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E-commerce vocabulary · Online Stores and Marketplaces

Headless commerce

Meaning in e-commerce, with examples

nounAdvanced term

In e-commerce, headless commerce means: A way of building an online store in which the customer-facing front end is separate from the back-end commerce system, and the two communicate through APIs.

In Turkish: headless e-ticaret, başsız ticaret mimarisi

How it is used

Used by developers, architects and larger brands. A company goes headless or moves to headless commerce to get more design freedom, faster pages or the same back end for web, app and other channels. It usually needs more development work.

Example sentences

  1. We moved to headless commerce so the website and the app could use the same back end.

  2. Headless commerce is powerful, but a small store usually doesn't need it.

Common collocations

  • go headless
  • headless commerce platform
  • headless architecture
  • front end and back end
  • e-commerce platformSoftware used to build and run an online store, covering the product catalog, cart, checkout, payments, orders and integrations with other tools.
  • storefrontThe customer-facing part of an online store: the pages, design and navigation that shoppers see, as opposed to the admin panel behind it.
  • omnichannelDescribes selling through several connected channels, such as an online store, app, marketplaces and physical shops, that share stock, customer data and one experience.
  • online storeA website or app where a business shows its products and customers can order and pay for them without visiting a physical shop.

More terms: Online Stores and Marketplaces

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