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TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE

Introduction: What is Headless Commerce?

Headless Commerce vs Traditional Ecommerce

Why headless, and why now?

Making is Big: Headless Commerce Use Cases

Unlocking Flexibility: Examples of Headless Commerce

How Headless Commerce is Built: Our Example

The Opening of SaaS (and the web)

Executive Summary

3

8

11

14

18

23

27

33

01

Businesses are living in an era of wealth, liquidity and mobility.

• Amazon blew past $1 trillion in market value in September 2018.

• Walmart picked up brands Bare Necessities, Art.com, and Eloquii, before recently acquiring Aspectiva, and AI-led product comparison and review tool.

• Netflix recently surpassed Disney in value.

• Procter & Gamble expanded its reach by swooping up a number of small healthcare and personal care brands like L., Form and Bevel from Walker & Company Brands, and First Aid Beauty.

What do all of these companies have in common?

They save people time effectively adding hours to our days otherwise spent in search of commodities or entertainment - this ultimately delivers convenience.

Plus, time is money.

3 Headless Commerce: Introduction

Introduction: What is Headless Commerce?

4 Headless Commerce: Introduction

This blending of content and commerce to provide for both experience and consumerism is not

unique to any of these large brands — though they arguably do it the best.

In fact, traditional and digital native vertical brands across the globe are working fast to implement

similar strategies.

Agencies are not far behind, picking up the pace with which their technology offerings operate — as

well as tailoring new go-to-market strategies to encompass this new approach.

Headless commerce is one such example strategy, an experience-led ecommerce model.

Headless commerce is the decoupling of the presentation layer from the ecommerce platform,

typically for more flexibility in content delivery, UX and even SEO.

Ecommerce platforms in this model serve up PCI compliance, security, fraud management and

inventory management that can also connect to larger, key infrastructure points such as ERPs, PIMs,

OMS and POS.

For agencies, this opens up a world of possibility from a client acquisition standpoint, as well as

a way to offer more digital ecommerce options. Brands who live on WordPress and other CMS

platforms no longer need to re-platform to get ecommerce added into their digital experience —

which saves time, money, and headache.

From an agency offering standpoint, it’s easy to see how headless commerce can provide more

options when it comes to ecommerce platforms. For content-focused brands like lifestyle products,

direct to consumer (DTC) brands, and brands relying heavily on influencer and native advertising, a

content-lead strategy like headless commerce is often a no-brainer.

5 Headless Commerce: Introduction

The State of Ecommerce in 2019

To understand the state of retail — especially ecommerce — think of it this way:

1. Amazon is the commodity market.

Meaning if brands sell their products there, they are competing for mindshare, especially from

Amazon itself, and are subject to immense pricing pressures within the context of the most

respected brands in the world.

In recent months, Amazon has proven that it is planning on pushing more and more native products

onto their platform, potentially shutting out third-party brands, especially those who do not use

Amazon fulfillment services.

But more than 50% of Americans begin their product search on Amazon, so it’s wise to think of

Amazon as a sales channel rather than a competitor — at least while you’re helping a merchant

build out an omnichannel strategy.

Still, though it produces short-term profit, it eats into long-term return — and that’s not accounting

for any future Amazon initiatives that eat into additional markets. Amazon is not the be-all, end-all;

nor should it be seen as the first channel to use in a brand’s go-to-market strategy. Instead, look for

an approach that solidifies a brand’s presence and voice — while also offering steady ecommerce

functionality and easy checkout.

2. Traditional retailers are quickly going direct-to-consumer.

Big box stores are realizing they have lost community, and thus brand recognition, due to the

thousands of digital native brands (DNVBs) that have focused solely on establishing a lasting

connection with consumers.

But shifting to direct-to-consumer from a B2B wholesale model isn’t easy. Tech debt from historic

open source or custom-built ecommerce technology solutions slows down internal decision making

and threatens internal innovation and testing.

