How Scaling Fashion Ecommerce Brands Are Future-Proofing With Headless
Being a fashion ecommerce brand is more challenging than ever these days. With commoditized giants like Amazon and Walmart dominating the landscape, you’ve had to look for creative ways to connect with your customers—and convey value.
Influencer campaigns, loyalty programs, exclusive drops—you’ve tried it all, and it’s paid off. You know your products are top-of-the-line, and you’ve got the customer base (and a GMV of seven figures) to show for it.
Yet, despite your success, you know you’ve just scratched the surface of what’s possible with ecommerce. To achieve brand recognition with the likes of Outdoor Voices, Reformation, and Everlane, you need to level up your owned-ecommerce experience. This means building brand equity and evolving from an online store running on endless third-party apps.
There’s never been a better time to take your fashion ecommerce brand to the next level.
The fashion ecommerce industry isn’t slowing down
One thing is for sure in this ever-changing industry: People love to shop for clothes online.
So much so that the ecommerce fashion industry is expected to hit a $672.71 billion valuation by 2023. What’s more, apparel, footwear, and accessories sales soared in 2021—raking in $180.50 billion in the US.
While these numbers indicate nothing but growth, they also mean there’s quite a bit of competition out there, especially with the Amazons of the world competing with brands on price.
It is possible to convey your brand’s quality (e.g., your products are worth their price tag) and stand out in a crowded market with your ecommerce experience.
The problem is, doing this hasn’t always been the easiest part of an ecommerce team’s job. Choosing functionality over design has been the norm for many brands. But with headless commerce, brands no longer have to compromise one for the other.
Today, you’ll learn what headless commerce is, why so many fashion ecommerce brands are choosing this tech (and how), and what this can mean for your brand’s future.
Skip ahead:
- What does it mean to take your fashion ecommerce brand headless?
- Why are fashion brands choosing headless?
- 3 Headless fashion ecommerce sites in the wild
- How should you take your fashion brand headless?
Headless commerce refers to separating the frontend of your online store (the customer-facing layer) from the backend (the behind-the-scenes operations like payment processing, shipping, etc.).
With headless, you don’t have to rely on an existing ecommerce platform to facilitate every aspect of your shopping experience.
This tech is often the next step for scaling fashion ecommerce brands who’ve reached a certain maturity level and outgrown their custom theme.
#cta-visual-fe#<cta-title>See what’s possible for your brand when you go headless.<cta-title>Learn more about what an all-in-one Frontend Platform can do for your scaling fashion ecommerce brand. Learn more
Why not just create a new custom theme when it’s time to update your website?
What makes headless commerce so appealing is what this separation allows—a host of benefits that aren’t possible with a custom theme, like:
- Limitless design potential of your shopping experience
- Unrivaled site speed
- The ability to personalize your shopping experience without tons of third-party apps
- A future-proof website infrastructure that scales with you
What’s more, for brands who go headless via an all-in-one ecommerce platform like Shogun Frontend, you get the benefits above and empower your non-technical team to make website updates confidently.
Let’s look at these benefits in more detail.
1. Enjoy limitless design potential
There’s no question that design is a big part of the shopping experience. 61% of customers say that product images are one of the most essential elements of any online shopping experience. What’s more, 50% of customers say that a brand’s website design is crucial to their first impression.
Especially in the fashion industry—where visuals are everything—building an ecommerce experience that allows you to have total flexibility is key to standing out.
Whether you want to add product close-ups, textured visuals, micro-animations, background videos, etc., each component plays a role in how your customers experience your brand…and if they’ll ultimately make a purchase.
If you’re constantly running into issues with your custom theme (e.g., you can’t add the media and design functions you want throughout without tanking site performance), your team will love the flexibility headless commerce offers.
2. Benefit from blazing-fast site speed
You know site speed is important in ecommerce, but just how fast is fast?
According to Google, sites that load in two seconds or less see a 15% higher conversion rate than sites that take longer to load. What’s more, nearly 70% of customers say page speed impacts their buying decision.
It’s safe to say that having a fast website is essential to growing your brand. It’s something customers expect nowadays.
And by going headless—particularly by building a progressive web app (PWA)—you can create that speedy shopping experience customers want.
How? PWAs have reduced data-fetching requirements, eliminating page load lag time.
By pre-fetching and caching data right when customers land on your site, your site doesn’t have to completely reload as customers shop. It swaps out the sections that need to change as they navigate, which causes that near-instant page load experience.
#cta-visual-fe#<cta-title>Get the storefront your brand envisions (without hits to performance)<cta-title>Learn more about what an all-in-one frontend platform can do for your scaling fashion brand. Learn more
3: Add personalized shopping experience features without worry
Creating a tailored ecommerce experience unique to your brand and products is a big part of differentiating (90% of shoppers say they’re influenced by personalization), but, unfortunately, it can come at a cost.
Whether you want to add a new virtual reality shopping experience or a dynamic search bar, adding robust shopping features can lead to site performance issues.
With PWA tech, your fashion ecommerce brand can accommodate these features (and more), like product close-ups, micro-animations, and auto-remerchandising pages, all without lags in performance.
Fashion giant Nordstrom’s ecommerce site, for example, makes it easy to discover new and related items, but it also helps you put together entire outfits:
This is a win-win for Nordstrom as this can boost AOV and position them as a go-to for fashion expertise.
4. Future-proof your site for whatever kind of growth your brand faces
As you grow, you’ll need an ecommerce site that can withstand more traffic and activity without hits to performance.
