Best Headless Shopify Ecommerce Growth Hacks To Know About

Headless Shopify provides the ultimate flexibility and customization to grow your business, but it also requires strategic thinking to unlock its full growth potential. What does that involve? What must you do to unlock the power of a composable tech stack and unleash the platform’s full growth potential?

This is where the best headless Shopify ecommerce growth hacks come in. Ecommerce growth hacking is about expanding your customer base, increasing revenue, entering new markets, and driving sustainable sales through low-budget tactics built into your headless ecommerce. 

Recent years have seen the explosion of ecommerce, with the global ecommerce sales expected to total $6.3 trillion in 2024. This underscores the increasingly lucrative nature of the online business model. However, while tapping into this enormous market is easier with headless commerce, you must use the right methods to surmount the (stiff) competition. 

In this guide, we take a closer look at headless commerce and outline the headless Shopify ecommerce growth hacks you must know about to help your digital storefront succeed. 

We started by stating that headless Shopify gives you the ultimate flexibility and customization to grow your business. But what creates this level of flexibility and customization? That’s where the headless architecture comes into play.

Shopify headless commerce architecture separates the site’s front-end presentation layer (what customers see) from the back-end functionality (what runs the business). This separation allows developers to create a custom storefront that can be connected to Shopify’s back-end via APIs (Application Programming Interfaces).

The ability to build custom storefronts using any modern front-end technologies like React, Angular, and Vue.js brings unlimited flexibility. You can design the look and feel of your storefronts in limitless ways to portray your brand. 

Such flexibility allows you to maintain full creative control over your online store without abandoning the powerful tools you rely on to manage your inventories effectively.

Let's dissect the headless architecture and quickly examine its main components.  

• Shopify front end

This is the storefront that customers see and interact with. It can be anything from a custom-built website to a mobile app, a social media shop, or even a smart mirror in a physical store. 

With headless commerce, you're not limited to Shopify's pre-built templates. You can design and build your storefront in the form of anything the customer can digitally interact with.

• Shopify back end

This is the engine that powers the online store. It handles things like product data, orders, payments, and shipping. 

Shopify's headless commerce platform provides a robust API that allows any front-end system to connect and interact with the back-end functionality.

• H3: Shopify storefront API

The Shopify Storefront API is a crucial part of headless Shopify commerce. It's a GraphQL API that lets you access all the data and functionality needed to build custom online storefronts, completely separate from Shopify's built-in themes and templates. 

This API, written in GraphQL language, is what allows the two layers of the website to communicate and function seamlessly.

Now that we have all the background information needed to understand headless Shopify and its functionality, it’s time to dive into the ecommerce growth strategy side. 

Here are the growth hacks to implement on your headless Shopify store. 

• Choosing the right tools

Alt text: An image with icons of common tools that integrate seamlessly with headless shopify. 

One of the main advantages of headless Shopify, like any headless ecommerce solution, is its unlimited integration possibilities. The decoupled architecture allows you to create custom storefronts using any technology you like. It also lets you integrate the ecommerce platform with various solutions, including headless CMS (Content Management System) software and more.

With such infinite possibilities, you might be spoilt for choice and easily squander the chance to implement key integrations. Don’t.

Don't just jump on the headless bandwagon. Ensure you create a tech stack that supports your needs by evaluating your needs to determine the tools and technologies crucial to your business. 

Once you know the technologies you need to run your business smoothly, your work is halfway done. The next step is to select the tools that integrate seamlessly with your existing tech stack and cater to your specific needs.

For an established business, you likely already have an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), CMS (Content Management System), CRM (Customer Relationship Management), and PIM (Product Information Management) software. 

Your headless Shopify platform can integrate seamlessly with any of these solutions, so you don’t have to give them up. 

Simply check to ensure you have the headless versions of these software solutions to facilitate easy integration with headless Shopify. Consider upgrading to a headless option for any tool that does not currently support headless integrations. This way, you won’t have to give up components of your existing technology stack. 

With the right tools and integrations, you can manage everything seamlessly with a unified system rather than creating a fragmented one. 

A strong cross-platform integration also lets you identify trends more easily, retrieve important data faster, and confidently make data-driven decisions.

• Optimizing the Shopify storefront for an omnichannel experience

Customers now expect a seamless experience consistent across both online and offline touchpoints. 

This means that businesses must create a blended digital experience for their customers. It is the only way to meet your customer’s expectations online. Allow them to get the same feeling when interacting with your brand on any channel or platform. 

Omnichannel customer experiences traditionally involved tying together ecommerce stores with brick-and-mortar. 

Today, it has evolved with the growth of the digital space. Customers now have more ways of accessing the internet and expect to shop at your store seamlessly on their mobile phones, desktops, IoT devices, and POS terminals without breaking their journey. 

Thanks to headless ecommerce, you can connect your headless store with your social media platforms, physical stores, and marketplaces to create a unified, omnichannel experience.

This connectedness creates a unified shopping experience for your customers and expands your reach to new shoppers. Your ecommerce growth strategy should include customers buying items online and being able to pick them up in-store.