This is where a lot of agency expertise comes in. While it’s a hefty undertaking to move a traditional

retailer into the lean, streamlined digital ecommerce space, it’s a technique that many agencies

have mastered by working largely with brands in that vertical to begin with.

6 Headless Commerce: Introduction

3. Digital native brands number in the tens of thousands.

This is in part thanks to SaaS ecommerce technology, which allows brands to rapidly build modern

ecommerce websites affordably.

Without the size to go after wholesale markets, these nimble brands have built grassroots

communities, conquered social media advertising, and are making true waves in digital native

advertising — that is, advertising that you don’t even know is advertising.

While digital native brands often lack the marketing budgets of the mid-market or enterprise

brands they hope to displace, they are highly effective marketing and community building

machine. Digital native brands are also often the first to use high-powered and tech-savvy agencies

to help build out the brand voice, user experience, and digital presence.

These brands are causing much larger competitors to respond either through acquisition (like our

Walmart and Procter & Gamble examples) — or head-to-head competition.

7 Headless Commerce: Introduction

This state of ecommerce affairs has resulted in 3 main ways businesses go after increased online

share:

1. Monolithic.

This is where ecommerce first started, back in the days when hardware and software were

inextricably linked. For instance, if you buy IBM hardware you must then, therefore, use IBM

software. The industry has largely since evolved from this model.

2. Commerce-led.

This strategy uses a commerce platform front-end for UX and checkout, but APIs for data

orchestration across a more robust infrastructure.

Businesses using this model often implement a PIM, ERP and OMS for product information

management, accounting and customer integration and inventory management across channels.

Businesses using this model are typically using SaaS or open source technologies.

3. Experience-led.

This strategy decouples the presentation layer from the ecommerce platform using popular CMS

solutions like WordPress for unparalleled content experiences that increase brand value perception

and drive to checkout.

In this model, the ecommerce platform has the potential to provide all core commerce functionality

— including catalog management, transactions, order/shipping management, PCI compliance and

inventory management – and it can also be connected to additional systems like ERPs, PIMs, or

OMS tools via APIs.

E X P E R I E N C E - L E DCO M M E R C E - L E DM O N O L I T H I C

S I N G L E CO M M E R C E

CO M M E R C ECO R E

WCM

DOM

MVT eCRM

UGC

PERS .

H E A D L E S SCO M M E R C E

DXP (CMS)

MVT

eCRM

UGC

PERS .

DOM

02

What is the impetus behind a move to new ecommerce models?

Amazon. With 55% of product searches happening on Amazon, brands cannot afford to not be

there. But Amazon is a commodity market. Therefore, brands are looking for ways to turn their sites

into value destinations driven by community, content and brand experiences.

The Traditional Ecommerce Model

The most traditional ecommerce model is the monolithic model. Many brands still use a monolithic

strategy, and many agencies still recommend a monolithic strategy for enterprise and well-

established brands.

The downsides to a monolithic strategy are slow go-to-market timelines and high development

costs. This delays innovation.

Upsides to a monolithic model are full platform control for the IT department — which may come in

handy if an ecommerce strategy or site experience needs extreme customization.

8 Headless Commerce: Headless Commerce vs. Traditional Ecommerce

Headless Commerce vs. Traditional Ecommerce

9 Headless Commerce: Headless Commerce vs. Traditional Ecommerce

Open SaaS Ecommerce Model

Commerce-led or commerce-first models use APIs for data orchestration and give relative control

to IT teams for infrastructure connectivity. On a SaaS platform, the number of API calls available is

important to making sure this functions properly.

Open SaaS is a SaaS platform architecture choice. It includes the following:

• High or unlimited API call volumes.

• Multiple endpoints.

• Well-documented developer documents.

• A heavy focus on API development in product roadmap make.

This is what an open SaaS architecture looks like.

