Taking your Shopify and e-commerce sites headless seems to be the hottest new trend for store owners, but for those who worry it’s more a matter of hype and hope than high performance, questions remain about whether going headless is the best option and avenue for their business. Together, Lucas and Ben address some of your most pressing questions about making the switch to headless -e-commerce.
Why should I go headless? A faster website is a better experience for the customer, which leads to a higher conversion rate and a better profit-per-visitor. When visiting a Shopify page, customers may get any sort of experience, based on how much the store owner is asking from both the site and their theme build. While they may be offering many key and important features, the sheer size of the theme may lead to a draggy experience, as each new page effectivly has to load twice. Using a headless build, de-coupling the front-end customer experience from the e-commerce tools, will greatly increase the performance of your store, improve your user experience and lead to a marked increase in sales.
How do I know headless commerce is right for me? Is your Shopify store large enough to spend the time, money and resources on a headless build? Will you benefit from it, or is it too soon for you? No store owner wants to fall down a rabbit hole chasing hype over a new and exciting approach to business when the old model may currently suit them better. There is no set line, no clearly defined profit margin or inventory size when you should make the switch, and it will depend on the particulars of your own operation, but if you’ve reached a point where you feel like you want to be growing faster, like you can handle expansion, possibly even rapid expansion, and that your current size has become only limiting to what you can do, then headless may be the tool you need to take your store to the next level. Above all, you will know when it’s time go to headless, it’s more a matter of realizing that what you need to do next.
How do I make my operation headless? Be careful, headless commerce is still very new, and the marketplace can be full of pitfalls and false promises. When chosing a provider to help you go headless, go for quality and reputation over flash, big claims and overhyping. Make sure that not only the provider you choose is ready, with a depth of knowledge and experience, but that your own team is ready to handle it too, so that you’re not locked in to the choices and claims of your provider, and so that you can take the power back and walk away if they prove to not live up to expectations, without losing the headless build. Shogun, show sponsor of Pitstop, provides exactly this perfect balance of reliance and control.
Going headless is not a quick fix that will solve all of your store’s problems, nor even guarantee a faster experience for every Shopify user, but for many it will prove an effective and helpful tool to take their e-commerce operations to the next level, while building bridges of trust between your team and your provider.
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