Headless eCommerce architecture is by no means a new concept, but it's been gaining momentum over the last several years as an option for brands.

Going with a headless Content Management System (CMS) unlocks a variety of capabilities — all while keeping your front-end fast and lightweight. This perfectly matches the modern consumer's preference for engaging, personalized, and buttery-smooth online shopping experiences. 

But let's face it, nothing in this world is perfect, and headless architecture is no exception.

This post aims to explore all the hidden and not-so-hidden downsides of going headless (and ways to mitigate them). In the end, it’s very possible that headless is no longer the preferred solution for enterprise ecommerce brands looking for a fast, friendly, and easy to maintain website experience.

What is Headless Architecture? 

Traditional ecommerce websites follow a "monolithic" structure, which means everything in the back-end and front-end runs through a single system. This includes inventory management, server management, product page designs, and everything in between. 

This looks efficient on paper, but it won't take long before you notice the cracks in terms of performance, personalization, and scalability. 

These are just some of the issues that a headless website architecture can help with — and why it's become popular in the eCommerce space over the last several years. 

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Who is Headless Commerce Best For? 

Looking at the benefits of a headless website architecture, it's no surprise that the biggest adopters are enterprise brands. Not only do they cater to a broad spectrum of consumers with varying content preferences, they also have the technical resources necessary to effectively implement headless commerce. 

Companies that need to deliver more immersive and unique shopping experiences can also benefit from a headless setup. It enables them to quickly and confidently develop dynamic storefronts tailored to their customers. 

The Hidden Costs & Challenges of Headless

Now that we have covered the positive side of headless ecommerce architecture, it's time to discuss the negatives. 

Here are the known costs and challenges of implementing a headless architecture that may not be obvious at first glance:

1. High Development & Maintenance Costs 

A small team of developers and designers can create a monolithic eCommerce site by building everything with an all-in-one platform like Shopify. In fact, it's not uncommon to find solopreneurs or one-man teams running an entire Shopify store by themselves. 

But if you want to go headless, you also need a full engineering team to work on your website's back-end and configure the required APIs. 

Ongoing development and maintenance of headless commerce websites can easily run you six or seven figures. For many enterprise brands, during a zero interest rate environment, high engineering overhead wasn’t a significant concern. But in the current macro environment, many organizations, especially D2C ecommerce brands, are looking to increase margins and focus on profitability. The last thing you need is an expensive, difficult to maintain website with massive overhead.

2. Increased Complexity & Time to Market

While monolithic platforms have drawbacks, they also offer various Quality of Life (QoL) features like a drag-and-drop page builder or built-in analytics. 

Going headless often means turning away from these conveniences, slowing down agility, and increasing time to market. You also won't be able to make fine adjustments to either your front-end or back-end without a developer's help.  

3. Integration Challenges

Another QoL feature you're potentially giving up by going headless is support for plug-and-play integrations. 

Whenever you need to hook third-party services into your store, be it a payment processor or fulfillment service, you need to integrate the corresponding API using code. It's also worth noting that existing integrations would most likely create compatibility issues or fail altogether when migrating from a monolithic to a headless website architecture. 

4. Operational Efficiency

Aside from setup and integration processes, non-technical users like marketers and graphic designers may also require training or developer assistance to complete simple tasks like posting content updates. 

This can bog down daily workflows unless you invest in additional solutions like Sanity.io, which are designed to address this specific problem. 

5. Infrastructure & Hosting Burden 

To reap the full benefits of headless commerce, the brand is in charge of your hosting management and performance optimization.

Again, this is a consequence of shifting away from the conveniences of all-in-one ecommerce solutions. Shopify and PrestaShop, for example, both offer out of the box image compression features, and can easily be enhanced with an optimization platform. 

The Headless Tradeoff: Customization vs Practicality

Picture headless ecommerce like a supercar. 

Sure, it feels better to drive and can get you to your destination faster. Most supercar manufacturers also let you customize your vehicle down to the tiniest detail, from the interior leather to the steering wheel stitchings. 

But it also comes with significantly higher overhead costs, not to mention the bad fuel efficiency. 

Monolithic ecommerce platforms, on the other hand, are like the mid-range Toyota Camry. 

They can also take you from point A to point B, but the ride won't be as exciting. You also might not have as many customization options as a Porsche or McLaren. 

On the flip side, mass-market cars are cheaper in terms of upfront costs and gas mileage — just like a monolithic ecommerce website. 

This begs the question:

Are the costs of going headless worth the extra customization and scalability? 

For many brands, the answer is probably no.

Why Most Brands Don't Need Extreme Customization

It's true that every ecommerce brand needs speed, Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO), and scalability. 

Investing in a headless CMS can get you those things eventually — but at the expense of cost-efficiency and ease of management. 

"But what about endless customizability?" 