STO R E F R O N T D E S I G N( P R E S E N TAT I O N L AY E R )

R E P O R T I N G & A N A LY T I C S

2 -WAY R E ST A P I L AY E R

U S E R E X P E R I E N C E

PersonalizationAdvanced

MerchandisingUser Generated

ContentBehavior Based

PromotionsFront-end

Coding/ScriptingPixel Tracking

MarketingPromotionsOmnichannel

ProductCatalog & Content

Orders Cart/Checkout

CustomerData

O M SE R P P I M C R M C M S P O S

10 Headless Commerce: Headless Commerce vs. Traditional Ecommerce

Headless Commerce Model

Headless commerce takes open SaaS one step further, completely decoupling the presentation

layer of the ecommerce platform.

API connectivity and robustness is important in ensuring data orchestration across the decoupled

systems.

This is what the headless commerce model looks like.

CO N T E N T D I ST R I B U T I O N

P O I N T O F SA L E

W E B A P P

M O B I L E A P P

U S D | W H O L E SA L EB I G C O M M E R C E

U S D | E N G L I S H

E U R | F R E N C H

M U LT I - P L AT F O R MS H O P P I N G

CO N T E N T & CO M M E R C EP L AT F O R M S

H E A D L E S S C M S

H E A D L E S S CO M M E R C EB I G C O M M E R C E

D E V E LO P E R S

S H O P P E R S

A P I L AY E R

03 Why headless, and why now?

There are multiple benefits to using both commerce-led or a content-led ecommerce strategy.

Content-led strategies using headless commerce can provide brands increased:

1. Site customization and personalization options.

2. Flexibility, familiarity and fund-savings for developers.

3. Marketing effectiveness for innovation without hurting backend processes.

4. Speed to market for international and omnichannel GTMs.

As an agency, offering a headless approach allows you to implement ecommerce with brands that

are already using a CMS platform, without making them do a full re-platform — thus maintaining

their important content-first strategy.

Additionally, headless commerce opens up a world of possibilities with brands that are looking for a

content-led strategy to begin with. There are now truly no limitations to the customizations that can

occur in the digital ecommerce space.

1. More customization and personalization.

Brands looking to drive increased engagement on their sites through content experiences are often

best serviced by a headless commerce approach.

11 Headless Commerce: Why headless, and why now?

12 Headless Commerce: Why headless, and why now?

This gives you the flexibility of a CMS like WordPress or Drupal with the security of an ecommerce

platform like BigCommerce, which manages PCI compliance and checkout uptime, among other

aspects.

If your agency specializes in unique branding or web experiences, now’s the time to hop in and plug

your services into the ecommerce world.

2. Increased flexibility, familiarity and fund-savings for developers.

Facebook.com and WordPress sites attract roughly the same number of monthly unique visitors, but Facebook does it with 25X the employee count.

WordPress employs less than 400 people.

All the rest of the work being done for sites using WordPress is accomplished via agency or

freelance developers and designers.

And with nearly 30% of the modern web using WordPress, some studies suggest that upward of

25% of freelance developers make their entire salary off of WordPress development.

Indeed, you can throw a stone in any direction in most cities in the U.S. and have it land within a few

feet of a WordPress developer. That is how ubiquitous WordPress development is.

Going the headless route can lower the total cost of entrance to launch because it saves time in

finding a skilled developer. The developer can work directly in WordPress instead of in the backend

system of an ecommerce platform that may have a proprietary coding language.

With developer cost savings, your clients will have more budget free to spend on your agency’s

value-add services.

1313 Headless Commerce: Why headless, and why now?

3. Marketing effectiveness for innovation.

The keys to growing ecommerce revenue month-over-month is innovation at speed and at cost.

Agencies and ecommerce marketing teams need to be able to get programs and campaigns up

quickly, A/B test them and then double down on what is working and get rid of what isn’t.

A headless commerce approach can make this easy for everyone. Working within a familiar CMS

speeds up productivity, while maintaining the security, inventory syncing and data orchestration

needed for the larger organization.

