36 Headless Commerce Examples From Top Brands (and Why They’re Awesome)

As you’ve likely heard about, headless commerce can be a next step for fast-growing, forward-thinking brands gaining momentum and outgrowing a traditional, monolithic site.“Decoupling” your ecommerce site—or separating the front and backend layers—affords you a host of benefits. Namely, limitless site design capability, flexibility as you scale, and unmatched site speed and performance.

But which leading-edge brands have successfully taken their site headless?

We’ve rounded up several top examples of headless commerce (in no particular order) for you to browse and get inspired by.

We recommend browsing these sites on a mobile device to see their impressive page-to-page load times, and the subtle rich merchandising they can afford to incorporate on site now that the frontend layer isn’t connected to the backend.

Let’s jump to it, or you can skip ahead:

• Food and beverage headless commerce examples
• Apparel headless commerce examples
• Lifestyle and miscellaneous headless commerce examples
• Beauty, skincare, and wellness headless commerce examples
• Why are brands turning to headless commerce?

#cta-visual-fe#<cta-title>Considering taking your store headless?<cta-title>See how Shogun Frontend is a radically different way to achieve headless flexibility. Learn more

36 of the best headless commerce examples

Brands spanning multiple verticals—beauty and skincare, food and beverage, consumer packaged goods, and fashion, to name a few—have taken their ecommerce websites headless.

Below are 36 top examples of headless commerce websites we think are the best to have on your radar as you consider making the leap.

Food and beverage headless storefronts

1. Daring

Focused on educating the market with a site that would feel fresh, Daring Foods had more robust content needs than most. The brand needed to showcase high-resolution how-to videos, vibrant imagery, and an ever-changing recipe library. Daring took their site headless with Shogun Frontend in September 2021.

Backend: Shopify

Site highlights:

• Rich merchandising features like “quick add” buttons and a slide-out cart simplify Daring’s shopping experience and introduce quicker conversion opportunities.
• The Daring ecommerce team can make site updates fast without always looping in developers with Shogun Frontend’s Experience Manager. Using reusable codeless sections, now the ecomm team can whip up content as fast as they can dream it, outputting the entire site as a progressive web app (PWA).
• Big, bold imagery throughout the site gives customers an up-close look at their products—and inspires hunger (if we do say so ourselves)

#cta-mini-fe#Learn more about Daring’s journey to headless commerce with Shogun Frontend. Read the case study: https://getshogun.com/headless-case-study/daring

2. The Vegan Kind

The Vegan Kind, offers a marketplace of 5,000+ products, a subscription service, a discount program for loyal customers, and a robust library of content, blog posts, and recipes, which warranted an ecommerce solution that could keep up.

Backend: Shopify

Site highlights:

• A robust recipe library and product marketplace remain fast-loading browsing experiences with the site’s headless architecture.
• The Vegan Kind team can continue to add customizations throughout the site and build up their product catalog without worrying about page speed or impacting the backend of the site.

3. Cocktail Courier

This BigCommerce-powered headless site is one cocktail connoisseurs will enjoy both from a design and site speed perspective. Oh, and the awesome selection of cocktails to choose from.

Backend: BigCommerce

Site highlights:

• The brand’s found a way to offer unique shipping options and kit sizes to customers.
• A rich, inspiring library includes educational content of interest to Cocktail Courier’s customer base—like “How to Select a Bar Spoon” and “How to Select Ice”—which is a great value-add to the ecommerce experience.

4. The Feed

The Feed, a nutritional marketplace for athletes, is constantly featuring new products thanks to the flexibility their Shogun Frontend-powered site offers.

Backend: Shopify

Site highlights:

• A frequent rotation of new products—store content made possible with the flexibility of headless commerce—keeps the site fresh and interesting for customers.
• Near-instant page load speed keeps busy, on-the-go shoppers happy and makes stocking up on product favorites easy.
• Shogun Frontend’s pre-built components allow The Feed’s nimble, non-technical team members to make site-wide updates faster. This frees up developers to work on other more pressing updates and projects.

#cta-visual-fe#<cta-title>The Feed increased their revenue per visitor by 10.3% after going headless<cta-title>Learn more about The Feed’s journey to headless commerce via Shogun Frontend. Read the case study

5. Four Pillars Gin

Australian gin distillery, Four Pillars Gin, crafts and sells a variety of high-quality gin—with a headless ecommerce site to match.

Backend: BigCommerce

Site highlights:

• A horizontal drag scroll feature on product pages, coupled with high-quality imagery, is a unique way to highlight ingredients.
• Vibrant, bold imagery throughout the site conveys the top-tier quality of Four Pillars Gin’s products.

6. Recess

Hemp-infused sparkling water brand Recess offers dreamy, refreshing beverages to calm your mood. Shopping on Recess’ headless site is an equally as dreamy and refreshing experience.

