Headless commerce is now mainstream - and that is good news!

When we discuss commerce solutions with clients we often stress the importance of digital maturity for organizations in picking the right commerce solution. A modern headless based solution best fits more digitally mature organizations with at least some combination of in-house IT capabilities, projects deployed in the public cloud, and adoption of headless, microservices or agile development practices. Companies without these setups could still be better off selecting a more classic suite approach to ecommerce. 

However, what we’ve seen lately is that the majority of early-stage companies have also mostly moved into the cloud, modernized many parts of their tech stack, and started their move from legacy systems into modern platforms – not just for commerce, but for various parts of their business environment. This highlights that headless commerce is now entering the mainstream phase and is no longer seen as a radical choice when proposing a new commerce architecture.

Convincing the rest of the world out of legacy suites

We’ll go ahead and celebrate the victory, for us and the businesses out there who want an easier time creating great shopping experiences, but there’s still a lot to do. The challenge that remains is convincing the late majority and laggards to consider a headless modern commerce solution, such as what commercetools offers. These late adopters are typically more conservative companies, from industries where tech is just another cost-center and not seen as a primary channel for revenue. They are tied down by legacy software suites which are “tried and tested”, but don’t realize is also the very thing holding their business back.

Those that do make the leap are quick to discover, and appreciate, that modern commerce breathes new life into their business (proven by the positive customer and revenue results that follow). Going headless with a modern tech stack is a snowball effect that tends to start with smaller steps like moving into the cloud. This opens up the doors for companies to broaden their scope and modernize other systems along the lines of commerce and CRM. What they end up with is more flexibility and the freedom to react faster to market changes and customer demands.

Commerce suites were fine 20 years ago, during the rush to have an internet presence, and the only requirement was to have an e-commerce website that worked. But in today’s fast-moving market that requires coverage across so many touchpoints, being locked into one solution — that dictates the tech you’ll have to use, what features you’re able to have (and not have), and forces you to create wonky workarounds to do anything that’s not baked into the suite — is a serious competitive disadvantage.

As part of digital transformation, many businesses are re-platforming to modern solutions. New vendors, like commercetools, offer an alternative to monolith suites with decoupled, headless commerce platforms and microservices. Modern solutions like these offer many benefits to customers, such as continuous daily releases, excellent compatibility with CRM, CMS and other software used within the ecosystem, and high degree of customization to fit their exact commerce needs. 

If you are interested in finding out if headless commerce is the right choice for your organisation then feel free to reach out or download our Headless Whitepaper