Headless CMS to Develop Your Online Store

In this article, we’ve collected the main points that highlight how e-commerce businesses leverage a Headless CMS and profit from it.

What is a Headless CMS, and how does it differ from traditional CMS platforms?

A Headless CMS is the content management system that handles the backend side of things. It lets you create, edit, and do whatever you want with the site content, but doesn’t have a built-in presentation – frontend part. Content comes through an API (REST/GraphQL), making it easy to deliver across any platform you’re running, simultaneously. With omnichannel flexibility, you can roll out content everywhere: website, mobile app, or IoT. Headless CMS is a great choice for complex, omnichannel projects who has plans for scaling. For simple websites or fast launching, traditional and hybrid CMSs are still more practical. 

Here are the core differences between Headless CMS & traditional CMS platforms:

• Content and its presentation separation. With a traditional CMS, content and templates are tightly linked. With a Headless CMS, they’re fully separate. This way, you can reuse the same content across different channels and publish it on web and mobile resources at once.
• API-first approach. Headless CMS publishes content via API (often with GraphQL), making it easy to integrate with modern frameworks.
• Flexibility and scalability. With a Headless CMS, it’s easier to scale the backend and individual services. That flexibility is why you’ll often see it powering e-commerce sites and corporate projects.

Why is Headless CMS becoming popular in modern e-сommerce?

Headless CMS and e-commerce often click well together. Headless CMS approach perfectly matches the big e-commerce platforms’ needs and covers all the tasks they handle. For instance, when it’s needed to update product cards or add new ones, you don’t have to make changes on different platforms separately, which requires a lot of time and effort. Instead of this, you make changes through the Headless CMS admin panel, click the “update” button, and all the content goes to all the platforms you have. So, it literally saves hours by doing the repetitive work behind the scenes. Especially when talking about complex e-commerce platforms, when you need to update hundreds of pages per day. 

There are more reasons why is Headless CMS so popular in modern e-commerce.

Omnichannel

Shoppers mainly interact with brands through the web, mobile apps, voice assistants, and more. Headless CMS makes it easy to deliver consistent content to all these platforms via API. As we said, this reduces your time and makes the updated data accessible on all platforms where customers explore it. 

Improved performance and loading speed

When frontend and backend are separated, you can easily optimize the frontend. Like using CDNs, modern frameworks, and server-side rendering. The outcome is obvious – lower response times, better UX, less user churn, and improved SEO. 

Faster time-to-market

Content managers and devs can work in parallel thanks to Headless CMS. While some make content updates, developers work on other tasks at the same time without any interruptions. 

Greater flexibility for developers

Headless CMS development gives full freedom to use modern frameworks like React, Vue, Next.js, etc. This reduces technological barriers, template choosing, and theme limitations.

Personalization and integration with other systems

Headless CMS integrates well with analytics tools, CRM, PIM, ERP, AI recommendations, and similar systems. This helps create more targeted and personalized UX. 

Scalability and Future-Proofing

Brands don’t want to be stuck with outdated CMSs as traffic grows and new channels, tech, and UX requirements pop up. With Headless, you can update the UI, change the frontend, and add channels without modifying the backend. 

What business benefits does a Headless CMS provide to your online store?

The first one is fast time to market and marketing flexibility. Marketing teams work on the content side at any time they need, without the development team’s involvement. This covers new campaigns and ads launching on time. As an advantage, it helps you react in a timely manner to new trends and directly affects your online store’s competitiveness.   

Next, a personalized experience for every customer and conversion rates improvement. With AI tools, CRM systems, and analytics integration, you can offer custom deals for everyone. Headless CMS lets you work with all the necessary tools you need to boost sales as well as retain customers. 

The frontend and backend parts separation facilitates the site speed optimization, mobile loading, and server-side rendering. The outcome is twofold: a lower rate of rejections and stronger, more reliable positioning in search results.

Another great perk is scalability. An e-commerce CMS headless setup allows adding new content spreading channels, integrating the latest tech, and updating e-commerce UI without the backend breaking. This way, your online store remains flexible, innovative, and built on current technologies, avoiding the pitfalls of outdated solutions.

What benefits does a Headless CMS provide to developers?

Headless CMS offers a bunch of advantages not only to your online store content management and productivity but also for development teams. We pulled together the most important ones that make the development process a breeze and simplify teams’ workflows. 

Complete front-end freedom

Developers can choose any framework or technology they need for work, like React, Vue, Next.js, Svelte, etc. Free from the constraints of traditional CMS templates, teams are able to deliver valuable input to the online store. What does it mean for business? Unique UX/branding that is easier to create and promote.

API-first and integrations

All the content is accessible via REST/GraphQL API. Such an approach makes it easy to connect third-party services: analytics, AI, CRM, PIM, and e-commerce platforms. This opens up possibilities for the new features and innovations faster implementation.