Backend: Shopify

Site highlights:

• Subtle animations—like floating clouds and cans and a wavy butter bar—and scrolling UX features—like auto-remerchandising as you mouse over different Recess. flavors—makes for an eye-catching shopping experience that keeps customers engaged
• Customers can easily choose the cadence of their Recess delivery with fun 3D-like buttons.

7. Kyoku

Nutrient-packed breakfast shake brand, Kyoku, has crafted a unique shopping experience with their Shogun Frontend-powered headless Shopify site.

Backend: Shopify

Site highlights:

• A stop-motion video on the homepage shows the ingredients of each shake packet, demonstrating their nutritional value.
• Rich product and brand visuals throughout the site—like product ingredients and user-generated content pulled from their Instagram—make the overall shopping experience feel elevated.

#cta-visual-fe#<cta-title>A radically new approach to headless commerce for food and beverage brands<cta-title>See how Shogun Frontend is changing how brands go headless with a packaged approach. Learn more

Apparel headless storefronts

8. FLEO

The husband and wife founder duo behind FLEO wanted to improve the site’s speed and gain more flexibility with design and content updates, which was difficult to do with a monolithic site structure. In <month> of <year>, they took their site headless, and one cruise through will show you the exceptional experience they’ve set up.

Backend: Shopify

Shogun Certified Agency Partner: Form Factory

Site highlights:

• A dynamic quiz helps customers discover the right products and find their new favorites.
• Rich imagery is added throughout the site without impacting performance.

9. Oliver Bonas

British fashion, jewelry, and gifts brand, Oliver Bonas, wanted to offer customers an online experience that closely resembles shopping in a physical store. With their headless site, the brand is able to provide just that and more.

Backend:

Site highlights:

• Oliver Bonas has a large product catalog, but its now near-instant page-to-page load speed can keep up with shopper browsing.
• Multiple product views, including detail shots, model poses, and a zoom feature help customers get full product context—just like they would in-store.

10. OVO

R&B and hip-hop music fans are sure to be familiar with this one. OVO—or October’s Very Own—is rapper, singer, and actor Drake’s brand. The company needed an ecommerce solution that could withstand large amounts of web traffic. Launched in Fall of 2022, the site is lightning fast, and stunning.

Backend: Shopify

Shogun Certified Partner Agency: Tidal Commerce

Site highlights:

• OVO’s quality, branded apparel is conveyed through large images, of which the Shogun Frontend-powered site can handle.
• A powerful content management system (CMS) allows the OVO team to make regular site updates with new merchandise, and can accommodate bumps in traffic upon each drop.
• A partnership between Shopify and Global-e means OVO is equipped with multi-currency functionality, priming them for internationalization. This means with the store copy capabilities in Shogun Frontend, OVO can expand into global markets faster—doubling down on demand no matter where their customers are located.

11. Jenny Yoo

Bridal designer, Jenny Yoo, knows how challenging it can be to convey quality and detail online while offering customers a smooth shopping experience. That’s why the brand turned to headless commerce to help.

Backend: Zonos

Site highlights:

• With sophisticated design elements—like quality imagery, elegant fonts, and magazine-like page layouts—customers get the same classic Jenny Yoo shopping experience online.
• The Style Boards feature helps brides curate their own Jenny Yoo style online—similar to how one might pull different style dresses and try them on in-store.

12. Black Diamond Equipment

Outdoor gear brand Black Diamond Equipment’s headless ecommerce site conveys product quality through various stunning images, subtle mouse-over movements, video explainers on product pages, and more.

Backend: BigCommerce

Site highlights:

• The home page packs a punch with an eye-catching hero image—demonstrating the quality and durability of their products trusted by outdoor athletes—without slowing down the site.
• Breadcrumb navigation on product and collections pages stays out of shoppers’ way as they browse but is easy to find at the top of each page.

13. Ted Baker

Luxury clothing and homeware designer Ted Baker’s ecommerce site is elegant and streamlined. The speedy site performance and rich visuals—which don’t impact the speed of the site—can be attributed to this BigCommerce site’s headless architecture.

Backend: BigCommerce

Site highlights:

• Product discovery is a cinch with categories grouped in a grid on the home page while keeping that iconic Ted Baker feel.
• The “Stories” page (the blog) is a beautiful way to showcase their products in an editorial-style format—from background videos and layered images to bold fonts and buttons—all while the site’s headless architecture keeps things zippy.

14. Just Sunnies

Just Sunnies’ headless BigCommerce site accommodates their large catalog of sunglasses, content, and more— without site slowdowns or glitches.

Backend: BigCommerce

Site highlights:

• A customer review carousel is a great way to display social proof for Just Sunnies and ensure potential customers see.
• Just Sunnies fast page-to-page time ensures customers view more products in a single session, which can lead to a boost in conversions (as is true for The Feed).

15. GOREWEAR

Running and cycling gear brand, GOREWEAR, knows shopping for the right gear online hinges on a seamless ecommerce experience. That’s why their headless site is designed with product discoverability and context at the forefront.

