The future is headless: e-commerce gets a new architecture
Unlock your organization’s own digital agility, enable better scalability, performance, and speed with headless commerce.
It goes without saying that e-commerce is constantly evolving, and traditional commerce platforms are struggling to adapt to the unique demands of individual customers, especially when it comes to convenience.
In the IoT age, companies should utilize platforms that drive growth, evolve their brand, and expand on current capabilities.
This is where headless commerce architecture comes in, or the decoupling of a website’s consumer-facing front-end from the functional back-end, allowing for companies to perform quicker integrations, experiment with their capabilities, and offer a more convenient experience to consumers.
How headless commerce ties together CX
While headless commerce is an effective driver in perfecting the customer experience, it isn’t the end-to-end solution.
Companies need to look beyond the current technologies being discussed under the umbrella of headless commerce to leverage their back-end data. This is able to provide detailed information on inventory availability, which in turn optimizes the overall customer experience.
The only way to increase convenience for customers is investing in order management systems – which are API-first – when leveraging a headless commerce strategy.
So how brands can implement solutions to ensure that they are meeting and exceeding all of their customers’ expectations?
Welcome to Sleep Hollow: Why commerce has lost its head
Headless commerce is more than just an e-commerce buzzword. The approach allows companies to increase, update, and manage their content regularly, which means a customer is more likely to have a seamless experience between consuming content and making transactions.
Headless commerce is a win-win strategy that brings convenience and flexibility to both the brand and the consumer.
In outdated and more traditional commerce solutions, the front- and back-ends are tightly coupled and coded together, leaving little room for content management without disrupting the entire architecture and customer experience.
It’s a no-brainer as to why headless commerce is on the rise, but not all companies are getting it right.
What is headless commerce: Definition, benefits, examples, history
Customers tell brands what they want via actions, social media, and surveys – learn how headless commerce provides the flexibility and freedom they desire.
Where companies are getting it wrong
There seems to be a gap in the ways in which many people discuss headless commerce. Some companies plug their front-end CMS technology into their pre-existing commerce platform, attempting to freshen up their outdated platform.
However, this approach doesn’t offer the same convenience that an API-first, decoupled approach does. Through an API-first approach, companies can select the best of breed customer experience tools and easily snap them into the commerce platform.
Order management systems play an important role in CX from a convenience standpoint, so how do they fit into headless commerce?
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Where order management services come into play
To achieve a complete end-to-end customer experience, companies should not only invest in headless commerce, but also in an adequate order management system. Most companies already have an order management system in place that they use to simply take and keep track of orders.
Universally, it’s important that companies implement order management services with technology that’s loosely coupled, micro services-based, and API-friendly. That way, the technology isn’t constrained to pre-defined experiences and processes, and can plug right in to the decoupled, headless architecture.
Today, order management systems should provide companies with real-time visibility to their distributed inventory enterprise-wide, enhancing customer expectations beyond speed and personalization.
Companies should invest in order management systems that orchestrate orders for fulfillment, route products from the most optimal inventory location, provide real-time inventory visibility for both the employer and the customer, process returns, and provide controls and feedback for management. All of this helps to achieve the perfect balance between customer experience and profitability.
Deliver outstanding CX with headless commerce and API-first approaches
Exceeding customer expectations when it comes to servicing their every need can not be met by only using a headless commerce strategy. The future of headless commerce should go beyond just “losing its head.”
Companies should implement an API-first decoupled approach that easily couples with tools that drive convenience for consumers, like order management systems. Today’s systems must use advanced tools to help manage customers and make the buying journey a seamless, convenient experience.
