Headless commerce

The platform vendor Shopify documents the model for its own platform: the merchant builds the frontend, and Shopify Shopify Shopify is a subscription-based commerce platform: merchants either have Shopify host their online shop or build their own shop front on its Storefront API. Read in the glossary → 's APIs API An API (application programming interface) is a defined set of functions and rules that lets one piece of software use the features or data of another system or service. Read in the glossary → run the selling underneath. Because the two sides are kept apart, other business systems can be connected to either side, for example systems for content management (CMS), customer relationship management (CRM), enterprise resource planning ERP ERP (enterprise resource planning) is cross-departmental business software that manages and analyses processes such as production, sales, logistics, finance and human resources. Read in the glossary → (ERP) or product information management PIM PIM (product information management) means keeping product data in one central system and distributing it from there to sales channels such as online shops. (PIM).

The same documentation does not hide the drawbacks: a headless storefront costs more to build and run than a theme. Shopify advises merchants, before they commit, to make sure they accept the added cost and complexity and have developers to look after the storefront after launch.

In our bespoke development, headless commerce is one option once standard shop systems hit their limits. For such cases we also build merchant portals, custom dashboards and domain-specific data models, on Symfony Symfony Symfony is an open-source PHP framework, a ready-made foundation for web applications, released under the MIT licence and developed by its community to a fixed release schedule. Read in the glossary → , which we have worked with for years.