With eCommerce, the “new kid in town” is headless. But is it time for you to make the switch? Let’s look at some of the reasons why moving your business to a new platform might not be a bad idea.

Speed, and Why It Matters

Let’s talk about speed. For what seems like a long time now, Google has started rolling speed into their page-rankings in the form of the Page Speed Index. While the update was never just about speed (in its most distilled form, it was really about user experience), sites that took speed to heart made strides in improving their rankings within the algorithm.

So how does your platform choice affect your performance in this area? Let’s look at probably the two biggest eCommerce players who aren’t Shopify and Amazon; WooCommerce and Magento.

While Magento made strides to deeply improve their platform around 2015 with the launch of Magento 2, one could easily make the argument that the decision-makers didn’t push for enough change. The platform uses XML documents for managing the entire layout, instead of template-like structures that are easier to read, manage, and manipulate. It not only makes development slow and tedious, but can actually cause developers to make poor decisions in the interest of fulfilling a design – choices that can lead to poor image optimization, poorly implemented Javascript, or even page related queries. All of which will affect the actual time it takes for the site to reach its intended audience.

WooCommerce, on the other hand, has a different problem. While the core templates are easily manageable, and one can make a fast WordPress installation, you’re still relying on underlying tech that was built for writing blogs. Optimizations are harder to make, and recommended plugins (some with dubious claims and even more dubious results) are the best option you have to help with speed.

SKU Counts, Oh My

One of the first signs that you might be ready for a platform move is likely something you’d see with WooCommerce before you see it with Magento 2, and that’s SKU count growth.

While WooCommerce generally works for smaller stores (think “Mom and Pops,” small brick-and-mortar retailers), the holes quickly start appearing when you’re adding layers of additional SKUs and variants on top of the core platform. Managing items can be tedious, with variants forcing you to navigate through multiple layers of product tabs. Want to add custom reports for the data you want? That means hiring someone with strong WordPress skills to pull apart the table design and get the data you need exposed, all while feeding into Woocommerce’s reporting tools.

The same can also be true for Magento. Data normalization starts to become a very difficult task. Managing search facets can be confusing and difficult to fully understand, often requiring the help of developers to fully flesh out. Platforms like UltraCommerce understand this, and have built tools for data normalization that work directly with their platforms. Gone are the days of manually maintaining spreadsheets filled with various vendors and their different ways of specifying data—you get the power and tools you need to make sure the data that ends up in your platform is exactly the way you want it, on a more automated level.

Add-Ons, Apps, and Growth

Another precipice for looking at new platforms is likely something you’re already all too familiar with—app/add-on growth.

If you’re consistently adding apps to your storefront to provide the tools you need to do business, you may want to ask yourself why your platform of choice doesn’t already come with some of those tools.

Apps are great. Having options is never a bad thing. But if your core business is built on apps that you had to add to your core platform—it’s probably time to look at some other options.

The Trap of Foundational Knowledge

One of the things we found out early in talking with eCommerce business owners is that organizations are typically pretty change-adverse. They want to use the platform, tools, and technology that they’ve spent the last few years working with. They know it has problems, but they’d rather continue down the same path because, well, change is hard.

Change will never not be fraught with its own problems. Retooling and relearning are difficult tasks, after all. But in the world of eCommerce—where sites compete not just on a local level, but on a global one—your business needs to change with the competition. Whether that’s adding new features, following design trends, or adding new payment methods (Bitcoin may be down, but is it out?), change will come for your business.

But this is why headless ecommerce was designed. It splits your business into two (equal; dun dun) parts: your backend (where all of your business logic is handled), and your frontend (what your customers see and interact with). It lets your business team build a solid foundation for processes that can last for a long, stable amount of time, while giving your marketing teams the control, the access, and the flexibility to do what they want.

After all, your customer only sees the product. They don’t see the years of process and learning you’ve made.

Want to learn more about headless eCommerce, our thoughts on the current state of eCommerce, or related technology? Tune into our UltraCommerce x Eightfold webinar on August 24th to have an opportunity to ask your questions.