Backend: BigCommerce

Site highlights:

• Product pages are balanced with both in-studio model images and in-the-wild close-up images to give shoppers a holistic view.
• Sizing and measuring charts coupled with product videos add value to the shopping experience and provide more context without sacrificing page speed.

16. Mountain Equipment Company

Shopping online for outdoor equipment and clothing can be a challenge. Brands like Mountain Equipment Company are making it easier to feel confident in their purchase with their headless commerce site.

Backend: BigCommerce

Site highlights:

• Contextual images and copy throughout the site give customers a close-up view of the specs, helping them shop with certainty.
• A “compare” feature allows customers to see the differences between potential purchases and ultimately choose what’s best for their needs.

17. Oboz

Outdoor adventure shoe brand Oboz has crafted an ecommerce experience that is sure to encourage any customer to hit the trail—with their new shoes, of course.

Backend: BigCommerce

Site highlights:

• Rich merchandising throughout ObozFootwear.com, like superimposed shoes that change out as you scroll through a carousel on the home page.
• A Shoe Finder quiz helps customers find their perfect pair of Oboz shoes.
• A large content library that includes video, blog posts, community event details, and more adds value to the shopping experience.

#cta-visual-fe#<cta-title>A radically new approach to headless commerce for apparel brands<cta-title>See how Shogun Frontend is eliminating headless headaches with a packaged approach to your new frontend layer. Learn more

Lifestyle and miscellaneous

18. Stikwood

For home decor brand Stikwood, showing real use cases throughout their site is a huge part of their shopping experience. With their Shogun Frontend-powered site, Stikwood can do just that without issues to site performance.

Backend: Shopify

Shogun Certified Agency Partner: Dyode

Site highlights:

• Stikwood can show the versatility of their products with customer examples and rich, embedded how-to videos—all without tradeoffs to site performance.
• Shoppers can toggle between interactive product features, like the Materials Explorer, and product pages at record-breaking speeds (perfect for improving dwell time and ecommerce conversion rate).

#cta-mini-fe#Learn more about Stikwood’s journey to headless commerce with Shogun Frontend. Read the case study: https://getshogun.com/headless-case-study/stikwood

19. Thomas Kent

Thomas Kent is a British clockmaker and high-quality wall art retailer who wanted to craft a fast, engaging ecommerce experience that also conveys the brand’s sophistication. Going headless helped Thomas Kent improve metrics across the board, including their page load times, conversion rate, and revenue from organic traffic.

Backend: Vue Storefront

Site highlights:

• The site is not only mobile-first in nature (it feels like shopping on a native app rather than a static website), but it considers customers who favor shopping on a desktop, too.
• An “Inspiration” page on the site shows customers how to style a room with a Thomas Kent clock, which can encourage purchase completion.

20. OURAGAMI

OURAGAMI makes antimicrobial supplies like towels, face masks, kitchenware, and more. To communicate the quality and value of their products, they’ve turned to headless commerce to tell that story.

Backend: Shopify

Site highlights:

• Layered visuals of product/fabric close-ups, videos, and branded shots on the home. page and product pages convey the quality of OURAGAMI products, which is especially important for this customer base.

21. Nomad

Before moving to their Shogun Frontend-powered PWA, Nomad—a lifestyle accessories brand—wasn’t able to construct a site as visually engaging as they’d like because of platform limitations and tradeoffs. Now that their site is headless, Nomad can add rich imagery and experiment visually with their site without worrying about performance tradeoffs. In fact, the site’s so high performing, it instantly started to convert better after going headless. The brand raised their revenue per user by 25% after going headless!

Backend: Shopify

Shogun Certified Agency Partner: Form Factory

Site highlights:

• Each product page is tailored to highlight that product’s most important features—complete with video, eye-catching scroll effects, and crisp imagery.
• A unique product toggle on certain product pages (e.g., the Horween Leather iPhone case) show how the product changes over time and with use. This is also a great way to mitigate this question from down the road!
• Nomad uses product variants to help bring their rich merchandising vision to life and with near-instant speed to boot.

#cta-mini-fe#Learn more about Nomad’s journey to headless commerce via Shogun Frontend. Read the case study: https://getshogun.com/headless-case-study/nomad

22. Zinus

Zinus is a rapidly-growing DTC mattress brand that reached a point where a traditional ecommerce platform or backend was no longer cutting it. Choosing to go headless via all-in-one Frontend Platform—Shogun Frontend—Zinus is now able to craft especially engaging online shopping experiences (in for various global locales!) without the stressors that typically go into multi-store capability.

Backend: Shopify

Site highlights:

• Zinus expanded into global markets using Shogun Frontend’s Store Copy feature to clone their original storefront instance and customize those new instances for seven different countries—the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, Japan, Germany, and France. Now, with their headless site, they’re primed for full international expansion should they choose to do so (right now the global instances lead to their Amazon marketp