In this ecommerce podcast, James and Paul interview Jim Tattersall, founder & CTO at Rotate°, on the valid use cases for a headless approach to ecommerce and when headless doesn’t make sense for a business.
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Buzzword bingo! Headless is thrown around a lot in our industry but amidst the noise there are some interesting projects emerging demonstrating the value that a flexible tech stack can have if the business properly understands the impact of going down this route
Tune in to get expert advice from a solution provider who has stacks of real-world project experience. Jim Tattersall is Founder & CTO at Rotate°, strategic design & technology partners for ecommerce brands..
Tl;dr
- What is the real value proposition for investment in headless?
- How does the challenge & experience building on different headless platforms compare?
- What is Rotate’s preferred front-end tooling?
- When headless isn’t the right approach for an ecommerce team
Key discussion points
- You were very early to the headless movement- what led you down this road?
- What’s your view on the true value proposition for headless – what are the main reasons you clients choose to go down this route? How has this changed over the last couple of years?
- Headless isn’t a need, it’s a solution but headless sometimes feels like it’s being pushed as the panacea to all ecommerce platform ailments. It’s not always needed and can also add more complexity to build & maintenance than people expect; in what scenarios do you think a business should avoid going down a headless route?
- You’ve built headless sites on a number of platforms and I’d imagine there’s different reasons and goals that have led to the decision – but, how have you found building headless sites on Shopify compared to a truly API first solution like Commercelayer or CommerceTools?
- What was your experience like with CommerceTools? It’s obviously taking the enterprise market by storm – the feedback I’ve had has been that there’s a lot left to build (more of a best in class shell), but the core is very solid. Would you agree with that?
- How does building on CT compare to building on CL in your view? How can an ecom team meaningfully differentiate to understand relative pros and cons?
- Do you have a preferred set of tooling on the front-end side of things? What variables tend to dictate this side?
- From a merchant perspective – what are the main operational impacts in your view and how can teams counter them?
- Given your experience- have you managed to reduce the dev overheads for new features etc? Do you have any proprietary tech that supports this?
- I think businesses can be given a bum steer on the full implication of systems architecture decision. Do you have any advice for brands going down this route- where should they focus their tech assessment to minimise headaches or unnecessary impacts?
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