The Rise of the Headless Heretic

I've always questioned conventions, things that are accepted as is just because it's always been like that. I'm somewhat of a heretic, asking the questions no one else wants to ask. I'm fighting the good fight to modernise the e-commerce industry's tech stack. For that, I am a headless heretic.

Why should we (e-commerce devs) accept a sub-par developer experience to build e-commerce sites when there is something much better out there? Especially when it also improves the lives of our clients.

Headless is the way forward for our industry. But ideally, we won't be talking about headless vs traditional in the future, or even headless at all. Building modern e-commerce sites requires modern technology and modern development flows with staging sites, preview deployments and access to powerful development tools. This should be a fully integrated part of the platform and not an uphill battle.

Why have we accepted that headless has to be more expensive? It really shouldn't be. If we compare a custom-built theme and a custom-built headless site, they should be the same. To get there, we need better support from app developers, something that has improved significantly over the past few years, and agency buy-in.

Agencies are already using headless and have for years. But to them, it was initially a selling point – and they charged more money because their costs were higher. The early days of headless were different. There were few starters, so agencies built their own tools and in-house frameworks. This tech debt is now haunting the headless space. Merchants have been burned by the high cost and vendor lock-in due to unusual tech choices. Development on brand-new sites is often slow, bogged down by years of hidden tech debt, inherited from an in-house framework that's been Frankensteined together by too many cooks, spoiling the soup and making it more spaghetti-like.

I want to change all that.

I got into Headless because my background isn't in e-commerce. I kinda slipped into e-commerce on a banana peel. Before that, I'd worked on more traditional (and pioneering) React-based web applications but found myself needing a job as a relatively new migrant to Melbourne, Australia, where I landed at an agency. I initially thought I would continue to work on web applications. This soon changed as the business streamlined the focus on e-commerce and tasked me with heading up the first couple of headless projects.

Yes, I, too, am responsible for creating an in-house framework—actually, two—because I made one for myself when I left to freelance. But back then, there weren't many options.

How things have changed! Now, there's Hydrogen – with Oxygen for hosting – for Shopify and Catalyst for BigCommerce.

But we're still seeing brand-new sites launched using old in-house frameworks, saddled with the same tech debt that's turning the industry against Headless. Sadly, the alternative is higher development costs, as everything needs to be rebuilt from scratch.

Someone needs to change that. And if you're someone who can do something about it, then you should. I am someone who can, and I will. I have some exciting plans for this year and next. I can't say anything more just yet, but I feel like my life is about to get turbulent. I will ruffle some feathers, not only from the Headless nay-sayers but also from the incumbent Headless players. In the end, it's all going to be better for everyone.

Change is natural, and the only way to survive is to adapt.