When the power shifts to the customer
AI is shifting power from platforms and consultancies back to the customer. But it takes domain knowledge, sound architecture and consultants who actually consult.
Headless without a head
'Go headless, and the hard part is solved.' A claim I have heard many times in recent years. The freedom to pick isolated systems that fit your specific needs, that can be swapped out, that can scale, where you pay only for what you use. It sounds like a dream. But if it really is that simple, why is not everyone doing it?
How does a headless system work?
Conceptually, headless works by having the system focus on selected parts of a larger world. Those parts can then, in a very structured and clear way, be used via an API by developers to push data in and pull it out. Sometimes there is a portal or site for administrators to view the data and modify what is in the system.
A challenge with headless systems is that they are not integrated with each other. In a way, they are large egos fighting to be the most important. As an e-commerce operator you have to work in a system that handles prices and products, and then have a different system for images and copy.
Imagine you want to change your homepage and you are working in your headless system for content. It works perfectly as long as you are working with images and copy. But hang on, at the top of the page you want to show top-selling products in a defined area. And why not another area with new brands that are trending right now? Ah, right, my headless systems do not talk to each other, and I need to work in two systems.
Where is the head?
All these different broken-up systems are good within their own domains.
But how do you get them to talk to each other? What is the consumer visiting the e-commerce site or the app supposed to use? And not to be dismissed: should employees at the e-commerce operator work across so many different systems without data being synced between them?
For several headless systems to work together for an e-commerce operator, one thing is required, and it is what everyone can see: the website, the brain behind it all. It is the website that stitches together the other systems, the ones the customer does not see: the headless systems. The website is extremely important and has to be top-class, not just in combining the underlying systems but also in ensuring performance.
The website is, in other words, the spider that on several levels has to technically orchestrate your headless systems and everything else around the site's technology.
What is the point of paying expensive invoices for headless systems that feel sluggish because you have not chosen the right hosting (Amazon, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud and so on)? Or if you have forgotten that you also need a CDN for the site? Or if the website does not cache the right things at the right time, and many other examples of technology that has to work.
The head becomes an absolutely critical point, and to a large extent it comes down to picking the right partner. A partner that understands how it should be integrated and what is required to build a top-class solution for the consumer.
Choosing headless is hard. Choosing the forgotten head is even harder. We at Commerce Mind help you choose the right headless, or not. It is not certain that headless is the right choice for you.
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