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Do You Need Headless Architecture if You Have Stores?

Posted by Amanda McLaughlin on Aug 26, 2021

The world might be shifting towards ecommerce, but physical storefronts don’t look like they’re going away anytime soon. Many companies still do most of their business in the “real world.”

Consequently, these companies may be slow to adopt headless architecture. After all, why would you optimize an ecommerce presence that only generates a minority of your sales?

As it turns out, headless architecture could actually help create a seamless experience between the physical and digital store presences.

Below, we’ll explain what headless architecture is and why stores doing most of their business in-store can still benefit from the technology.

What is Headless Architecture?

Headless architecture describes a website where the front end—such as the user interface—is decoupled from the back-end functionality (thus, a headless website). Instead, everything is connected via APIs. (Headless is a part of the MACH technology ecosystem. Learn more about that here.)

In retail, that would mean decoupling things like your user interface, digital marketplaces, and social commerce from the back end.

As a result, you can customize front-end elements without causing any disruptions to the back end of your online store.

How Headless Architecture Helps In-store Sales

Headless architecture isn’t just for customizing your online presence. Thanks to the decoupling of the front end and back end, you can easily put whatever content you want on any screen or device, not just your website.

That means you can set up a multichannel experience between the physical and digital storefronts much more easily.

A 2017 Harvard Business Review study showed that consumers who use multiple channels to browse brands actually spent more in-store. It also found that the more channels a customer uses, the higher their in-store spending.

In short: in-store affects ecommerce, and vice versa.

Benefits of Headless Architecture for Physical Retail

More Customization

Most obviously, headless ecommerce architecture offers a massive amount of customization. You have much more freedom to create a shopping experience that reflects your brand while tailoring that experience to each customer.

Integrations

You can easily integrate your business tools, which helps you earn more revenue per customer, increasing customer lifetime value.

For example, you can stitch together your CRM and marketing automation tools. If you collect customer information in-store—perhaps they sign up for loyalty rewards—you could easily arrange for them to receive an automated welcome sequence. They might buy during that sequence, giving you another sale.

Higher Sales and Revenue

As we mentioned earlier, the more channels a customer uses before a purchase, the more they’re likely to spend when they finally buy. Omnichannel strategies optimize your returns.

By giving them more options across all these channels, you’re allowing them to see more of your brand and products. As a result, they’ll be able to shop around more and thus buy more from you with each purchase.

Higher Customer Loyalty

With headless architecture, you’ll be able to provide a seamless, custom shopping experience to all your customers—in-store or online. As a result, customers will enjoy shopping at your business. They’ll gravitate to your brand time and again whenever they need more of what you sell.

Consolidated Tech

Before headless architecture, you had several technologies, each needing to be managed and kept track of.

But now, headless architecture helps you consolidate each of these functions, saving you time on managing them all.

Additionally, it saves money. You no longer have to juggle various costs associated with each independent legacy platform. You can cut your costs and make tracking tech spending easier.

Competitiveness

Here’s the thing: many brick-and-mortar stores either don’t know what headless architecture is, or they don’t think they need it.

At the same time, some do understand the benefits and are adapting to this technology at this moment. Make sure you stay ahead of the curve by leveraging headless commerce for your business.

Now that you know the advantages of headless commerce, you can get ahead of the first group of stores and keep up with the second group by adapting it. As brick-and-mortar stores close due to the ecommerce shift, you’ll be much more likely to continue growing your in-store and online sales.

What’s Next?

Headless architecture isn’t just for ecommerce-first businesses. Physical stores with any sort of ecommerce presence, no matter how small, should adopt headless commerce. It creates a unified, multichannel experience that ultimately drives sales and customer loyalty. You’ll make shopping at your store much more fun for your customers. And when shopping with you is fun, you’ll grow revenue.

At NewStore, we are the first in-store solution for headless commerce listed on the Salesforce B2C Commerce AppExchange and LINK Marketplace. Let us know how we can help you extend your digital capabilities into the store for more personalized and streamlined customer experiences.

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