When it comes to endless customizability, the straight answer is you likely don't really need it. 

Remember that the goal of ecommerce isn’t to wow your audience with a fancy, ultra-slick web experience. It's to provide fast, user-friendly, and streamlined experiences that will help users find what they need and ultimately go from visitor to paying customer. 

Site Speed & Performance: The Last Stand of Headless

Historically, unparalleled site speed and performance was one of the key selling points of going headless. 

It allowed for fast, snappy user experiences that drove conversion rates up and brought bounce rates down. 

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It's also worth noting that traditional ecommerce platforms fell short in terms of performance. Monolithic architectures like the early Shopify builds and Salesforce Commerce Cloud often tried to be "one-size-fits-all" solutions — leading to unnecessary bloat. 

Today, however, you don't need to go headless to provide the fast and smooth experiences that modern customers seek. 

The Game-Changer: Edge Delivery & AI-Powered Performance Solutions

Emerging tech like Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions have since leveled the playing field — enabling smaller players to leverage the power of headless without the hefty price tag. 

Utilizing edge delivery networks, for one, is a breakthrough that equips any ecommerce website with headless-level loading speeds without needing extensive back-end work. 

In simple terms, edge delivery moves data transfers and processing (from server to browser) ever closer to customers — AKA "near the edge." There are also solutions that package the edge delivery service with extra tools like smart caching and crawler optimization. 

How Nostra Delivers Headless-Level Speed Without the Downsides

If you're interested in headless commerce for the sake of performance optimization, take a step back right now. 

With solutions like Nostra’s Edge Delivery Engine, you can achieve your goal of top-tier website performance without burning a hole in your budget. 

Check out the key features below:

1. No-Code Deployment

Unlike a headless CMS, you don't need a full-stack development team writing endless lines of code to use Nostra. 

In fact, you don’t need to write any code at all. 

The Edge Delivery Engine is a no-code performance optimization solution designed to be configured and launched in as little as 30 minutes. No need for messy content migrations or re-platforming. 

2. Edge Delivery for Instant Load Times

The Nostra edge delivery network includes 310+ server locations that are strategically distributed for maximum coverage. This minimizes latency to 50ms or lower for the vast majority (95%) of the world's internet users. 

In short, Nostra takes server distance out of the equation to help ecommerce websites achieve near-instantaneous loading speeds. 

3. Continuous Site Speed Improvements Without Engineering Overhead

While your ecommerce store continues to serve customers, Nostra works hard in the background — testing and optimizing configurations to unlock further performance gains. 

You won't need a dedicated engineering team to run performance audits and optimizations. This not only simplifies the process, but also makes running and maintaining your ecommerce website a whole lot cheaper.

4. Higher Conversion Rates Without Complexity

Remember, faster loading speeds don't only improve conversions. They also bump up your SEO performance, lift your Average Order Value (AOV), and heighten customer satisfaction. 

These are the promises of taking the leap into a headless future. And with Nostra AI, you can cash in on all of these benefits without the maintenance nightmare.

The Future of Ecommerce Website Architecture

With all that out of the way, here's a quick recap of everything you should remember when deciding whether or not to go headless:

• Headless will become a niche solution — Rather than being the doorway to ecommerce's future, there's a strong likelihood that headless will remain a niche solution. Outlier businesses that require unique, hyper-personalized customer experiences and have the engineering resources to support them might continue investing in headless architecture. 
• Platforms will continue to improve — Ecommerce platforms like Shopify, BigCommerce, and Magento are rapidly getting better at addressing challenges that headless ecommerce proposes to solve. They're getting better at improving website performance, enabling extended customizability, and supporting the scaling and personalization needs of most brands.
• AI-optimization is the future — Today's generation of AI-driven tools is designed to accomplish data-driven tasks like marketing personalization with minimal manual intervention. The good news is, most of these tools are designed to work seamlessly, even with monolithic platforms. 
• You can achieve the speed of headless without the headache — Optimization as a Service Platforms like Nostra will enable more brands to provide optimized, effortless experiences to the customers — while still maintaining a lean and efficient architecture.

Conclusion

The headless CMS was once touted as the bleeding edge of ecommerce technology, and it technically still is. 

But in terms of practicality, the pros of headless commerce often aren't enough to justify the costs, especially for ecommerce brands that have no use for extreme customizability. 

Let's put it this way: Platforms like Shopify, WooCommerce, and SFCC can provide 95% of the benefits of headless — given that you deploy the right optimization strategies. There are also solutions like Nostra AI's Edge Delivery Engine that offer headless-level speeds and AI-driven optimizations without the costs and complications. 

All of a sudden, going headless might not sound like it’s worth the overhead. 

If you'd rather spend your time and budget creating value for customers instead of maintaining complicated web infrastructure, request a demo of Nostra AI's Edge Delivery Network here.