Many of us have probably made online purchases so impulsive that we sent the Consumer Authorities a silent thank you for the right of withdrawal. But despite what it may sound like, headless commerce has little to do with headless online shopping. So, what is this concept everyone is talking about, and why should we care?
Let's first look at the term headless. Headless is the name of an architectural principle where the back end – the part or parts of the system responsible for data and business logic – doesn't have a presentation layer. Instead, features and data are made available in APIs (application programming interface – in short, standardized ways for applications to talk to each other). Therefore, the term API first is also often used to describe the idea of building and developing back-end functionality primarily to meet a specification of how the API should work, rather than how the graphical user interface (GUI) should behave.
This way of thinking is in many ways driven by the extensive business digitalization that we have all been through in the last 15 years – whether we have been at the forefront riding the top of the wave or have been swept away by the current, bewildered, and powerless.
As e-commerce and other digital services have gone from being a marginal side business to becoming the primary delivery model for most companies that aim to be part of the battle for customers, the associated technical solutions have also grown in significance, size, and not least complexity. The early beginnings of the "online store" or "website" were often a stand-alone publishing solution where both input and output were handled manually by one or two dedicated enthusiasts. But today's solutions are often almost living organisms that process large amounts of data and run through massive revenues at a tremendous speed.