How to Prepare a Headless eCommerce Solution Like a Michelin-Starred Chef
Michelin star chef cooking is the ultimate hallmark of culinary excellence. During the pandemic, when guests were unable to visit restaurants, top-rated online courses appeared with recommendations from Michelin-starred chefs. And now this cooking education business is gaining momentum, and you can enroll yourself in courses from Gordon Ramsay, Inbal Baum, Tal Ather and others.
A special theme of such courses is a “Michelin Star Dessert.” We, at Virto Commerce, have decided to embrace our own version of what Michelin chefs are doing with the B2B ecommerce platform.
A modern ecommerce platform can be thought of as a multi-layered dessert. A Michelin chef’s cooking is a fine art, but you may adopt the advice of the best chefs in the world for how to enjoy your own dish. In fact, our tips from the “chefs” are only five lines long, but each encompasses a whole universe of mastery:
● Invest in best-in-breed ingredients.
● Create the perfect filling and dressing.
● Try the flavors yourself, and ask your team to criticize.
● Expect your guests to have vivid emotions.
● Believe in yourself.
Let’s follow this recipe, and design a headless ecommerce solution as if it were a beautiful, layered cake. Are you hungry for more information? Read on.
Invest in Best-In-Breed Ingredients
You might be wondering why the word “headless” is tacked onto our ecommerce platform terminology. This is purely internet technology (IT) terminology about modularity. Our culinary-like exercise expands on how to best create a multi-layered dish like cake, separating the toppings from the main course.
Without individually catering to all of the ingredients, everything will just look like one bland combo in an electric multicooker. Who wants one monolithic piece of cake without celebrating the gamut of tastes?
In the United Kingdom, you may have heard of the multi-layered French dessert called a “gateau.” Basic ingredients for this sweet delight include flour, sugar and salt. During initial prep, gather your go-to items first.
For an ecommerce solution, basic ingredients will be legacy applications that work normally. The flour, sugar and salt equivalent for back end systems is the ERP (enterprise resource planning), CRM (customer relationship management), PIM (product information management) and similar options. This is your base, your bottom gateau layer.
Now select exceptional ingredients that are available to buy. According to baking rules, the number of dessert layers should not be more than the amount of fingers on one hand. Otherwise, with a large number of layers, the tastes will mix, and the dessert will become either boring or too busy.
Let’s say there are four layers, of which we will compose a solution for commerce. The bottom layer is legacy applications. Now it’s time for you to choose the next layer of best-in-breed service applications from the market.
So, the second layer from the bottom could be a set of service applications like the search engine, AI (artificial intelligence) personalization, email system, etc. Thanks to the headless architecture, we can afford not to write code from scratch for all these applications. Instead, we will use the out-of-the-box proven applications like Lego.
The third layer gives the main flavor to the gateau. Back to ecommerce, this could be a set of high-performance, real-time modules that perform online trading operations. This is a digital catalog of products; a shopping cart; and modules responsible for order processing, account management and others.
Finally, we move on to the toppings layer of a dessert. For an ecommerce system, this is the enticing user interface found in various online sales channels. You know them as the website, mobile application, messenger, etc.
Now you know all four layers of our ideal “B2B ecommerce gateau.” Let’s move on to the next tip from the chef about dressing and filling.
Create the Perfect Filling and Dressing
The gateau needs some kind of binding jelly-like substance between the layers to avoid it becoming too dry. It can be jelly with fruit flavors, milk-based or coconut-based. There are a lot of options.
In the architecture of a headless ecommerce solution, such a jelly is the API (application programming interface). As any layer in the system architecture operates separately from each other, and can even be placed on separate servers, the bridges between layers work via API calls. APIs are built based on standard protocols and languages such as representational state transfer (REST), GraphQL (a more modern alternative to REST) and others.
To support scalability and performance of ecommerce, it has to run in containers and to be ready to deploy in any cloud (like a mixture of cake ingredients slowly forming into a moist cake in the oven). Although we said that API is analogous to gateau jelly, it is more accurate to refer to it as a set of connectors.
Now we know how to unite different layers in our ecommerce solution. This is using the API, so let’s go to the next tip for tasting the dessert.
Try the Flavors Yourself and Ask Your Team to Criticize
Although any Michelin chef has a high sense of taste, the dishes are prepared for the guests of the restaurant — not each other. The guests come there to be surprised and satisfied. This is the key to the commercial success of the restaurant and personally to the career of a chef.
A good chef leads the team (development), and also listens to team members and takes advice about what can be improved in the process. Since restaurant guests like to be served in a timely manner, the chef usually divides the kitchen team into specialized groups and assigns tasks to make the baking process faster.
Accordingly, when we talk about headless architecture, it allows us to have faster product development. Apply the agile and digital transformation approach to the software development by building a cross-functional team, including a product owner (product manager), system architect, user-interface (UI) designer(s), business analyst(s), a team lead and skilled developers with experience on the latest frameworks.
Since the headless makes it possible to divide developers into groups, each dealing with a specialized task and then dock based on standard protocols, marketing and production time increase for a software product.
Therefore, no matter how wonderful a dessert or a B2B ecommerce solution may seem to its creators, the main criterion is verification from customers. Always test the ideas on the team first, then get a response from the customers.
Give Your Customers Vivid Emotions
The criterion for the success of a product, be it a Michelin-starred dessert or a software product, is the emotions of the customers. The more quality the product is, the more strongly the customers will be attached to the product, becoming the advocates of the brand.
We can use customers’ emotions for business growth as well. B2B buyers spend a lot of time on the vendors’ sites; this is their job. By making improvements to the UI, you improve their UX. Basically, you improve their workplace in a way, increasing their productivity. This can be done in many UI and functionality improvements like bulk adding of the products to the cart from MS Excel file, one-click reordering, out-of-stock pop-ups, and many personalization features both for the client company and their purchasing department employees.
Conclusion: Believe in Yourself
When you have an exciting business, a team of like-minded people gather around you. Using their efforts and support, you can develop your competencies and overcome setbacks.
Complex businesses like a headless ecommerce portal and mobile apps are created to maintain the work for several years, preferably longer. Meanwhile, restaurant guests’ tastes and preferred dishes change over time. So does kitchen technology. Computer technology and online trade also have evolving trends.
It is important to be at the forefront of customer wishes and technology development. Make sure to have a quality group of “chefs” to work on your projects, including software developers, to exercise the principle of modularity, to provide necessary flexibility and to expedite productivity.
As French chef Mr. Claude Bosi said, “While the kitchen organization and working with the highest-quality products are important, believe in your ability. Accept that we all make errors but then choose to view the situation as a learning curve and an opportunity for growth.”