Scalability and performance

It is easy to optimize the frontend for high loads, CDN, and server-side rendering. By reducing dependence on a monolithic backend, you get stable performance as traffic grows and a smoother UX for users.

Better control over versions and processes

CI/CD, Git, and infrastructure as code make it easier to test and maintain frontend and backend.

How does a Headless CMS support multichannel e-сommerce?

Headless CMS e-commerce web platforms use an API-first approach. Which means that all the content managers create is stored on the backend side and posted through the API to any source you need. Included website, social media, mobile app, chatbots, and so on. That’s how you avoid content duplicates and share concrete information on all resources at once, which creates a consistent experience and brand recognition. 

Moreover, Headless CMS easily integrates with various e-commerce platforms, like Shopify or Magento. It gives you an extra opportunity to manage products, prices, and descriptions centrally. This setup keeps businesses adaptable, and new experiences like AR shopping or voice assistants can plug in seamlessly, without a massive rebuild. As a result, the company gets faster time to market, a unified customer communication strategy, and scalability, all critical for e-commerce today.

Features of developing an online store with a Headless CMS

The features list covers the following points:

• The frontend is built on JAMstack architecture as a separate app using static generators and a CDN. This speeds up platform loading and reduces infrastructure costs.
• The microservice approach helps to build an online store from standalone services that offer flexibility for scaling or replacement. For example, CMS, search, catalog, payments, and delivery.
• Use of Headless e-commerce + Headless CMS. They’re usually used as content management systems (descriptions, blogs, banners) and product management systems (Shopify Plus, BigCommerce). Their use provides greater flexibility and the ability to manage vital site features in one place.
• Development includes thoughtful work with multiple APIs (content, payment gateways, CRM, ERP).
• Because the frontend and backend are separate, updates to stores are implemented through pipelines with automated testing and deployment.
• Developers can create a completely unique user interface without the limitations of themes or templates.
• The ability to scale for peak loads on the platform. Since the frontend and backend are fully separate, only the parts that actually need resources can be scaled. For example, check out during Black Friday.

How does a Headless CMS improve SEO and content management?

First, with Headless CMS, teams can build frontends on modern frameworks with server-side rendering or static site generation. In this way, they build a solid SEO foundation, which affects page loading times and search rankings.

Secondly, centralized content storage makes it easy to update product descriptions, blogs, metadata, and keywords without duplicating data. Headless CMS helps creative teams distribute content across platforms and still keep uniform quality and strong SEO. 

What challenges might you face when implementing a Headless CMS in eсommerce?

In some cases, e-commerce platform owners may face some issues while Headless CMS implementing. Since it has only a backend part, you need a team to build a frontend where all the content will display. It requires extra resources, but at the end of the day, you’ll get a powerful business tool for content management. 

Next, integration with other services can be pretty challenging. Especially if they use different APIs and protocols. For instance, with payment gateways, ERP, CRM, PIM, and other marketplaces. Also, CI/CD configuration, server scaling, and API monitoring must be provided to avoid performance issues under high loads. 

How much does it cost to create an online store with a Headless CMS?

The cost can vary, depending on your project size, its complexity, and the tech stack you choose. As a rule, the Headless CMS development services cost consists of CMS license, development and design itself, integrations, hosting and infrastructure, support, and maintenance.

For small businesses and startups cost may vary from $30,000 – $80,000. It includes building a basic CMS platform with a simple design and standard integrations to set up an e-commerce platform. 

Mid-size businesses can expect a cost of around $100,000 – $300,000. For this money, you get a fully scalable CMS solution with complex integrations and custom UI/UX design.  

The cost for big corporations starts from $500,000. It covers the creation of a global content delivery system, enterprise SaaS plans, and security compliance.

Is a Headless CMS the right choice for scaling your online business?

For sure. Headless CMS is a strategically justified tool for scaling and rapid growth of businesses with high demands for flexibility, personalization, and productivity. You can easily scale your online business thanks to the following features:

• Frontend and backend separation. Content is stored centrally and accessible via API, and the frontend can be modified or scaled independently of the CMS. Moreover, you can add more channels to distribute the content – mobile apps, marketplaces, social networks, voice assistants, or even AR/VR platforms. It creates a huge headroom for further scaling. 
• Headless CMS provides flexible integrations with e-commerce platforms, payment systems, CRM, and analytics. Which means your teams can easily automate processes, personalize customer experiences, and maintain content consistency across all channels. When your e-commerce platform scales – these options keep working, considering a new amount of data to proceed. 

Conclusion

Headless CMS opens up a lot of new opportunities to develop and scale your e-commerce business. At its core is a set of features that help you manage, improve, and update the content before posting it on various platforms at the same time. Its work principle helps to achieve the prime goal – to effectively manage and deliver data across all channels where your target audience is. It’s a smart way to move your business toward growth and tremendous success, using time-proven technologies and Headless CRM approaches.