Perhaps you want to expand your personalized marketing strategies to other channels, but your teams are working in silos and they haven’t shared the data you need to personalize anything. Or maybe you feel locked in by your martech stack, not able to add personalization tactics without going to the IT department, waiting weeks – if not months – between major updates to your eCommerce website. Maybe you even use a certain ESP which is no longer working effectively for you, and you want to swap to another ESP, but because of your all-in-one martech stack you’re stuck using the same one, watching potential revenue go down the drain.
Headless commerce may be your answer. But what does that mean? And what are the benefits?
What is headless commerce?
To find out what headless commerce means, we must compare it to traditional commerce. In traditional commerce, you have intertwined front-end and back-end solutions, meaning if you want to change something in the front-end code (for example, change the design of your website), you’d have to dig into back-end codes to achieve this – that is, if you don’t want everything to break.
On the other hand, in headless commerce, your front-end and back-end are decoupled, so they are no longer intertwined. Instead, they use an API to communicate between front- and back-end to show customers what they need to see, and to provide your back-end system with the data it needs for the customer to complete their purchases.
Fresh Relevance makes use of this headless, best-of-breed approach. Below are some benefits that allow us to believe that this is the future of eCommerce.
Benefits of headless commerce
1) Use true multi-channel personalization
Because your front- and back-ends are no longer intertwined, you can use API to communicate data from your back-end to any of your channels. It also makes integration in your martech stack easier and more efficient, as you can use the same API and same database for all channels.
For example, you could use the Fresh Relevance platform and use one of the ESPs we integrate with to send triggered emails, whilst also using one of our eCommerce integrations to help manage and drive personalization for your online store. The process to set this up is simple and the integrations will work together seamlessly.
2) Market on new channels more quickly and easily
Once again, by using API instead of the intertwined front- and back-end solution, you can easily market on other channels more quickly. For example, you can let headless commerce do the work for you on your new social media page or your native app.
Fresh Relevance personalizes on a cross-channel basis. You get to choose which channels you need to achieve your goals.
3) Personalization is consistent across channels
As your data is stored in a place that is now accessible to your front-end of your main website, but also your other channels, you can segment customers based on behavioral data cross-channel and personalize accordingly.
For example, you can use browsing and purchase data to create more tailored product recommendations, and you can have those product recommendations be consistent across multiple channels.
With Fresh Relevance’s technology, all you need to do is to place a SmartBlock in your channels and decide the recommendation algorithm based on what your needs are. You can, for instance, decide that customers will see products in their favorite color, but the products that are not available in their size won’t come up.
4) Only pay for the channels you want
When not using traditional commerce, and choosing to opt for headless commerce, it is likely that you won’t be stuck in a contract which includes channels you never touch.
Fresh Relevance, for example, charges you based on the channels and modules you choose to include. If you want to replace or add a channel, you can.
This is not only more cost effective because you won’t need to pay for the channels and modules you aren’t using, but also because of the way headless commerce works, conversion rates will likely be higher. The brands who use headless commerce are more content- and experience-led, and so the focus is on the customer journey. Customers will be presented with the same information throughout their travels across your different channels, reminding them why they want to convert at each stage of the journey.
5) You are in the driver’s seat
Without the need to go to your IT department to change the back-end code every time you want to update your brand’s image, you are in full control of what your customers see on each channel.
Fresh Relevance allows you to use SmartBlocks so that you can use the same dynamic banners on multiple channels, keeping your branding consistent, whilst still using your own design.
6) Keep your integrations up-to-date without the hassle
New upgrade on one of your integrations? No problem. As the front-end of your integration is not coupled to the back-end, it can update without affecting anything else.
And leading on from that…
7) Testing and optimizing your personalization has never been easier
With headless commerce, it becomes easier to test new back-end solutions and options without all of your brand’s channels going down. Headless commerce makes this super fast and efficient.
Fresh Relevance offers A/B and MVT testing as well as constant optimization with multi-arm bandit, allowing you to optimize your website and other channels to help you achieve your goals more quickly.
How we can help
Headless commerce is the next step to future-proof your business.
Request a demo with us to discuss how we can help you achieve your goals.
