Traditional vs Headless Commerce? Which one suits your Business?

The difficulties posed by this sudden acceleration have retailers panicking, but they are also looking for ways to take advantage of the advantages that adversity offers. Customers today expect a consistent, individualized, and simple shopping experience across all of their devices and channels.

As webshops morph into social media apps, IoT apps, wearables, and other smart products, as well as AI-powered conversational commerce, and other digital fronts, rapid digitalization is shining a light on 'headless commerce.'

While startups and smaller businesses often look for low prices, advanced technology, and user-friendly interfaces, some businesses still advocate for the tried-and-true methods of doing business.

To help you decide which model is right for your business, let's take a closer look at both of them.

What Is Traditional Commerce?

The term "traditional commerce" refers to the commercial transactions or exchange of information, as well as the purchasing or selling of goods or services from person to person without the use of the internet. This is an older method of conducting business, and it falls under the category of "traditional business."

More specifically, commerce refers to the set of processes that facilitate the flow of products and services from producer to consumer. The process by which manufactured items make their way from the factory to the consumer is referred to as "commerce." Its primary goal is to meet the needs of buyers by making products accessible to them at optimal times and locations.

Traditional Commerce Pros

These are some of the advantages of traditional commerce that may sway you away from the more conventional methods of doing business:

● Your Local Audience Is Available for Your Communication Needs
Reaching local audiences and establishing personal connections with consumers are two of the most significant goals of traditional marketing. Customers place a higher premium on personal connections than ever before. Customers are loyal to brands they believe care about them and their needs.

Promoting your business using time-honored channels like printed materials, newspaper advertisements, local television commercials, and billboards allows you to get right into the hands of your target audience. Since it's not so obviously a marketing campaign, your attempts to connect with your audience come out as more genuine and sincere.

● Greener Promotional Products Exist
When it comes to digital marketing, one of the drawbacks is that you have to constantly provide new content to keep people interested. This may be an everyday occurrence for certain businesses. They could update their social media accounts twice or thrice a day, make a new video every day, and send out emails once or twice a week.

The results of marketing campaigns using traditional approaches tend to last longer and be more memorable to consumers. The same commercial, flyers, business cards, or brochures may be used several times. In order to keep promoting your product or service, you won't need to create fresh content as often.

● Credibility is established via traditional commerce
Traditional commerce is more credible than internet marketing from a psychological perspective. Digital marketing may have a wider audience reach, but it doesn't necessarily provide the impression that the firm is credible or well-established.

Many people place greater faith in printed materials and advertisements shown on bigger screens. This is because many people still associate "conventional" marketing with more expensive and more well-known channels. To advertise in print or on broadcast media, a business needs sufficient capital. Therefore, people assume that the firm is expanding, prosperous, and secure.

● A Wider Spectrum Of People Are Impacted
Supporters of digital advertising stress the medium's superior ability to hone in on a certain demographic and keep tabs on consumer behavior. As you collect data from channels like social media, email marketing, and your website, you can use that info to fine-tune your promotional materials.

However, heavy targeting of a demographic may not be essential if your brand naturally draws a wide variety of customers. If you own a small company, broadening your customer base might be a boon to your success. As a result, it's possible that more success may be had with more conventional forms of advertising.

● Printed promotional materials may be simpler to process
There's no denying the power of high-resolution digital marketing visuals, graphics, and photographs, but sometimes there's just too much going on. Potential customers may be so preoccupied with the aesthetics of your presentation that they miss the point and fail to form an emotional connection with your business.

Physical copies of advertising materials may improve brand remember since they are simpler to read and retain. The reading and comprehension demands of direct mail may be lower than those of electronic mail. Brochures might be more quickly perused than white papers or websites. In certain cases, a three-minute film on YouTube may be too long for the average viewer, whereas a 30-second ad may be more manageable.

Is traditional commerce right for my business?

Most merchants and vendors operating in today's retail and wholesale markets engage in traditional commerce. Where products and services cannot be transported easily from metropolitan centers to outlying locations, traditional trade continues to thrive.

Traditional trade is also commonplace in regions where many people lack access to modern forms of communication technology due to illiteracy. Available, required, and emerging client needs all contribute to the continued success of traditional business models.

What Is Headless E-Commerce?