4. Speed to market in new geographies or channels.

Combine all of the advantages above and now apply them to the process of launching in new

geographies or launching micro-brands.

Once you have the system setup, the headless commerce route is easily replicable across the board,

optimized for international SEO and connected to the overall data orchestration infrastructure.

04 Making it Big: Headless Commerce Use Cases

There are a variety of content management software solutions in the market — chances are, as an

agency, you’ve worked with each of them at least once.

Whether your clients prefer WordPress or Drupal, want to upgrade to BloomReach or have their

own custom built solution — headless commerce still works in just about any use case.

All you need is an API connection to decouple the BigCommerce presentation layer and then plug

the platform in to where you need it to work.

The most common reasons for using a decoupled SaaS ecommerce platform in combination with a

CMS solution are:

\ PCI Compliance mitigation: Less work for IT teams, as the SaaS provider takes on the risk.

\ Checkout security and fraud protection: Same as above. Less work for IT teams as the SaaS provider takes on the risk.

\ Open architecture & extensibility: Utilize pre-built integrations with ERPs, CRMs and more, or custom build your own with additional APIs and SDKs.

14 Headless Commerce: Making it Big

1515 Headless Commerce: Making it Big

Here are a few of the more popular CMS solutions used in a headless commerce implementation.

1. WordPress.

WordPress is the CMS of choice for more than 30 million websites around the globe.

As such, it is the leading CMS on market. Brands from the start-up next door to The New York Times

use WordPress to run their businesses.

Historically, combining ecommerce with the power that is WordPress’s content solution has been

difficult.

WooCommerce was for a long time the only serious player in that market. However,

WooCommerce’s drag on site speed as well as high-cost for security and implementation

(WooCommerce is an open source solution) have pushed would-be users to lower-cost SaaS

ecommerce platforms.

Those ecommerce platforms, however, have historically had a poor content management system

(CMS).

After all, it isn’t what they were built for.

With BigCommerce’s recent launch of the BigCommerce for WordPress plugin, there is now a

scalable, SaaS solution available for the WordPress brand.

BigCommerce also partners with WPEngine and Nexcess for unparalleled WordPress hosting

support.

“Razoyo is excited to be involved with BC partnership from several aspects. We

believe the future of headless commerce rests in the ability to marry an easy to

use CMS system with best in class e-commerce capabilities. We feel the WPBC

path is exactly what content rich, product focused merchants are looking for.” — JASON BOSLOW, BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT AND SALES MANAGER, RAZOYO

1616 Headless Commerce: Making it Big

2. Drupal.

Drupal is considered the leading enterprise CMS solution.

One of the main reasons why Drupal is preferred by enterprise organization is its security. Drupal

is the preferred CMS for governmental agencies and websites like whitehouse.gov because of the

high level of security. In addition, Drupal is designed for custom development.

Whereas in the WordPress community, folks like to use plugins (hence the BigCommerce for

WordPress plugin), folks in the Drupal community like to custom build. As a result of custom build

versus plugins, Drupal often doesn’t have the same site load lag times as WordPress — and it can

handle a much larger volume of content. Other than that, some designers, developers and editors

just plain prefer Drupal over WordPress.

BigCommerce partners with hosting providers Acquia and Pantheon to deliver a world-class

headless commerce experience on Drupal.

“The WordPress and Acquia integrations with BigCommerce certainly stand out for

marketers. As decoupled and headless commerce solutions become increasingly

popular for marketers to deliver dynamic content across many devices, the

demand for a rock solid back-end platform capable of supporting a larger number

of API calls becomes even greater. From both a cost and performance standpoint,

BigCommerce is one of the best options to utilize for this type of setup.” — ALEC BERKLEY, CHANNEL SALES EXECUTIVE, SILK SOFTWARE

1717 Headless Commerce: Making it Big

3. Bloomreach (Hippo).

Bloomreach is a digital experience platform.

