The vastness and complexities of headless commerce might be overwhelming for companies trying to dive in. It's not simple to switch your entire eCommerce experience to a new architecture, after all.

However, it doesn't have to be either/or a phased strategy can help you enter the headless website world. This enables you to modernize your storefront at your own pace, reduce risks, and expenses while carefully concentrating on the areas of your website where headless will have the greatest impact.

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Prioritize areas that will make the most impact

A thousand miles can be travelled in one stride (or one phase, if you're constructing a headless website). Start with one section of your website, and make it a key one, rather than redesigning the whole thing.

For instance, the international furniture business Stokke started by updating its checkout process when it made the decision to create a headless website. 'We wanted to avoid a risky 'big bang' rollout,' says Yann Milin, manager of Stokke Business Solutions. We also understood that improving checkout would be the most beneficial to us, so we started there.

Focusing on the areas of your website that receive the most traffic or that require the most updates makes implementation easier and speeds up the release of new features. And you don't have to wait for the rest of the website to be finished to benefit from them.

One thing to keep in mind is that it's better to update all of the pages at once if clients view them sequentially (for example, the product landing page and the product detail page). You can improve performance outcomes like page load and transition times by doing this.

Get buy-in from cross functional teams

Setting expectations and creating a strong implementation plan are essential to prevent runaway costs. When you update your website gradually, this is simpler to accomplish. Think about the many expenses related to a headless implementation, such as vendor management, development, and upkeep.

A staged approach allows you to monitor these jobs more closely and swiftly modify your plan if costs end up being greater than anticipated. If your plan or budget runs into trouble, you may sort out the kinks and use what you've learned to the subsequent phase, streamlining your procedure as you go.

'A phased approach reduced our testing effort tremendously,' said Milin. 'We were able to test, learn quickly on production, and improve the setup to bring the experience to a satisfying state before moving to the next chunk of our development.'

A phased strategy can make change management simpler. Instead than dealing with a sudden, overwhelming change, your teams can gradually become used to the rollout and the new ways of functioning. Get your commerce, sales, marketing, and merchandising teams on board early and set them up for success because a new headless website affects more than just your IT staff.

Adopt a test-and-learn mindset

Another significant advantage of a phased strategy? the chance to get better with each page and iteration. Following the testing and deployment of the first stage of your project, monitor success metrics to ascertain whether and where additional work is required.

For instance, the team kept an eye on important performance measures like conversion rates and speed after Stokke debuted its new checkout. The team felt confidence to go on to the next phase, which involved revamping the homepage, product detail pages, and product listing pages, when they noticed a 29% boost in checkout conversions following the first phase, according to Milin.

Keep your business objectives in mind throughout the headless implementation process, and compare the performance of your new pages to those of your earlier iterations. Determine the customer experience KPIs you'll use to gauge performance during the planning stages. This will help you stay on course and intuitively decide when to start the next phase.