Top 9 Headless Commerce Trends You Should Know (2024)

Headless commerce has grown rapidly over the last few years, transitioning from a novel concept to an essential approach for modern digital experiences.

The headless commerce decouples the front-end presentation layer from the back-end infrastructure.

This separation provides businesses with greater flexibility, omnichannel capabilities, freedom to customize experiences, personalize customer experience, increase conversions, and multiply revenue.

The headless commerce industry has raised over $1.65 billion in funding in 2020 and 2021 together. 80% of businesses not currently leveraging headless plans to implement it within the next two years with a current average expenditure of $2.6 million.

As headless commerce gains widespread adoption, innovations and trends continue shaping its future.

By going headless, businesses can develop seamless, engaging customer experiences across all touchpoints.

Headless commerce removes friction and empowers complete personalization across web, mobile, social media, and emerging channels. For brands who want to provide memorable omnichannel experiences, headless is becoming critical.

As we progress into 2024, new trends will further evolve headless commerce. We’ll explore the key innovations and strategies defining the future of headless commerce.

For businesses looking to stay competitive, it’s essential to leverage these new developments and make the most of their headless approach:

Social media is transforming into a central hub for commerce, and Headless provides the flexibility to turn platforms like Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok into storefronts. Seamless social commerce integration will be a major priority for Headless in 2024.

Already, over 130 million people use social media for shopping inspiration and product discovery. Headless commerce allows brands to tap into these built-in audiences by integrating social platforms with their product catalogs and online stores.

Social platforms are also enhancing their native checkout capabilities, which headless commerce can readily plug into.

By uniting social content, commerce, and data in a flexible architecture, headless allows merchants to provide an ultra-personalized, frictionless experience on social media channels. With headless, brands can meet their customers where they already are.

As social commerce booms, having the ability to integrate social platforms will be key for headless merchants to stay competitive.

By 2024, voice shopping is estimated to reach over $80 billion in consumer spending. Smart speakers and voice assistants like Alexa are transforming how consumers browse and purchase products.

With a headless architecture, integrating voice shopping capabilities into the customer experience is streamlined. Rather than relying on a legacy commerce platform, businesses can connect voice interfaces with backend services on demand.

This allows brands to provide frictionless voice-based product discovery, personalized recommendations, contextual notifications, and seamless checkout.

As consumers increasingly use voice technology in their daily lives, having a commerce strategy tailored to voice assistants becomes critical.

We will see more businesses leverage headless commerce to connect shoppable voice skills with their product catalogs and order management systems.

Voice will drive engagement across the customer journey, from awareness to purchase and support. And, having a headless foundation will enable merchants to rapidly embrace new voice commerce innovations as they arise.

Adopting a mobile-first strategy is essential for headless commerce in 2024. Optimizing for mobile is no longer optional – with Google's mobile-first indexing, making mobile versions the priority, brands must focus on mobile to reach customers.

Quick Bite - Mobile Commerce is also called m-commerce. 

Headless commerce inherently lends itself well to a mobile-first approach, separating the front-end to enable device-specific optimization.

Progressive web apps, accelerated mobile pages, and responsive design can all be leveraged to craft fast, engaging mobile experiences.

In 2024, we will see more businesses implement features like swipe navigation, one-page checkouts, and contextual push notifications to engage users on mobile.

By unifying backend services, headless allows brands to efficiently reuse services, data, and business logic across all mobile touchpoints. Ensuring mobile experiences are frictionless, personalized, and consistent will be key to m-commerce success.

With mobile poised to account for over 70% of traffic for many websites, prioritizing mobile in your headless approach is no longer optional.

2024 will see a mobile-first strategy become a prerequisite for delivering modern commerce experiences that consumers demand.

AI and machine learning will enable greater personalization, recommendations, and automation for headless commerce. By integrating these technologies, merchants can derive deeper customer insights and optimize experiences.

Integrating AI into your headless commerce will bring in features like predictive search, individualized product recommendations, and dynamic pricing.

Chatbots leveraging natural language processing will also provide conversational shopping experiences.