Large, enterprise retailers are a perfect fit for this headless commerce CMS solution. Bloomreach

offers a microservice architecture and APIs to reduce IT complexity in powering a truly customer-

focused experience from homepage to checkout. In addition, innovations around AI-powered

search and merchandising make Bloomreach a popular choice for complex and hyper-focused

multi-channel brands.

If you are running a complete omnichannel business, BloomReach’s microservice architecture and

partnership with BigCommerce for a headless commerce solution is worth taking a look at.

4. Custom Solutions.

Working with a client that has a custom CMS solution? No problem.

Custom content management systems can use BigCommerce’s APIs to decouple the BigCommerce

presentation layer, plugging in the back-end system to maintain PCI compliance, checkout security

and fraud management –– along with inventory management and integration to ERPs, CRMs and

more.

CENTRAL DIGITAL

EXPERIENCE PLATFORM

CUSTOMER

MARKETING AUTOMATION

MARKETING

IT

SALES

PRODUCT MANAGEMENT

SITE BEHAVIOR

PRODUCT SPECIFICATIONS

INVENTORY MANAGEMENT

CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT

05 Unlocking Flexibility: Examples of Headless Commerce

First of all, it’s often very difficult to tell if a brand is using headless commerce as a strategy just by

looking at it.

This will only become more so true as headless commerce becomes more mainstream and loses its

URL redirect to a checkout page.

For the time being, let’s look at a few headless commerce examples.

1. Kodak.

Kodak uses WordPress on the front-end to host their products, blog content and merchandising.

18 Headless Commerce: Unlocking Flexibility

1919 Headless Commerce: Unlocking Flexibility

For checkout, they outsource PCI compliance, checkout uptime and security to BigCommerce.

This also allows them to use integrated payment options like Amazon Pay, PayPal One Touch, Apple

Pay and more without having to do the interaction work themselves.

This saves time, saves money, increases security and allows for fast innovation and campaign launch

to remain competitive in the industry.

2. Bindertek.

Hosted on WordPress with ecommerce functionality from BigCommerce, the Bindertek website

uses a 1-page checkout to get users quickly into and out of the buying funnel.

20 Headless Commerce: Unlocking Flexibility20

3. Carluccio’s.

Carluccio’s built this presentation layer (i.e. the site experience) on WordPress, then used the

BigCommerce for WordPress plugin to implement a headless commerce solution.

This allows a customer to stay on the same site (no subdomain) throughout the experience.

Here is how it works. Watch that URL.

Homepage.

Category Page.

2121 Headless Commerce: Unlocking Flexibility

Product Page.

Checkout Page.

2222 Headless Commerce: Unlocking Flexibility

4. Duxiana.

With a front-end built on the Sitecore CMS, Duxiana maintains the rich and detailed imagery that

helps illustrate the benefits and features of their products — while also having powerful and secure

ecommerce on the back-end for the purchasing process.

Duxiana mattresses have a lot of customizable features, so it was important that they maintained a

management system that solved for all of the different variants that the product may have.

06 How Headless Commerce is Built: Our Example

Author: Corinne Watson

Years ago, BigCommerce was built from scratch.

We had to define how things function on the front-end based on inputs

from the backend.

For example, we built the concept of a product catalog on the backend,

including title, images, reviews, warranty info, and more.

We’ve also built out how those backend inputs translate into the

structure of a product page on the core BigCommerce platform.

So when you visit a page to shop, the images you see are displayed there

by choice. The font size, placement of the title, the product details, etc. all

had to be determined.

This is what we call Stencil — our version of a front-end CMS, if you will.

When you add a theme into the mix, the theme is still using the same

Stencil foundation, but getting more particular in terms of how the layout

should change, what style customizations need to be applied, what

product information needs to be present (or removed), and more.

23 Headless Commerce: How Headless Commerce is Built

2424 Headless Commerce: How Headless Commerce is Built

With headless commerce, while core elements of the BigCommerce backend can live and breathe

outside our SaaS platform within another system, there’s no structure in place in those other

systems — similar to how we treat Stencil.

