Latest Headless Commerce Statistics That You Need To Know In 2024
Thinking about going headless? This overview covers the key headless commerce stats you need to know for 2024.
What is Headless Commerce?
Headless commerce architecture decouples the frontend shopping interfaces from backend ecommerce systems. This creates a flexible, API-driven infrastructure.
The frontend can be built with any technology like React or Vue. It connects to backend systems via APIs.
This provides flexibility to optimize experiences across web, mobile, and new touchpoints. Brands can use ideal technologies instead of relying on one vendor’s solution.
Headless also enables faster iterations. Frontend changes don’t require backend updates, allowing quicker optimizations without ecommerce platform constraints. Headless provides flexibility, speed, and agility.
The Numbers Say the Story
We can see the ongoing shift towards headless, and it’s no wonder investors are putting a large chunk of money into it . According to Forbes, headless commerce platforms raised over $1.65 billion in funding in 2020 and 2021.
This clearly reflects the massive potential of decoupled architectures to disrupt the ecommerce ecosystem. And this doesn’t even include 2022–23 numbers, which will likely show headless investment growing even faster.
Another survey by Salesforce found that 80% of brands without headless commerce today expect to adopt it within two years. This highlights the growing consensus that headless is the future, even among retailers currently on traditional platforms.
The Need for Speed and Agility Drives Headless Growth
Behind these adoption metrics lies a common thread: the need for greater flexibility, productivity, and speed in delivering digital experiences. Legacy monolithic platforms are struggling to support brands’ omnichannel strategies and keep up with user expectations.
With headless architecture decoupling the frontend and backend, brands can bypass these bottlenecks and innovate much faster. A study found that 77% of organizations report headless enables faster changes to their storefronts.
With composable commerce, they can achieve 80% faster development by 2023 compared to competitors.
These productivity gains demonstrate why brands are flocking to headless and composable architectures. Legacy platforms struggle to match the flexibility and speed that decoupled infrastructures offer.
Headless Enables Seamless Omnichannel Expansion
A key benefit of headless commerce is the ability to add new channels and touchpoints easily. Traditional platforms often limit brands to their supported channels and frontend frameworks.
With headless, integrating emerging channels like voice commerce, AR/VR and more is simple with API-based headless frontends. This positions brands to capitalize on rising channels and devices.
Salesforce found that 69% of brands report headless commerce enables them to expand to new channels and touchpoints faster. The composable nature of headless allows brands to build digital services having independent components.
Headless Commerce Drives More Customization and Personalization
Along with omnichannel agility, headless commerce’s component enables greater personalization and customization of experiences.
Salesforce found that 76% of brands say headless allows them to customize digital experiences and touchpoints for individual users. When the presentation layer is decoupled, personalizing across channels becomes much easier (source: State of Commerce report by Salesforce).
Read more: 4 Ways To Improve Customer Experience With Headless Strategies.
Brands gain complete control over the frontend without relying on the limits of a single vendor solution
Headless allows retailers to design and iterate experiences faster while incorporating data from customer analytics, CRM systems, and customer data platforms. The result is a personalized customer journey.
With real-time data integrated via APIs, headless storefronts can deliver tailored recommendations and experiences matching individual interests and contexts. Legacy platforms struggle to enable this level of personalization across touchpoints.
The composable nature of headless commerce empowers brands to assemble customized frontends to serve each target audience. Experiences can be optimized for different demographics, locations, languages, and other audience attributes.
According to Salesforce, 66% of brands gain improved integration between systems with headless, which is foundational to personalization. Headless provides a connectivity layer to use data.
Improved Customer Experiences and Conversion Rates
Headless empowers brands to unify data and deliver contextualized experiences to customers. This leads to measurable gains in customer satisfaction, engagement, and conversions.
According to Commercetools, 73% of brands say customers will likely take their business elsewhere when commerce experiences a lack of expectations. Headless bridges these gaps.
Salesforce reports that unified commerce experiences consistently increase revenue by over 20%, demonstrating the ROI of well-orchestrated omnichannel strategies. Seamless headless experiences better serve customers.
With actual access to customer and product data, headless storefronts can dynamically adapt to provide the right information, recommendations, and offers at the right moment. This drives higher engagement and conversions compared to static traditional platforms.
Headless Commerce Enables Major Cost Savings
The flexibility of headless commerce also provides cost savings compared to legacy monolithic platforms. With Headless, brands only pay for the specific technologies and services needed.
By contrast, legacy platforms force retailers into bloated, expansive suites with many unused features. This leads to substantial waste and overhead costs that functional organizations don’t require.
Gartner predicts that headless commerce platform costs will decrease by 30% between 2019 and 2023 as the market grows. Increased competition and demand for headless drives this cost reduction.
Headless also enables smaller overall IT spend by allowing brands to leverage best-of-breed SaaS solutions rather than massive on-premise suites. Operational costs are reduced by using more efficient cloud platforms.
Final Thought: Headless Delivers Unmatched Agility and Flexibility
The numbers show that headless commerce adoption is growing as brands require pace and innovation. Legacy platforms struggle to provide the benefits of decoupled architecture.
Headless removes friction and barriers to optimization while providing cost efficiency. It enables seamless omnichannel experiences that exceed customer expectations and drive growth.
For brands that want to compete and stay ahead of trends in the years ahead, headless is becoming imperative. The statistics clearly reflect the current and future dominance of this approach.
Yet headless commerce is still just getting started. As more brands recognize its advantages, adoption will accelerate even faster.
Read more: Know The Effectiveness Of Your Headless Commerce Strategies.
