Building a headless Shopify store is getting quite popular these days. It emphasizes flexibility and performance making it quite popular among businesses. Headless commerce separates front-end and back-end.
A Bit About Headless Shopify Commerce –
Headless Shopify commerce is all about decoupling the front-end and back-end of your store. The back-end manages the product catalog, customer data, and order process. The different framework is used to build front-end like Angular, React, etc. It helps to create a highly customized storefront.
In this guide, we will explain how to create a headless Shopify store in detail.
Reason To Choose Headless Shopify Commerce –
The prominent benefit of a headless Shopify store is flexibility. Headless commerce allows you to access a variety of templates. All you need to foster your creativity. Headless commerce helps you develop an entirely custom user interface that understands your requirements.
Headless commerce development also makes it possible to have quick website performance. The user will have an ideal customer experience since the front-end and back-end communicate through APIs. The improved speed can also give you higher conversion rates.
Another advantage is omnichannel selling. You will be able to tackle content and transactions all around different channels. Does not headless Shopify commerce quite exciting.
Comparison Of Traditional Vs Headless Shopify Stores –
Features | Traditional Vs Headless Shopify Store |
Front-End Customization | Traditional Shopify stores come up with limited Shopify Themes. On the other hand, the headless Shopify store is completely customized and loaded with any technology. |
Speed & Performance | The traditional store is moderate in the context of speed and performance. The headless Shopify store is highly optimized regarding speed. |
API Flexibility | Traditional stores will give you only limited flexibility. A Headless Shopify store gives you entire access to Shopify storefront API. |
Multi-channel | Traditional Shopify stores come up with a basic setup. The headless Shopify store introduces a highly advanced setup ideal for an omnichannel system. |
Development Time | Talking about the development time, it is faster to set up. On the other hand, headless Shopify stores need more development time. |
SEO Optimization | It is easy to handle by Shopify. The headless Shopify Store needs a manual setup for SEO. |
CMS Integration | Traditional Shopify stores have only limited options regarding CMS integration. A Headless Shopify store makes it possible to have flawless integration with external CMS. |
Steps To Build a Headless Shopify Store –
It needs to have careful planning and technical expertise to build a headless Shopify store. Check out the systematic guide to help you navigate the entire process.
Pick The Ideal Front-End Technology –
You need to choose the ideal front-end framework. Each framework comes up with its strengths –
- React is quite a fast and scalable framework. It comes up with a large developer community. It makes an ideal choice for dynamic user interfaces.
- Vue.js is regarded for its excellent simplicity. Vue.js is ideal for smaller teams. It is perfect for business hunting for rapid development.
- Angular introduces a powerful tool to create complex web applications. In comparison to React and Vue.js, Angular introduces a steeper learning curve.
Your choice depends on your particular needs and team’s expertise. If you are not sure what to pick then consulting a Shopify development partner would be the right thing.
Setting Up Shopify Storefront API –
It needs to integrate your custom front-end with Shopify storefront API to enable headless commerce. API helps your front-end to communicate with Shopify back-end to collect product information. It also helps to manage carts and processing orders. Shopify imparts comprehensive documentation for developers.
Customize The User Experience –
A Headless Shopify store imparts the ability to create a custom user experience. It means you would not have to stagnate by Shopify’s limitations. You can easily design a front end that ideally goes with your e-commerce identity. It helps to cater to excellent customer journeys.
Headless setup imparts excellent flexibility if you want to create a highly visual homepage. It helps to create a personalized checkout experience. It is also beneficial if you want to add interactive elements such as animations or product configurators.
Third Party Services Integration –
You will have full control over the front end. It makes it easy to integrate with third-party services enhancing functionality. Be it about analytics tools or marketing automation platforms, headless commerce makes everything quite simple. It adds external services without being stagnant by Shopify themes.
To manage your content quite effectively, you can easily integrate a robust CMS like WordPress/Contentful. These platforms generally introduce more excellent features compared to Shopify’s built-in CMS. It imparts you excellent control over your content strategy.
Optimize For Speed and SEO –
Speed is everything in the digital world especially for building a headless Shopify store. Front–end frameworks such as Vue.js and React are quite popular for their speed feature. Today’s customers want a good speed. If you want to survive in the market, it is important to optimize your site to load faster in comparison to Shopify stores.
It is quite important to go with ideal practices for performance optimization. Lazy loading is good for images and videos. It would be helpful to mitigate CSS files and JavaScript. Moreover, caching also helps to mitigate load times. Go with CDN to cater to content quickly. Make sure that your site is completely SEO-friendly.
Why Should You Partner With A Shopify Plus Agency –
Building a headless Shopify store can be a bit complicated. Therefore, partnering with Shopify Plus Agency is ideal. Professionals specialize in headless commerce makes your store all set to get overwhelmed with long-term success.
A Shopify Plus Agency can introduce excellent solutions right from choosing the ideal technology stack to ongoing support. They also introduce scaling your store as your business grows. It also ensures that your headless Shopify setup will remain completely agile.
Summary –
Partnering with an ideal Shopify development partner is good to have a smooth transition to headless. They guide you all across the process and impart you excellent ongoing support. The headless Shopify Store brings an incredible level of flexibility. So, what are you waiting for? It is time to call the trustworthy one to have the best response. A successful e-commerce brings a motivation to keep doing excellent at the forefront.
Author Bio:-
Bhumi Patel has vast experience in Project Execution & Operation management in multiple industries. Bhumi started her career in 2007 as an operation coordinator. After that she moved to Australia and started working as a Project Coordinator/ Management in 2013. Currently, she is the Client Partner – AUSTRALIA | NEW ZEALAND at Magneto IT Solutions – a leading Magento web development company, where she works closely with clients to ensure smooth communication and project execution also forming long term partnerships. Bhumi obtained a Master of Business Administration (MBA) in Marketing & Finance between 2005 and 2007.