Behind the scenes, machine learning algorithms will optimize inventory, logistics, and promotion strategies based on data analysis. AI will also assist with forecasting, marketing analytics, and testing/optimization.

Blockchain is starting to emerge in headless commerce to increase transparency, security, and traceability. Although still in its early stages, utilizing blockchain enables shoppers to verify the authenticity and origin of products.

We will see more headless merchants experiment with blockchain to build trust and assurance.

For example, blockchain can create immutable product histories, allowing consumers to validate credentials like organic certification or fair trade sourcing.

Blockchain also enables greater transparency throughout the supply chain. Shoppers can trace an item's journey from raw materials to manufacturing to final delivery.

For certain goods like diamonds, traceability is highly valued.

Additionally, blockchain facilitates smart contracts and streamlined payments. Integrating blockchain to manage transactions, track orders, and fight fraud will become increasingly common.

Virtual reality (VR) shopping is starting to gain traction, providing immersive product experiences. Headless commerce enables merchants to integrate VR environments with product catalogs and order management systems.

For example, furniture and clothing retailers can allow customers to visually interact with products in a simulated 3D environment.

VR also unlocks new opportunities for branded content and gamification. Customers can explore interactive brand stories and participate in virtual showrooms. Augmented reality will also gain adoption for contextual try-ons and product visualizations.

By decoupling the frontend, headless commerce makes it simple to plug VR/AR modules into the shopping journey when needed. As these emerging technologies mature, they will enable more lifelike product experiences and personalized shopping advice/suggestions.

Blending these technologies will become a key strategy for forward-thinking headless merchants over the coming years.

Adopting a MACH architecture will enable greater flexibility, scalability, and resilience for headless commerce. Rather than a monolithic platform, microservices break software into modular components that can be developed and updated independently.

In 2024, we will see more headless merchants embrace fine-grained microservices. Core functionalities like cart, checkout, search, and product display can be separated into distinct services. This makes the overall architecture more nimble.

Microservices aligned with business capabilities can also be reused across different applications.

For example, a common user profile service manages customer data across web, mobile, and in-store. Shared microservices simplify development.

Additionally, microservices can scale independently to meet demand fluctuations. During a promotion, only the cart and checkout may need to be temporarily expanded. By going micro, headless merchants gain that agility.

Deliver unified commerce across all touchpoints by leveraging headless commerce. In 2024, headless merchants will leverage PWAs, smart POS systems, and mobile apps to provide a seamless experience across web, brick-and-mortar, mobile, social, and other emerging channels.

Backend integrations with order management systems and ERPs will enable consistent product/inventory data, transaction history, and CRM profiles everywhere. Loyalty programs, promotions, and shopping carts will span across channels as well.

Headless flexibility allows brands to be channel-agnostic, and meet customers most conveniently. Providing consistent experiences and journeys removes friction, builds loyalty, and amplifies conversions.

As consumer expectations rise, brands must adopt a true omnichannel strategy. Having a centralized backend and flexible frontend(s) is the foundation of unified commerce. Headless delivers the freedom required for its success.

Cloud computing will play an instrumental role as headless commerce matures in 2024. Cloud infrastructure provides the scalability, resilience, and flexibility needed for modern headless deployments. While reducing the need for expensive hardware and IT infrastructure.

With cloud services combined with your headless commerce, users can rapidly experiment, test innovations, and scale up as needed. The abundance of cloud resources integrated with headless commerce unlocks new possibilities.

Parting Notes

As we move through 2024 and beyond, headless commerce will continue rapidly innovating to power cutting-edge customer experiences.

Mobile-first, voice, social, AI, blockchain, VR, and microservices are just some of the trends shaping headless now and into the future.

To stay ahead, brands need a content-first, API-driven strategy that can harness these innovations as they emerge. Having a flexible, cloud-based headless foundation is crucial to adapt and lead in this new era of digital commerce.

As consumer expectations grow, headless commerce offers the agility, scalability, and personalization required to drive growth and multiply conversions.

If you are looking to embrace these key trends and build a future-ready headless CMS, our professionals from WPSteroids can help.

Get in touch today to discuss how our headless and decoupled solutions can set your business up for long-term success.

The possibilities are endless with a headless-first approach!