Moving your ecommerce site to a progressive web app, you ensure your site can do just that and allows your team to be agile with site updates.
When you go headless with an all-in-one Frontend Platform, you know your migration is relevant for years (and whatever new technology comes next) as your store is built on industry-leading React.js.
5. Empower your non-technical team to make website updates with confidence
With traditionally-built ecommerce sites, most site updates are handled by a developer, which can slow down your workflow and productivity (as there are lots of priorities to balance!).
If you choose an all-in-one frontend platform like Shogun Frontend, your non-technical team can make updates quickly and easily with features like:
- A visual experience manager with a live preview so you can publish updates with confidence
- Reusable codeless updates allow non-technical team members to make site-wide changes quickly
- A native CMS built for ecommerce needs, like the ability to make changes at scale and automate actions like product catalog updates
These features alleviate workflow roadblocks and ensure both your dev and non-technical teams work hand-in-hand while remaining aligned.
#cta-visual-fe#<cta-title>Say goodbye to workflow slowdowns.<cta-title>Empower your non-technical team to make site-wide updates without reliance on dev resources. Learn more
Many top fashion ecommerce brands have made the move to headless commerce to ensure they’re primed for growth.
Here’s a look at what headless tech has allowed these three scaling fashion brands to accomplish:
FLEO
Athletic apparel brand, FLEO, chose to go headless for several reasons:
- Improve their mobile page speed performance
- Increase their site design flexibility
- Rely less on third-party apps
FLEO now enjoys all three and then some. Now, with their Shogun Frontend-powered ecommerce site, FLEO has total storefront control and can make updates quickly with reusable codeless content sections.
The non-technical FLEO team can swap out rich visuals and publish other site updates in seconds without relying on a robust developer team or worrying about tanking site performance.
They can keep moving fast without worrying if their ecommerce site can keep up.
Rothy’s
Sustainable shoe brand Rothy’s has made quite the splash since they launched in 2012. Now, the brand has built a cult-like following for their coveted, comfortable styles of shoes made from recycled materials.
With their headless site, Rothy’s Shopify Plus backend can stretch even further with rich visuals and editorial-looking collections pages while offering a fast shopping experience.
KOTN
Canada-based apparel brand, KOTN, turned to headless commerce to create a sleek, lightning-fast ecommerce experience.
KOTN’s app-like ecommerce site is packed with rich visuals and remerchandising that make discovering products fun and easy and speak to KOTN’s brand personality. The fashion brand can experiment with design without worrying about if their site can withstand the changes (or subsequent uptick in traffic).
You might think headless commerce could be your brand’s next step for your brand…but where should you start?
One of the best things about this tech is that there’s more than one way to go headless. However, some methods are more complex than others.
Let’s look at two common ways fashion ecommerce brands can go headless.
Method 1: A custom-build headless tech stack
In the past, most brands have gone headless by building a custom headless tech stack (usually referred to as composable commerce). With this route, you hand-pick the technology for every component of your fashion store, like your content delivery network (CDN), CMS, or server-side rendering (SSR).
While this method sounds ideal, this route involves managing multiple vendors and requires robust development resources:
If your team is partial to particular tech (like Netlify vs. Vercel), the composable route may be best for you.
However, if you’re making less than $500 GMV annually or don’t have a large developer team for ongoing maintenance and initial build setup, you may not have an opinion on which tech you want to power your site.
The composable route can get complicated quickly, as managing multiple vendor contracts and working with a large dev team is a lot to juggle.
Also, your non-technical team will need to make decisions about each component of your site, which can turn your brand into a tech company rather than one focused on revenue and your customers.
Method 2: An all-in-one Frontend Platform
Headless commerce is known for being a developer-centric tech, which only makes sense because certain methods require a heavy dev lift with tools familiar to developers.
But now, there’s a new way to approach headless: all-in-one frontend platform Shogun Frontend.
Frontend platforms give brands total storefront control (without needing to change up your backend), allowing non-technical team members or brands with lighter dev resources to get the benefits of headless like creative/UX flexibility and speed.
With a frontend platform, you don’t need to hand-pick every piece of tech that powers your store (platforms like Shogun Frontend have already chosen the best-in-breed tech for you). Instead, you can focus on building the best fashion ecommerce brand.
Here’s how Shogun Frontend enables fashion ecommerce teams:
Your ecommerce team is in the driver’s seat
We know how important it is for a CMS to be flexible and reliable. That’s why we’ve created our own CMS native to Shogun Frontend.
Your non-technical team can build content with a live preview and publish confidently using pre-build codeless content sections.
Start your dev team off on the right foot
Using pre-built templates, sections, and reusable code in the Starter Kit, your dev team can jumpstart your build. Your dev team will have access to CMS data, allowing them to build custom experiences, workflows, etc.
Shogun Frontend is built with React.js, meaning your site can handle your evolving brand and ecommerce landscape.
An all-in-one Frontend Platform for fashion ecommerce brands
As a scaling fashion ecommerce brand, your team has a lot going on. Headless commerce ensures your brand is ready for whatever comes your brand’s way in terms of growth.
Traditionally, headless has been a tech primarily geared towards developers and companies with unlimited budgets. With software like Shogun Frontend, more brands can benefit from this tech.
#cta-visual-fe#<cta-title>Get the storefront your brand envisions (without hits to performance)<cta-title>Learn more about what an all-in-one frontend platform can do for your scaling fashion brand. Learn more
Kaitlyn Ambrose
Kaitlyn works on all things content at Shogun. ⚡