ECWID and WebriQ C-Studio - Headless Ecommerce Solutions for a Successful Ecommerce Site

Creating and managing an ecommerce site is full of challenges. Not only do you need to manage your content well, but you also have to be on top of your game when it comes to online marketing as well.

This is where headless architecture can help. Its essence is that the presentation layer of your website is separated or decoupled from the backend services. This means easier inventory management, content management, and payment processing without sacrificing the design and the user-experience essential features of your digital storefront.

With top-quality and reliable headless commerce solutions at your fingertips, the ecommerce world will be so much more convenient to navigate. You'll be able to create websites and manage them in a more streamlined and profitable manner. You will also be able to handle the integration of advanced features and mobile applications without too much of a headache.

ECWID ecommerce, StackShift and C-Studio in particular are wonderful platforms for you to sell products and offer services online with more confidence. Of course, to integrate ECWID on your websites and use C-Studio, one must get a full understanding of them.

What is ECWID headless ecommerce

ECWID is a popular ecommerce platform that allows businesses to easily create and manage their online stores. One of the unique features of ECWID is its headless ecommerce capabilities, which allow businesses to decouple the front-end and back-end of their online store.

What is C-Studio

StackShift and C-Studio have four major components

• A UI that serves as a single source of truth for all your marketing content and Ecommerce content
• Nextjs as the production framework
• Serverless forms and payment forms through AWS
• Netlify for the entire publishing workflow and Edge functionality

The content schema is prebuilt and serves as the core of the publishing tool and as the only UI that users need to learn and understand. Headless platforms are all about ease of use and offer smooth collaboration for all people involved.

For each page you build, you can choose from 20 different components and each component has 5 different variables, which you can tweak to your satisfaction.

Examples of pre-configured components are Navigation, Header, Footer, Text, Call to action, Testimonial, Portfolio, FAQs, Blog, and more.

Examples of C-Studio components are Products, Collections and Commerce Pages.

Each page with a distinct URL can be populated with one or multiple components. All components can be reused on other pages and all components that are uniquely tagged are updated throughout all pages when content updates are done to that component. All components can be uniquely designed and branded through a Windtail CSS library.

All product and Ecommerce pages are uniquely managed through the UI, and all data is synced with the ECWID back-end through a multitude of API’s.

All pages can be previewed before publishing.

SEO settings can be done on all pages separately and there is an SEO preview functionality embedded.

What is Headless Ecommerce

Headless ecommerce is a relatively new concept in the world of online retail, but it is quickly gaining popularity due to its many benefits. In a traditional ecommerce setup, the front-end (i.e. the website that customers interact with) and the back-end (i.e. the system that manages the products, orders, and other details) are tightly integrated. This can make it difficult to make changes or updates to the front-end without affecting the back-end, and vice versa.

In a headless ecommerce setup, the front-end and back-end are decoupled, meaning they are separate and independent from one another. This allows businesses to easily make changes to the front-end without affecting the back-end, and vice versa. For example, a business can update the design of their website without having to change the way their products are managed or their orders are processed.

One of the main benefits of headless ecommerce is the flexibility it provides. With a traditional ecommerce setup, businesses are often limited by the capabilities of the platform they are using. With a headless setup, businesses have much more freedom to create custom solutions that are tailored to their specific needs.

Another benefit of headless ecommerce is the ability to use a wide range of technologies. With a traditional ecommerce setup, businesses are often limited to the technologies that are supported by the platform. With a headless setup, businesses can use any technology they want, as long as it can communicate with the back-end API. This allows businesses to take advantage of the latest technologies and stay ahead of the curve.

ECWID and Headless Ecommerce

Many online ecommerce platforms (Ecwid included) are offered as software as a service (or SaaS) in which companies and users pay a subscription to access the software, which is centrally hosted outside of the user’s computer or network and can be accessed on demand.

And as with other pieces of software and technology, we have the ability to make ecommerce software headless — that is, separate its visual interface from the backend architecture and construction that gives it its functionality. What that leaves us with is all of the core functions and components of the ecommerce software that makes it “work” without being tied to a specific user interface, visual representation, or certain company brand.

You might wonder, “What’s the point?” Well, with this ability to use the functions of a software (like ecommerce) without being tied to a specific interface, there is much more freedom for developers, partners, stakeholders and other companies to offer these services without having to create their own ecommerce software from scratch.

Headless commerce also allows other businesses to offer ecommerce services the way they want — with their designs, their interface, and their user experience — and enables true white-labeling of ecommerce services. You get the functionality of a robust ecommerce platform, but one that’s much more under your control.

Imagine shopping online and getting to use all of the functionality and features of Amazon’s online shopping experience without being tied to Amazon’s specific site or app interface, and instead being able to tweak elements of those things so that they’re friendlier to how you like to shop. That, at its heart, is headless commerce.

HEADLESS ECOMMERCE HEADACHES

One of the main challenges of headless ecommerce is the increased complexity. With a traditional ecommerce setup, businesses only have to worry about one platform. With a headless setup, businesses have to manage multiple systems, which can be more complex and time-consuming.

Life Without Page Management

At the start of developing company websites, a developer usually determines all the pages and routes in your site so that then they can build the digital content types to represent them.

But what about pages we want to add in the future? I'm not talking about merely adding new blog posts or articles here, but instead adding actual new primary website pages, perhaps nested under other pages. What about landing pages, new lines of business, and so on?

The second complication here comes when we've got many pages and digital content we want to create on our website. If we have to create a different content type to articulate that, we will have a ton of content types to define.

Some traditional CMS options limit the number of content types, charging overages at a certain point. That's limiting in and of itself, but the bigger deal-breaker here is who is doing this work: Developers.

When we predefine our pages, a developer has to do the work of actually setting up those routes in code. Then they have to map those routes to the content types we defined earlier. Not only is that a great deal of work, but it means we have to get a developer involved again every time we want to add a new page! There's a better way.

The Benefits of Headless CMS with Page Management

Using Page Management, you can empower editors to create and manage pages for your digital solutions using reusable building blocks.

With headless CMS page management, content editors can manage your site's page tree, and page-level SEO properties, and determine what content and functionality will be on each page. Content delivery becomes a breeze.

Compared to traditional CMS, a developer and architect will still have full control over what page templates are available to the editor, where they can place modules within the page, and what the modules can do. To sum up, the benefits of Page Management:

• Empowered editors who can do more without a developer
• Happier developers who can focus on new functionality and enhancements, and less time responding to new website content requirements
• Increased productivity for the website and the team behind it
• Fewer resources/expenses required

the challenges. By using ECWID as their back-end, businesses can take advantage of its powerful ecommerce features while still having the flexibility to create custom front-end solutions.

Key Takeaways

In conclusion, headless ecommerce is a powerful and flexible way to build and manage online stores. ECWID provides a great option for businesses looking to take advantage of headless ecommerce, by providing a powerful and flexible back-end solution that can be easily integrated with custom front-end solutions.

This allows businesses to take advantage of the latest technologies and stay ahead of the curve while still having the ability to manage their products and orders. With the headless ecommerce, businesses can have the best of both worlds, the powerful ecommerce platform with the flexibility of custom front-end solutions.

Take a good look for yourself just how powerful headless ecommerce solutions are and how they can benefit your business. Get to know C-Studio more or send us a message to see how you can integrate the StackShift and ECWID into your website.