Having worked at Shopify for almost 5 years and being boob-deep in anything and everything commerce, there was no way that I wouldn’t hear about “headless commerce” (wow, the biggest flex for Shopify is not writing about headless commerce and having it as a top result in Google) — TLDR; having commerce software handle the backend of your website while using a different content management system or custom storefront from scratch as your frontend.
My golden years at Shopify was working with Channels, specifically on the Custom Storefronts team. At the time, we were a team of ~10, ya girl as the sole designer leading a team of engineers trying to figure out the many touchpoints of what a custom storefront could be. It ranged from the Buy Button (export a low-customized widget to paste its code onto a website outside of your Shopify store) to a full developer experience maintaining SDKs that fed into the Storefront API. What I loved about the team was the autonomy it gave merchants and developers about what their buyers’ user experience could be. I’ve seen some fun experiences. I’ve made very basic ones. I’ve tasted blood. I want more.
Unfortunately, that team—and whatever else Shopify was prioritizing at the time—had to pivot and do other things and eventually my team dissolved (and recently came back as the new custom storefronts team for Hydrogen and Oxygen and whatever else). The dream lives on. I love the idea of customizing your own storefront or using another platform that leverages the kind of functionality you need for content management. IMO Shopify Online Store is too rigid for someone like me—frankly, I think it’s ironic the lack of support the native blog has when content marketing is the backbone of brand- and audience-building for most brands on Shopify. Anyway.
Headless commerce is bringing more fun to the internet. I look at Vacation Inc or whatever Commerce Cream showcases and it brings me joy to see visions come to life, and I want to be part of that. More colours, more chaos.
This might be less about theory, more about implementation as I look into “headless commerce”.