If you’ve heard the term “Headless Commerce”, you might be walking around looking for all these headless products and probably have a couple of questions:
What are they?
Where are they?
Are they zombies without heads? Why yes (sort of).
The Headless Ecommerce Myth
Let’s debunk the Headless Ecommerce Myth. Headless is not anything new. It is simply a branded application programming interface (API). It started out as an acronym, but no one likes confusing acronyms, so marketing came through and gave it a name.
Anything with an API can be headless – Searchspring is – but if everything is headless who controls the final ‘state’ of things? We certainly can’t have a litany of zombies walking around without something controlling them. This is where things can get tricky and confusing for those shopping for a product and are told to find something headless. Somewhere in the decision, we have to pick something that isn’t headless and that controls the state of things.
Don’t Be Fooled by the Hype
So let’s step back. All ecommerce brands and sites absolutely should pick headless products that can integrate with almost anything and can easily be swapped out for something else in the future. Properly done, you could use Searchspring one day and tomorrow swap it for something else. That is euphoria (not really).
But don’t get fooled by the hype. Remember that API first companies have been doing headless for years before it was cool. Now it just has a cool name and a resurgence thanks to some crafty marketing.
When evaluating and buying software make sure you are buying what you need. You should absolutely be picking software that is ‘headless’, but this should be a secondary consideration. The first should be the actual features you will be using.
Always cut through the marketing messaging and just get what you need.
If you’d like to learn more about Headless, I’d like to invite you to Searchspring’s upcoming webinar: What the Heck is Headless Commerce?
