A website is like a human body – it consists of different parts.
There is the head that holds all the visual elements of a site. This is the front-end layer that can be seen and can interact with users and customers.
Then there is the body that holds your ecommerce platform or your content management system. This is the back-end layer and is full of data such as product information, product availability, pricing, stock levels, and so on.
Linking these two parts like a spine, APIs allow them to connect and interact with one another.
Traditional websites are monolithic, with the back-end and front-end inseparable. In contrast, headless represents just the body, the back-end. 
Headless technology separates the front from the back and is powered by APIs that allow communication between different programs. It provides space for creativity in how you showcase products and makes it easier for people to buy products online. A clear example of this is how we can add a product to our shopping cart by scanning it with our phones.
A love affair?
By separating the front and back, it lets businesses use a front-end headless ecommerce platform and gives them ultimate control over the look and feel of a website. It’s spread through online businesses like wildfire as organizations invest more and more into digital technologies.
With headless tech, we can extract a few advantages which we will now outline.
Flexibility and scalability. Organizations can build advanced customer experiences that fit their brand. This prepares them to adapt and scale along with changing behaviors – that come around relentlessly.
With headless, teams can test new technologies at a fast pace, new concepts, and new channels and deliver them to customers as soon as possible. With nothing on the front-end dragging you down, you’re freed up to build features in addition to the main platform.
Lightweight. The headless move gives freedom to develop enhanced customer-facing functionalities such as personalized digital journeys without disrupting the existing functionality.
For headless ecommerce, it unlinks itself from weighty data at the back-end and instead, delivers smaller amounts of data through APIs. In addition, it helps make sure that companies can deliver seamless interactions for their customers. 
Faster time to market. The revolutionary nature of headless commerce has provided the opening for greater customization while allowing organizations to manage their content and apps independently – this has the effect of cutting down on development cycles.
Think about the convenience: it would be easy for businesses who want to quickly deploy new projects without having to tie up their back-end with other services like shipping providers and payment gateways.
Booming API-based commerce
It has been one of the biggest trends in ecommerce within the last few years: the growth of API-based commerce, also known as headless commerce. Headless commerce is a type of ecommerce architecture that, likewise, separates the front-end layer from the back-end layer.
What are the benefits?
Headless commerce can provide organizations with the flexibility to build out tech stacks and provide consistency when it comes to the user experience across all of their app channels.
This ensures that they can cover the broad needs of its customer base – from millennials who shop through mobile apps and Alexa devices to older generations who prefer to purchase products in-store or place orders by phone.
It also offers the freedom to build omnichannel experiences using any programming framework or language – without having to worry about the underpinning technology. A company are able to introduce a new feature by modifying the front-end and publishing it on its website.
And regarding the performance, since the back-end is separated from the front, businesses can scale their websites.
PS: ArganoUV is one of the world’s leading digital products & experiences consultancies. Contact us to see how we can work together.