When we first approached the building of the WordPress plugin, we had to basically go line-by-line

of the core BigCommerce platform, code and functionality to determine

1. If that feature/functionality would be rebuilt inside WordPress, and

2. What that would look like.

A good example of this would be something like furniture inside a house.

My house is fully furnished and the furniture in each room was selected for a reason. The layout of

the furniture was determined by me based on usability, function, and parameters of the room.

Even the concept of having rooms is something that is unique. If I were to hire movers and take all

the furniture from my house and put it into a different house that has zero rooms, just raw open

space, and without instruction, it would just be nonsensical and not at all functional.

The same thing happens with headless commerce.

25 Headless Commerce: How Headless Commerce is Built25

In this example, furniture is the product catalog, movers are the API, and the rooms are the various

pages that we’ve built inside BigCommerce (i.e. product page, cart, checkout, account information,

etc.).

Sure, you can hire movers and they’ll get the furniture moved, but if it’s done at random with no

organization, nothing will be accomplished.

With our BigCommerce for WordPress initiative, we built an external-to-BigCommerce framework

that gives order to chaos.

So when you connect a BigCommerce store to WordPress, not only does the right information get

passed over to WordPress, but the plugin itself

1. Builds the “rooms” of the house (so to speak)

2. Knows exactly what “furniture” is coming through, and

3. Knows where that “furniture” is supposed to go.

This template for commerce we built is what we’re calling our reference implementation.

It’s worth calling out that not every piece of “furniture” might be needed in the new house.

Maybe you’re moving into a smaller place and you just need the bare essentials. (For example, a

non-indexed microsite that you simply want to act as a landing page of sorts, like a soda company

wanting to test out a new flavor. All they would need would be product details and the ability to

serve up a checkout experience).

Maybe you’re moving into a much bigger place that already has furniture and you need to make

sure your furniture works with and integrates nicely in the new environment.

The beauty of the approach we took with BigCommerce for WordPress is one that can be applied to

a variety of other systems (different CMS, DXP, and other platforms). This reference implementation

then becomes the basis for others to use as a guide for how to build BigCommerce into a different

system.

We made significant changes to the BigCommerce platform to enable all of this. We now treat

individual “heads” as unique channels.

26 Headless Commerce: How Headless Commerce is Built26

Previously, our concept of channels was limited to marketplaces and several POS systems.

Now, BigCommerce customers can treat channels as any place where they wish to be selling.

So you can now build a mobile app and embed our checkout in it. You could take our APIs and

create product overlays in proprietary video software. You can connect the catalog to 30 different

WordPress sites and still be running a BigCommerce Stencil B2B site as well.

This is how you achieve true omnichannel commerce.

“BigCommerce is pushing the envelope of commerce. Their efforts to

pioneer ‘headless’ commerce is one of the most exciting initiatives we

are seeing from any platform.” — ALLEN BURT, FOUNDER & CEO, BLUE STOUT

07 The Opening of SaaS (and the web)

Author: Jason Greenwood

It’s decision time for your agency’s clients.

Time to decide whether they’re going to use an old self-hosted platform and business model that

holds them back, or make a game-changing decision to use cloud and SaaS to take their business

into the future.

For merchants, Amazon’s commodity market is profitable, but earns little brand equity.

And micro-brands numbering in the thousands are chipping away at THAT brand recognition and

loyalty — with much smaller teams and much smaller budgets.

These merchants getting squeezed in the middle — and there’s only one way to stop it: innovate at

speed and cost.

If they don’t, the company won’t be around in five years.

They simply won’t be able to compete.

I know that because I’ve seen a lot of changes to the world of ecommerce since I started working in

the industry over 15 years ago.

27 Headless Commerce: The Opening of SaaS

28 Headless Commerce: The Opening of SaaS28

Back then, nearly all of the ecommerce sites I built were bespoke, self-hosted solutions.

