What is headless commerce?

In headless commerce, the front-end presentation layer is not associated with the back-end e-commerce functionality of an online store. Headless commerce aims to separate user interfaces or presentation layers from the business logic and transactions handled by the backend.

What is BigCommerce?

The platform facilitates the launch, management, and creation of online stores for businesses of all sizes. Furthermore, BigCommerce development offers several features and tools for online store building, scaling, and optimization.

Here are a few unique features:

• Usability: Whether your business is small or large, BigCommerce offers a user-friendly platform that requires no technical expertise.
• Customization and design: To create a unique online store, the platform offers a variety of templates and themes. Adding and editing pages is also easy with the drag-and-drop interface.
• Optimized for mobile: Businesses can create mobile-friendly websites with BigCommerce, which offers mobile-optimized designs.

What is Next.js?

The React Framework is an open-source framework based on React that can be used to build server-rendered and statically created applications for the web. In most cases, it is used to build modern web applications and is particularly popular when creating server-side renderings or optimizing them for search engines.

Next.js offers several features:

• Server-side rendering: With server-side rendering, clients can render content on the server first, improving web application performance.
• Static site generation: A CDN can host and serve a fully static website generated by this tool in real-time at build time.
• Automatic code splitting: Code is automatically broken into smaller chunks and only loaded when needed, so the application runs faster.

What are the steps for using headless commerce with BigCommerce and Next.js?

You must follow the crucial steps to implement headless commerce with BigComerce and Next.js. You can make the most of your e-commerce project by contacting an eCommerce development company. Here is a peek at the steps:

Use a Customizable Frontend

An essential advantage of headless commerce is that you can customize the interface of an online store to meet your organization's specific requirements. Using both BigCommerce and Next.js can be very useful for your business, and you should use a font that can be customized and versatile. 

One of the best choices you can make is to use Next.js, which can provide customized pages and components based on your requirements. If you would like to speed up the development process of your application, you can use pre-built UI libraries such as Tailwind or Bootstrap.

Fetch data using GraphQL

Using BigCommerce and Next.js together can lead to a headless commerce site that is fast and efficient. The GraphQL query language lets you retrieve and filter data efficiently from your BigCommerce store. GraphQL APIs for BigCommerce and Apollo Clients for managing queries and caches are available.

Rendering on the server

With server-side rendering (SSR), you can reduce page load times and improve SEO for your e-commerce site. For BigCommerce stores, Next.js offers built-in support for SSR. This will allow you to deliver fast and responsive user experiences by generating dynamic pages on the server.

Maintain security

E-commerce sites are always concerned with security. A secure headless commerce setup with BigCommerce and Next.js is essential when using the two together. Data can be encrypted using SSL, user authentication, and authorization implemented, as well as protecting against XSS and CSRF vulnerabilities on the web.

Performance optimization

Successful e-commerce sites rely heavily on performance, and it is therefore essential to optimize your BigCommerce and Next.js websites for performance when setting up headless commerce. Utilizing a Content Delivery Network (CDN) to distribute your site's assets globally includes minimizing the size of your assets, leveraging caching, and leveraging caching.

Monitoring and analytics

It can also help you identify errors and track performance and user behavior. To monitor your application and get insights into its usage, you can use tools such as Google Analytics (GA4), Sentry, and LogRocket. This data-driven decision can improve your application's performance and user experience.

Conclusion

BigCommerce and Next.js can create a powerful headless commerce website that provides an excellent user experience and is highly performant. With the rapidly changing e-commerce and web development landscape, BigCommerce and NextJS will likely have a promising future.

Business websites will become more sophisticated and efficient as BigCommerce and NextJS integrate more. To add value to your e-commerce project, it is always an ideal choice to hire eCommerce developers.