Headless E-Commerce – The perfect Tech Stack to build and run it

APIs (Application Programming Interface), stack, and frontend freedom: the technical capabilities and benefits of a headless architecture.

Using headless architecture for an e-commerce model follows the same principles as all other headless software models. It is a solution for creating lightweight, flexible, and dynamic websites. Thanks to decoupling, meaning separating front-end development from back-end development, this headless technology turns formerly limited static websites into modern, fast, and customizable ones.

These separate software applications connect via API, which is the key component of the modern e-commerce system, as it allows brands to add independently any service, solution, and tool that is needed at any given time.

We’ve put together some top tech stack picks that brands can use to get started in the world of headless e-commerce.

LoyaltyLion

LoyaltyLion is a data-driven loyalty and engagement platform. It powers e-commerce growth by creating a loyalty program that goes beyond points and rewards, driving greater customer lifetime value and cost-effective acquisition through better customer relationships.

Brands can choose to reward their most loyal customers with points for activities including purchases, birthdays, social media likes, referrals, and more. Customers can then collect these loyalty points and redeem them for rewards to use at your store further down the line.

The customizable components (such as iconography, format, and colors) can be fully edited to match the branding.

LoyaltyLion’s tech currently has strong integrations with categories such as: Headless commerce, ESP, SMS, Reviews, Mobile apps, Subscriptions, Helpdesks, and Charitable and sustainable initiative platforms.

Klevu

Klevu’s proprietary product discovery technology connects people to products they want to buy. It drives traffic, conversion, and loyalty for e-commerce websites while reducing bounce rates.

It is easy to configure, optimize and maintain and fully integrates with major e-commerce platforms. Klevu provides innovative solutions including smart search, smart category merchandising, smart recommendations, and a product discovery suite.

Klevu’s AI identifies trending products and personalizes the session for shoppers, automatically boosting relevant products accordingly on search overlays and search results pages.

Klevu’s tech is easy to configure, optimize and maintain, and fully integrates with major e-commerce platforms, including: Shopify, BigCommerce, Magento, SalesForce, and more.

Yotpo

Yotpo helps brands accelerate their growth by enabling advocacy and maximizing customer lifetime value with solutions for SMS marketing, loyalty and referrals, subscriptions, reviews, and visual UGC.

Although it requires custom integration, brands get exactly the same Yotpo functionality and experience as they would with a monolithic build.

Yotpo integrates with the majority of the Shopify ecosystem and has an open API for anything they haven't built an integration with yet.

Some of the most popular integrations include Google, Klaviyo and Mailchimp, and Gorgias and Zendesk.

Nacelle

Nacelle is a data orchestration platform. They connect brands’ commerce systems to deliver PWA storefronts for faster, bespoke experiences that accelerate growth. It allows brands to go headless without re-platforming while eliminating the typical maintenance costs and infrastructure complexities related to going headless while accelerating their time-to-market.

By indexing data into a single API, Nacelle sits between the frontend and backend code of a website, acting as the intermediary between an e-commerce PWA and its “behind-the-scenes” data sources. It indexes a brand’s product catalog and content, then re-arranges and optimizes data.

Data orchestration as part of the modern commerce stack gives brands the flexibility to swap out platforms and choose which tools provide the best customer experience.

Nacelle is compatible with popular e-commerce technologies (Shopify, Contentful, Sanity, Vercel, Netlify) and easily integrates with new systems through APIs, to keep up with a brand’s evolving needs.

Nosto

Nosto uses shopper behavioral data to deploy fully personalized, integrated e-commerce experiences. It reviews customers’ actions, learning their likes and dislikes and allows brands to deliver automated, personalized recommendations in real-time.

It analyzes what brands and categories the customer views and tailors their recommendations specifically to each customer using a self-learning engine that detects which products the customer viewed and provides recommendations based on their behavior.

By providing the Session API, the GraphQL API, and relevant tech documentation, Nosto empowers headless merchants to unlock the full potential of the platform.

Nosto integrates with multiple tech providers: from e-commerce platforms to email system providers and reviews platforms.

Recharge

Recharge is built on an API-first e-commerce backend providing seamless subscription commerce. It gives developers the freedom to craft unique customer experiences around recurring transaction workflows.

It also offers hosted customizable components like checkout and a self-serve customer portal.

Recharge integrations are limitless. They include top e-commerce software providers in the following categories: Store design, Personalization, Loyalty referral affiliates, Marketing and retention, Subscription management, Shipping and fulfillment, Customer service, Enterprise solutions.

Littledata

Littledata makes it easy to connect sales, marketing and customer data in the tools e-commerce brands already use. Its Shopify to Google Analytics connection works with headless setups to capture enhanced e-commerce events and ensure a complete data match between Shopify and Google Analytics, as well as those who use Segment's CDP.

Using server-side tracking for accurate sales data and marketing attribution, Littledata covers: Order events, Checkout events, Subscription lifecycle events, and Marketing attribution.

With Littledata, brands will be able to make better business decisions by attributing purchases, accurately tracking shopper behavior, and pinpointing areas of improvement for their store and product pages.

It integrates with both e-commerce (e.g. ShopPay, Nacelle, and PayPal) and in-app (e.g. Recharge, Bold, and Shopify Plus) integrations.

Klaviyo

Klaviyo is a unified customer platform that gives online brands direct ownership of their consumer data and interactions, empowering them to turn transactions with customers into long-term relationships—at scale.

It's a versatile tool that you can use to support almost any email marketing campaign to automate personalized email and SMS communications that make customers feel seen.

It offers powerful SMS marketing software that you can use for discounts and promotions, VIP early access updates, or welcoming and thanking customers.

With Klaviyo, brands can combine unlimited customer data with more than 250 native integrations.

Dixa

Created to counteract the increasingly impersonal and transactional nature of customer service interactions, Dixa is a customer friendship platform that helps brands build stronger bonds with their customers through simple, unified, and engaging conversations.

It allows brand teams to deliver instant and continuous service across phone, email, chat, and Facebook Messenger all from one screen to build more personal, long-term relationships with their customers.

Real-time performance stats, intelligent routing, seamless integrations, automations, customer recognition, and much more helps brands prioritize their customers and how to give the best possible service every time.

Dixa integrates with some of the most popular integrations including: Shopify, Jabra, Salesforce, Magneto, WooCommerce, and many more categories.

The right tech stack for a headless site – Sogody’s take

Brands don’t want to waste their time building a technology stack that isn’t up to date, or one that will limit their growth potential. Choosing the best technologies for an e-commerce store can seem like a difficult task, especially for non-tech entrepreneurs. Yet, once brands have these core components in place, it will be easier than ever to scale and extend their site.

Aspects such as scalability, developer availability and reliability can seem like unsolvable puzzles. But, having the right technology stack can ultimately offer brands the competitive edge they need.

To meet these requirements, Sogody offers brands its services, allowing them to build their stacks around a core group of microservices that will make the biggest difference to their bottom line.

After determining which aspects of the user experience are most important to a brand’s target audience, and which providers integrate well with their existing tech stack, we create the ultimate, personalized customer experience for your headless e-commerce.