Ever since online shopping became a widespread possibility, businesses across industries are constantly pushing the boundaries of what their websites and applications can do while ensuring faster performance, richer user experiences, and hassle-free integration across devices.

Have you heard about headless ecommerce? It is turning into a major investment for many businesses. It is rapidly becoming one of the most significant trends in ecommerce, with projections estimating it will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 20.5%, reaching $32.1 billion by 2027.

Here are 10 examples of the brands that are using headless ecommerce successfully.

10 outstanding examples of headless ecommerce

Now let’s read on for 10 of the best headless ecommerce examples available on the market today.

1. Nike

Website: https://www.nike.com/au/

Nike is a global leader in athletic apparel and footwear. It adopted the headless ecommerce approach as it wanted to work on providing better service to its mobile-first customer base. Nike wanted a highly optimised experience tailored specially for smaller screens.

It used the headless setup and combined React single-page application (SPA) for the front end with a Node.js backend for the front end (BFF). This allows them to customise each and every single element of the mobile experience, from visuals to calls to actions, without being restricted by backend systems.

2. Target

Website: https://www.target.com/

This is a popular retail brand. The brand did research on customer behaviour and found that nearly most of its customers begin their buying journey from one device and complete it on another. Hence, to deal with this inconsistency, they implemented a headless ecommerce structure to create a unified shopping experience across all devices and channels.

This allows the customers to move between devices without restarting the process. The shift towards headless ecommerce helps them improve the customer experience alongside a higher conversion rate.

3. Lilly Pulitzer

Website: https://www.lillypulitzer.com/

This is another popular apparel and accessories brand. This brand adopted headless ecommerce very early in its journey to improve the mobile shopping experience, as during that time, many of its customers were browsing on mobile devices.

Using the headless structure helps them to deliver a consistent experience across both mobile and desktop platforms. This led to impressive growth as customers found it easier to browse and complete purchases on any device.

4. Victoria Beckham Beauty

Website: https://victoriabeckhambeauty.com/en-au

This high-end cosmetics and skincare brand is widely known for its minimalist, clean and sustainable ethos. As a premium brand, Victoria Beckham Beauty needed to create a digital experience that loads quickly on all devices, provides sleek, on-brand visuals, supports customisation and delivers a luxury feel.

Headless ecommerce was implemented as an optimised solution to develop an engaging and quick website. By separating the front end from the back end, they could also boost their gifting experience by offering digital gift cards, store cards, and personalised packaging options.

5. Chilly's

Website: https://www.chillys.com/en-au

Chilly mostly works on innovative and eco-friendly products. They wanted to make their website as memorable and distinctive as the items it sells. That is why they adopted headless ecommerce very early in its growth to get complete creative freedom over the front.

This also lets them keep their backend operations stable and efficient. Going headless, they could also enable their brand to scale more into the international markets as they could easily adapt their site's URL structure, content and language to fit different regions, making localisation simple and efficient.

6. Rothy's

Website: https://rothys.com/en-au

Rothy's is a sustainable fashion brand. The target of this brand was to create a more flexible and scalable system that could grow with the expanding global presence. They used the headless structure to decouple the front end from the backend as they wanted to customise user interfaces for several regions without having to rebuild or duplicate core systems.

With this setup, they could launch an international storefront while tailoring the shopping experience. They could also reuse backend data to reduce development time and complexity. It also helped them implement dynamic pricing strategies and support multiple currencies and languages.

7. K2 Skis

Website: https://k2snow.com/en-au/

This is a prominent outdoor and winter sports gear brand. In the beginning, they were struggling to support modern shopping experiences. Their existing infrastructure was not flexible and efficient enough to meet their evolving needs. Hence, they transitioned to headless ecommerce architecture to work more independently.

On the front end, they integrated a headless content management system that empowered them to build content-rich, personalised user experiences. All this helped K2 significantly improve its internal processes.

8. Claro

Website: https://www.claro.com/

Claro is one of the largest broadband and telecommunications providers. It serves a massive and diverse customer base. So, Claro needed a digital infrastructure that could support rich, personalised content experiences and deal well with heavy traffic. To achieve this, Claro tried a headless ecommerce structure that could allow them to separate content creation from backend processes.

This approach also lets Claro integrate best-of-breed technologies and multiple APIs seamlessly into their ecosystem. In this way, the content team could collaborate with developers with no dependencies or delays.

9. Burrow

Website: https://burrow.com/

Burrow is a direct-to-customer furniture brand. After launching, it faced problems in keeping up with its growth and the complexity of its products. So, to deal with the challenges, Burrow tried a headless ecommerce approach.

They used a custom content management system to get complete design flexibility and the ability to create rich, tailored shopping experiences. This setup helped them to manage their unique modular products in a better way and focus more on marketing and customer engagement.

10. Oatly

Website: https://www.oatly.com/en-au

This one is a globally recognised oat milk brand. In their previous setup, they were struggling to keep up with the scale and flexibility the brand required. They were facing limitations in managing content across multiple regions as well. To overcome all these, they adopted the headless structure so that the content team could work independently without waiting on developers.

The primary goal was to serve international audiences with localised websites tailored to multiple languages and product offerings. This scalable digital strategy assisted them in supporting both regional marketing efforts and global brand consistency.

What is headless ecommerce?

In the simplest form, headless ecommerce is a modern approach to ecommerce architecture where the frontend presentation layer (storefront templates and themes) is decoupled from the backend presentation layer (like product management, order processing, payments, and more).

In this model, both layers communicate via APIs, giving teams more freedom to make changes to the front end with whatever tools or framework they need without making any changes to the back end.

Why choose headless ecommerce?

If we compare headless ecommerce with traditional ecommerce platforms, even for a small change like redesigning the product page or updating the checkout flow, it ends up involving backend work in the traditional settings. It ends up slowing down the development while maximising the risk of errors.

However, using headless ecommerce, whether the developers and designers are redesigning pages, testing new layouts, or launching marketing campaigns, doesn't affect the backend systems, such as inventory or payment processing.

Secondly, you can use one central backend to manage products, content, and orders across multiple platforms, from websites to mobile apps to social media to voice assistants.

Thirdly, you can optimise performances with modern frontend technologies and deliver personalised experiences.

Final words

As these examples show, headless commerce is way more than a passing trend; it is a powerful strategy. From startups to widely known global names, companies of all types are considering headless architecture to future-proof their brand and unlock new possibilities.