I worked for a Magento Gold Partner agency for almost 5 years, and during that time I saw the many

limitations and challenges of self-hosted ecommerce platforms.

Although they were designed with flexibility in mind, many necessary functions like integrating

other systems or securing development talent at any kind of reasonable cost were massive money

and time debt centers.

The plain truth of it was that self-hosted platforms like Magento were very complex to work with

and took a long time to go to market.

But, they were the only options available. That’s no longer the case.

Why SaaS: Making the Move

When I worked on the agency side, we started building ecommerce sites on SaaS platforms like

BigCommerce.

I already knew the benefits of SaaS across other pieces of the commerce platform stack, including:

\ Omnichannel commerce technologies.

\ OMS Systems.

\ WM Systems.

\ ERPs like NetSuite.

I quickly saw that working on SaaS ecommerce platforms was so much easier than working with

self-hosted platforms, especially at the enterprise level with integrated systems.

The SaaS benefits are easy to see: it is so much less expensive, doesn’t require an army of

specialized developers, and companies can go to market much faster.

This is how those micro-brands outcompete you with less resources and capital. And you can fight

back.

Traditional retailers are starting to realize the benefits software as a service, and of making the

move to SaaS.

29 Headless Commerce: The Opening of SaaS29

I saw the writing on the wall.

In fact, I witnessed a large migration to SaaS across the entire commerce and business technology

stack, not just the ecommerce platform itself.

However, large organizations don’t always move as quickly as they should — even when it’s in their

best interests.

Fear and technology investment debt are holding traditional retailers back, allowing Amazon (and

other marketplaces) to strike from the top and micro-brands to attack in the thousands from below.

Death by a thousand cuts if you will.

The black swan for your business isn’t a disrupting startup. It’s a line item on your P&L.

The Fear of the Unknown

I started recommending SaaS ecommerce platforms to my customers, but many initially pushed

back and were hesitant to make the move.

Although they wouldn’t say it directly, I think the fear of the unknown kept them from making the

logical move to SaaS.

Let me explain.

When you have a legacy with any self-hosted technology, you’re loathe to throw out those

investments.

You’ve made massive investments in people, processes, and technology to get up to speed on your

self-hosted platform, and you feel like all of that will have been a waste if you go to SaaS.

When you’ve invested heavily in people with back-end development skills, you’re worried about

what all those developers are going to work on if you move to a SaaS platform.

And believe me, I get it:

Making the decision to move away from traditional on-premise software that is in its little silo of

ownership and management within the business can be extremely difficult.

It threatens your position of knowledge, of authority, of power, of control. It may even threaten

your livelihood and potentially your career if you get it wrong.

30 Headless Commerce: The Opening of SaaS30

In short, it all comes down to the fear factor.

It’s change, and many people perceive change to:

\ Be too difficult.

\ Be too expensive.

\ Take too much time and planning.

But in my experience, when it comes to business, what change really takes is leadership and vision

more than anything else.

The Digital Influence

Digital is driving your businesses to change whether you like it or not.

It behooves you to work with vendors, partners, and consultants who have a track record of success.

Partnering with the right people that can give you the confidence you need to move forward is

critical for making the move to SaaS.

The need for speed-to-market in terms of the initial build, integrations, and deployment of the stack

is important for this switch, but it’s also the need for speed in the evolution of the user experience

for your customer.

On self-hosted platforms, change is more painful. The simple truth is that self-hosted technologies

are not designed for the pace of change of business today.

With self-hosted technology, you can literally spend months configuring, testing, and load-testing

the infrastructure behind the technology as opposed to actually being in market making money.

Again, the SaaS benefits here are clear: you can be in market within weeks, avoid all of the

development hassles, dramatically lower your costs, and not have to worry about security since

SaaS ecommerce companies handle PCI compliance.

31 Headless Commerce: The Opening of SaaS31

Disruptors, Led by APIs, Are Forcing Change

Three of the most disruptive factors that I’ve seen in my 15 years in digital are mobile, SaaS, and

APIs.