Optimizing your Shopify storefront to market, sell, and serve customers on all channels effectively creates an integrated and cohesive experience for the shopper regardless of the touchpoint. 

• Selling directly on social media via social commerce integration

As we have mentioned above, you can connect your headless store with your social media platforms and sell directly on platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok using headless APIs. 

Gone are the days when selling products on social media involved promoting a link to your website and hoping that potential customers click it, add items to their cart, and follow by filling in their details before proceeding to check out. 

Thanks to ecommerce integration into the social media platforms, you can now let customers buy the products they discover on social media without leaving the platforms.

Note that the average internet user spends 147 minutes daily on social media, so the chances are pretty high that your target customer will reach your product and purchase it.  

• Using data and insights to personalize product recommendations 

Data-driven decision-making can drastically improve the quality of your results. Where customers are involved, this can mean the difference between good and great decisions. 

With headless ecommerce Shopify, you can get data from multiple sources, including Shopify analytics, integrated third-party apps, and customer surveys and reviews. 

Consider leveraging built-in reports to understand browsing behavior, purchase history, and customer demographics. Also, integrate third-party apps like Google Analytics and Klaviyo with your ecommerce platform and leverage them to gather data on abandoned carts, email engagement, and wishlist items.

You could also get more granular and carry out customer surveys and collect explicit feedback on through reviews. These will tell you about customer preferences and product compatibility, which you can then use as the basis for personalizing your recommendations.

But how do you approach personalizing your recommendations as part of your headless Shopify ecommerce growth hacks? 

Here are some techniques you could use: 

1. Rule-based recommendations. In this case, you set up simple rules based on purchase history or browsing behavior. For example, recommend socks after someone buys shoes.

2. Machine learning algorithms. The use of artificial intelligence (AI) is top on the list of ecommerce growth trends today. Consider utilizing Shopify's "Search & Discovery" feature or apps to leverage AI-powered algorithms for more dynamic and personalized recommendations.

3. Collaborative filtering. Recommend products based on what other customers with similar preferences purchased. Think targeted pop-ups or real-time stock alerts. 

• Automating marketing campaigns with the right integrations 

Automation is one of the areas where headless Shopify excels. The platform allows you to run crucial tasks on autopilot with pre-built templates that you can customize with a few clicks and quickly set up to meet your needs. 

Even better, you can leverage API-powered marketing automation by integrating tools like Klaviyo into your Shopify’s automated workflows. 

Shopify’s API-first development approach allows you to connect the platform with any headless tool you need to run your business, which makes marketing automation fun. 

Leverage marketing automation tools via APIs to trigger personalized email campaigns, product recommendations, and abandoned cart recovery based on real-time user behavior. 

With such automation, you can send a discount code automatically for the exact item someone left in their cart without lifting a finger. 

Trigger personalized email campaigns, SMS messages, or push notifications based on customer behavior and lifecycle stages. This keeps your brand top-of-mind, and drives repeat purchases.

• Integrating Headless CMS to manage content centrally 

Headless CMSs (Content Management Systems) help your business create, edit, publish, and manage content on your ecommerce website, automating most of the work for you. 

Leading options like Contentful or Prismic will make your life a lot easier by managing all your content in one place and easily delivering it across multiple touchpoints, including your Shopify store, apps, and social media channels.

We have a detailed article on the best headless CMS platforms that you can integrate with your headless Shopify to streamline your content management.   

• Leveraging Headless PWA to boost customer experiences 

Progressive web apps (PWA) combine the best features of mobile applications and modern web capabilities to offer a more traditional app-like experience on the web.

Think about websites that operate like native apps, allowing users to enjoy the best of both worlds while interacting with your business. Integrating these capabilities into Shopify’s robust ecommerce platform creates a powerful recipe for success. 

So, building a progressive web app using your headless Shopify backend should be a key ecommerce growth strategy in your list. 

PWAs will offer app-like experiences on mobile devices and help boost engagement and conversions.

Should you hire someone to implement your headless Shopify growth hacks?

Implementing some of these headless Shopify ecommerce growth hacks should be possible without the help of an outside developer. If you have a team of Shopify-savvy developers in-house, they should be able to handle your ecommerce growth hacks.

However, advanced strategies like headless PWA may require an expert in that area. Consider enlisting the help of headless PWA experts like Endertech. 

Summary of the Best Headless Shopify Ecommerce Growth Hacks

What have we learned in this guide so far? We’ve recapped that headless ecommerce Shopify decouples the front and back end of your ecommerce site, giving you the ultimate flexibility and customization.

That said, you can use the following headless Shopify ecommerce growth hacks to take your business to the next level: 

• Leveraging Headless PWA to boost customer experiences 

• Integrating Headless CMS to manage content centrally 

• Automating marketing campaigns with the right integrations 

• Using data and insights to personalize product recommendations 

• Selling directly on social media via social commerce integration

• Optimizing the Shopify storefront for an omnichannel experience

• Choosing the right tools 

Next, we’ll shelve headless Shopify and take you through enhancing the user experience with Magento PWA Studio in headless mode.

Want to take your business to the next level with ecommerce growth hacking? Contact the headless Shopify experts at Endertech to help.