Today, Salesforce introduced Hybrid Storefronts, which pairs pre-built Commerce Cloud templates with Composable Storefront to give businesses the flexibility to combine templated and customizable headless approaches to ecommerce site development.

Why it’s relevant: Research shows that 80% of businesses without headless commerce technology — the separation of the front end and back end of an ecommerce application for greater customization and agility — plan to implement it in the next two years. However, many commerce leaders fear that moving from a templated ecommerce site to a custom, headless one will be expensive or time-intensive. 

Innovation in action: With Hybrid Storefronts, merchants can start their headless commerce journey with the ability to create unique, AI-powered commerce experiences with Composable Storefront while using pre-built Commerce Cloud templates for automating development of more uniform pages. With this flexible deployment approach, customers are empowered to:

• Build for maximum impact: Brands can choose which part of the ecommerce journey they will prioritize for headless implementation based on their business and customer relationship goals. For example, a skincare brand that is focused on driving a faster and more data-driven, customized path to purchase for browsing shoppers can leverage Composable Storefront to bring headless commerce to their Product Listing Pages (PLP) and Product Detail Pages (PDP) in order to make each product page more agile with less down time.
• Reduce cost, complexity, and risk: Commerce companies can start building and flexibly testing headless experiences on a small portion of their site before rolling it out across the entire ecommerce experience. 
• Build fast, data-driven, and personalized experiences: Brands can leverage the Composable Storefront on pages where they want to prioritize load speed and design unique experiences that break from traditional ecommerce layouts. For example, a vitamin brand can automate most of their site with storefront templates while using Composable Storefront to architect a page for shoppers to create customized vitamin packs tailored to their own health goals.

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Salesforce perspective: “Commerce companies are looking to architect high-caliber headless ecommerce sites that can swiftly adapt to changing customer expectations and continue to foster strong customer relationships. With the combined power of data, AI, and CRM, Commerce Cloud gives brands the choice of the right tool so they can implement headless their way — whether that’s getting to market quickly with storefront templates, using Composable Storefront for headless commerce to create unique, agile experiences, or unlocking time to value with a combination of both.” – Michael Affronti, GM and SVP of Commerce Cloud

With the combined power of data, AI, and CRM, Commerce Cloud gives brands the choice of the right tool so they can implement headless their way.

Michael Affronti, GM and SVP of Commerce Cloud

Reaction to the news: “The phased approach to composability that we experienced with Salesforce helped us limit the risks of a big bang rollout and reduce the testing effort tremendously. This way, we could test, learn quickly on production, and improve the experience before moving to the next chunk of development.” – Yann Milin, Business Solutions Manager, Stokke

Learn more:

• Register to attend Connections 2023 to learn more about Commerce Cloud
• Discover more about headless commerce here
• Learn how to jumpstart your headless commerce journey here
• Check out all Commerce Cloud offerings here