not found in a more traditional approach. The unique uniform data approach also ensures a more easily monitored system, given that features are not bound together where they can potentially bloat another. Other benefits of a secure headless solution is in its read-only APIs – with your solution decoupled, most APIs are processed in a read-only mode and therefore tamper free. For potential security breaches of the backend, we advise a cloud-native solution so that support can be delivered at a much higher rate, and security protocols are standardized and up to date.
The next component of our framework is microservices which consists of a single application composed of many loosely coupled and independently deployable components. Microservices are bound by APIs and serve as the various use-cases in a build. In exchange for demanding a more expanded team of many experts, a microservice based implementation strengthens an offering by offering a wider array of functionalities that are not bogged down together in bulk as one might find in a traditional implementation. As these functionalities are maintained more independently, they can be reviewed and updated at a much faster clip than when these services are not bundled together as each microservice manages its own data and is self-developed. APIs in turn help exchange data between bundled microservices to quickly adjust and calculate throughout channels.
Next comes omnichannel, which is the ability to deliver a cross-channel strategy that improves user experience and ultimately, drives customer retention. An example in action is to consider how a customer ought to have the ability to switch from an in-store interaction to online, and then to a call-center with the consistency of a single cart and account recognition. Omnichannel solutions have taken the CX world by storm – by connecting multiple touchpoints with a single customer experience, brands widen their sales funnel to capture a far broader customer base. We’ve seen exceptional success in powering omnichannel solutions for brands like iShopChangi, Diesel, and Paul Stuart – with ample case studies that illustrate the success of omnichannel efforts in commerce.
However, legacy eCommerce systems can suffer when handling all the inputs and requests of the many channels available. Omnichannel solutions greatly benefit from strong headless solutions due to the nature of the decoupled CMS. Having a myriad of assisted channels to utilize your effective front-end will deliver exceptional user interest and a more seamless experience. By decoupling the two layers, developers can focus on specific channels when needed with far more precision.
Finally, we have Cloud-Native – this refers to the ability to scale your commerce solution infinitely, through holiday rushes and other events that would cause an increased number of users. Where Cloud-Native excels is by ensuring you do not need to rely on local devices, servers, or any particular machine in order to access the files that power your commerce solution. A cloud solution as Cloud Native ones both command a much stronger sense of security due to the cloud enabling support to assist any breaches much faster, along with scaling dynamically based on site traffic. As a result, Cloud Native empowers your eCommerce to be exceptionally nimble – able to navigate demand, disruptions, and any data breach.
Above you’ll find how these pieces come together under one SMOC layer highlighted in yellow. The swappable architecture above yields advances in security and omnichannel, while utilizing microservices bound by API managed in the cloud to deliver an exceptional service. Having a headless environment that is mindful of all of SMOC’s components is the foundation for any successful implementation.
For more information on BORN Group’s headless offerings, please reach out to Mackenzie Johnson, [email protected].
