Headless Commerce: Decouple Your Storefront for Maximum Speed and Flexibility

Traditional ecommerce platforms couple your frontend to their backend, limiting your design options and slowing your pages. Headless commerce separates the two, giving you sub-second storefronts built with modern frameworks while your commerce backend handles the business logic.

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higher conversion for 1-second sites versus 5-second sites, a performance gap headless architecture is designed to close

Portent, 2022

Headless Commerce Development

Decoupled commerce architecture that separates your storefront from your commerce backend, enabling sub-second load times, omnichannel selling, and total frontend design freedom.

What's Included

Everything you get with our Headless Commerce Development

Custom Storefront Application

React, Next.js, or Astro storefront with static generation, edge caching, and sub-second page loads connected to your commerce backend via API

Commerce API Integration Layer

Abstraction layer between your storefront and commerce backend that normalizes data and provides resilient error handling

Omnichannel Content Architecture

Content and product data structured for delivery to web, mobile app, kiosk, and any future channel through a single API

Our Headless Commerce Development Process

Architecture and Backend Selection

We evaluate headless commerce backends like Shopify Hydrogen, Medusa, Saleor, and CommerceTools based on your catalog size, pricing complexity, and integration requirements. We design the API layer and data flow architecture.

Storefront Development

We build the custom storefront with React, Next.js, or Astro, implementing static generation for product and collection pages, client-side cart interactions, and server-side checkout processing for security.

Integration and Content Architecture

We connect the storefront to your commerce backend, CMS, inventory system, and payment processor through the API abstraction layer. Content models are designed for omnichannel delivery.

Performance Testing and Launch

We load-test the storefront under realistic traffic conditions, validate checkout flows with live payment sandbox testing, and launch with CDN configuration and performance monitoring.

Key Benefits

Sub-second page loads that boost conversion

Static generation and edge caching deliver product pages in under 500ms globally. When Akamai's research says every 100ms costs 7% in conversions, being 2 to 3 seconds faster than competitors translates directly into higher revenue per visitor.

Total frontend design freedom

No theme constraints, no template limitations, no platform-specific design conventions. Your storefront is a custom application built with React, Next.js, or Astro, with pixel-perfect control over every element of the shopping experience.

Omnichannel from a single source of truth

Products, pricing, inventory, and content live in your commerce backend and are delivered via API to any channel: website, mobile app, POS, voice commerce, or social selling. Update once, publish everywhere.

Research & Evidence

Backed by industry research and proven results

Page Load Time and Conversions

A site that loads in 1 second converts at 3x the rate of a 5-second site, making the performance advantage of headless architecture directly revenue-impactful

Portent (2022)

The State of Online Retail Performance

A 100ms delay in load time can reduce conversions by 7%, and headless architectures typically achieve 50-70% faster load times than monolithic platforms

Akamai (2017)

Frequently Asked Questions

When does headless commerce make sense?

When page speed is critical to your conversion rate, when you need a completely custom shopping experience that no theme can deliver, when you sell across multiple channels and need a single source of truth, or when your marketing team needs to iterate on the storefront faster than your platform allows. Headless is typically the right choice for brands doing $1M+ in annual revenue where the performance investment pays for itself in conversion gains.

Is headless commerce more expensive to build?

Yes, the initial build is typically 30-50% more expensive than a traditional theme-based store. However, the ongoing performance advantage means higher conversion rates, and the API-first architecture means adding new channels like mobile apps or POS requires frontend work only, not rebuilding the entire commerce stack. For brands at scale, the ROI is significant.

Which headless commerce backend should we use?

Shopify Hydrogen is excellent if you are already in the Shopify ecosystem and want their checkout reliability. Medusa and Saleor are strong open-source options for teams that want full control. CommerceTools and BigCommerce Catalyst are enterprise options for complex catalog and pricing requirements. We will recommend the backend that fits your specific needs.

Can we migrate from a traditional platform to headless gradually?

Yes. A common approach is to keep your existing platform as the commerce backend and build a headless frontend that consumes its APIs. This lets you get the performance benefits of headless while keeping your existing catalog management, order processing, and fulfillment workflows intact. The migration is progressive and low-risk.

Related Services

Explore more of our ecommerce development services

Give Your Customers a Storefront That Loads Instantly

Tell us about your commerce requirements and performance goals. We will show you how headless architecture delivers the speed your competitors cannot match.

Explore Headless Commerce