Since headless e-commerce separates the store's front and back ends, it's very flexible and can be tailored to almost any business need. It was developed to meet the ever-increasing need for a unique and customized user experience on the part of the client base.

Rather of immediately affecting the user experience, changes to the site's code are sent to the front end through an API. As a result, developers may make changes to the site's front end without worrying about impacting the site's underlying logic and functionality.

Headless e-commerce platforms don't use pre-made storefronts. It takes more time than standard e-commerce, but this method ensures that your digital shop is designed according to your specifications.

Headless E-Commerce Pros

1. You may personalize it whatever you like
Since there is no fixed front-end, you are free to create an interface that best suits your company's requirements. Do you want a clock to appear in shopping carts? Don't worry about it. Have you thought of having your site automatically translate to the user's native tongue? Can do. In terms of personalization, there are no constraints on the headless variety.

2. It's simple to incorporate
When using a headless system, you may easily integrate third-party applications using an API. APIs provide easy data connections and transfers across software systems by facilitating simple communication between them. Because of its malleability, fewer boundaries exist, and more applications for the data may be imagined.

The majority of an online store's features are generated by its underlying infrastructure, but if there are any issues that need fixing, an API may be used to make things easier for shoppers. User experience and backend are separated, making integration simpler.

3. Complete, Integrated, and Personalized Omnichannel Interaction
As more and more consumers complete their purchasing processes online, whether through desktop computer, mobile device, or chatbot, they have come to demand a unified, seamless, and convenient experience across all channels.

Some monolithic systems claim to include omnichannel functionality, however this isn't necessarily the case. For instance, a business may be out of luck if their preferred digital sales channel is not currently supported by their current eCommerce platform.

● Short-Term Tests
The online retail industry may benefit greatly from testing out new user experiences and price structures. It just takes the superfoods company 30 minutes to use Chargebee to set prices for new goods or introduce existing ones.

Superfoods' capacity to experiment led to a quadrupling of profits in a little over a year. They went from having one product to having five, and from having a few hundred subscribers to having over a hundred thousand.

Headless commerce can be put to a variety of uses, including the introduction of new products or features, the exploration of alternative pricing structures, the experimentation with alternative page layouts, and the development of more interactive user experiences, all without requiring any alterations to the underlying infrastructure.

● Rapid adaptation and adaptation to change resulting in a shorter time to market
As new technologies arise, headless e-commerce systems may adapt to accommodate them. It implies that marketing departments may rapidly roll out many sites for different products, services, and brands.

Headless software allows for more rapid product iteration, which benefits companies even when consumer tastes shift overnight. If you wish to experiment/innovate without sacrificing backend functionality, a headless platform is a good option, whether your goal is to test out new variations in shopping experiences or to exceed quickly growing consumer expectations.

Is headless commerce right for my business?

Because of their pre-assembled frontends, traditional all-in-one ecommerce development platforms might be useful for startups seeking early successes. Depending on your goals, the conventional method may be enough if your business does not need a heavy online presence.

However, scalable platform design, such as that offered by headless commerce, is required to reliably satisfy consumer expectations while also withstanding the rigors of the marketplace. For experience-oriented firms like lifestyle items and direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands, a content-led approach like headless commerce is a no-brainer.

Using a decoupled architecture, creative teams may maximize the user experience, interface, and customer engagement and conversions by using a headless CMS (content management system) or digital experience platform (DXP) as frontend presentation layers.

In addition, the back end will include features including a payment and subscription management platform, account administration, and inventory management. The move to headless commerce is significant; therefore it's important to pick a platform that can support your company as it expands.

Conclusion

Initially, it's vital to acknowledge that a headless strategy may provide very little advantage to certain firms. Online shopping as it has always been done is a method that continues to be successful for many companies. To rephrase: a basic storefront may be all that is required. Once it's up and running, it requires little upkeep. However, making significant changes might be difficult.

Despite the advantages, many businesses opt for a headless approach. There is a lower barrier of entry when it comes to adopting mobile technology. Additionally, it is very customizable. For specialized goods, the ability to tailor the consumer experience to certain demographics and user groups is also a significant plus.

On the whole, headless Commerce is a good choice if you need to sell a lot of items quickly and easily. On the other hand, the conventional approach may be preferable for little enterprises selling a limited number of items.