These three disruptors are closely related in many respects, but API-led connectivity, an API-led

technology, an API-led organization, an API-led economy is the future.

This is yet another benefit of the SaaS model: the API-led approach sets them up perfectly for the

future of commerce where best-of-breed technologies can be easily added as custom integrations.

Self-hosted platforms are going to be left behind.

Emerging Ecommerce Trends

Many trends are taking shape in ecommerce, but maybe none more prevalent than voice commerce.

It’s already more disruptive than most businesses can appreciate.

In fact, voice is changing online shopping as we know it.

While the vast majority of ecommerce businesses still rely on organic, paid, and email channels to

drive traffic, we’re moving to a voice-driven world where this model becomes totally challenging —

especially if you aren’t an omnichannel business.

If you don’t believe that voice is on the verge of changing ecommerce as we know it, consider these

facts:

1. Google says it has sold a Google Home device every second since October 19, 2017.

2. Amazon announced in January that over 100 million Alexa items have been sold.

Voice commerce is going to be the biggest game changer we’ve seen in commerce in probably a

decade.

Google recently implemented Shopping Actions, which effectively turns them into an Amazon-like

marketplace except that they’re not selling against their merchants.

And the transaction is going to be taking place directly within Google.

32 Headless Commerce: The Opening of SaaS32

Merchant partners of Google that are already selling via Google Shopping, which redirects back to

the merchant, is going to be a thing of the past.

Google wants to be able to clip the ticket across every stage of the transaction — from the

marketing to the payment to the fulfillment.

This is Google’s answer to a voice world and it’s going to integrate tightly with Google Home and

Google Assistant. It’s probably the biggest change to Google’s fundamental architecture that we’ve

seen since there was a Google.

Leading SaaS ecommerce platforms are developing AI integrations to be on the vanguard of voice

search technology and to give you the features you need to satisfy customers.

The Future Is Here

As we continue to move into a relationship marketing model that’s informed by content, blended

with commerce, and based on experience, you have to be extremely agile and highly adaptable to

thrive in our ever-changing marketplace.

After all, the only constant is change, and you’re going to have to get really comfortable with it

because it’s coming whether you like it or not.

SaaS ecommerce solutions are, by far, the best platforms for enabling you to quickly adapt to

change while achieving a lower total cost of ownership, a faster time to market, greater security,

and everything you need to deliver a world-class online shopping experience.

Fear isn’t an option.

08 Executive Summary

As an agency, you must recognize that some businesses, led by modern, microservices-first

technological thinking via their technical teams, don’t actually want an all-in-one platform.

Instead, these brands want to pull together several API-first products to roll into their own

ecommerce strategy and infrastructure.

This allows them to pick and choose between solutions they like with less risk and effort than a

completely custom-built platform.

There’s a strong emphasis on being able to rip and replace any particular component as business

requirements change or something better comes along.

Headless commerce’s decoupling of the

performance layer allows for this, and is a

good first step for retail businesses.

But Commerce-as-a-Service, under which

the headless commerce model falls, is

much more than the decoupling of the

performance layer. Over the next few years, expect a rise in CaaS platforms and microservice

architecture as brands choose best-of-breed solution to plug and play toward increase ecommerce

innovation and revenue.

33 Headless Commerce: Executive Summary

Remember: ecommerce currently makes up only 13% of total global sales. As that number increases,

agencies will need to be equipped with new strategies that enable growth long-term for brands

that want a content-first approach.

Having a headless commerce approach in your agency toolkit is much more than an additional

software partner — it’s an announcement that you’re dedicated to any ecommerce structure that

best molds with and facilitates the growth of your customers.

LEARN MORE

By joining the BigCommerce Partner Program, you’re coinciding amongst the most innovative and specialized voices in ecommerce — especially when it comes to complex content-driven initiatives like headless commerce.

Discover more about the BigCommerce Partner Program today and talk to an expert about how our brands can work together.