Each week we share business ideas and opportunities that you can use to build your next big business. You’ll also find tweets, articles and a lot more to keep you updated on the latest business trends.
This week you will find:
💆🏽♂️ Headless Commerce - The Future of E-commerce 💆🏽♂️
TID’s 3-2-1 (3 Tweets, 2 Podcasts, 1 Article)
TID’s Book Recommendation
💆🏽♂️ Headless Commerce - The Future of Ecommerce 💆🏽♂️
We’ve spoken about the D2C boom on our Podcast and Newsletter dozens of times.
This boom was enabled by platforms like Shopify and WooCommerce which allowed people to easily build the front-end and back-end of their stores.
The Frontend is the website where customers can interact with the brand.
The Backend is the inventory management, marketing tools, and everything else that helps a D2C brand operate.
Therefore, Shopify is a full-stack platform giving you capabilities build all aspects of your online business from one place.
However, as a result of building the full-stack for a large variety of customers, Shopify has to standardise the platform. This standardisation may work for 80-90% of the customers but what about the remaining 10-20% who need customisations? Here’s an example for why Shopify doesn’t work for perishable foods.
This is where headless commerce comes into play.
What is Headless Commerce?
The noise around headless commerce has been steadily increasing over the 5 years and we believe it will continue to rise.
Some people even believe that Headless Commerce will be the next evolution of online selling.
So, what is Headless Commerce?
To put it simply, the backend and frontend of the store are seperated and are then connected using API’s. Read our Book Recommendation of the week to learn more about API’s.
This might seem like a meaningless change. “Why did you seperate the frontend and backend if you’re just going to connect them anyway with a more complicated method?”
The reason this change is powerful because it puts the frontend entirely in control of the seller. This flexibility can translate into greater experimentation with new features and integrations - quickly and easily. As long as the company is set up to implement these changes, adopting a headless approach can be a true competitive differentiator.
For example, you could allow purchases directly using QR codes in a Subway platform.
The decoupling of the front and backend systems also allows you to use best-in-class software for your backend instead of buying into whatever Shopify offers. For example, you could use the best inventory management software that uses API’s to connect back to the rest of the ecosystem.
The biggest benefits of using Headless Commerce:
A true omnichannel experience - Headless commerce can be a mobile app, an internet of things device such as a smart mirror or watch, voice shopping, a Buy button, or a progressive web app. Any possible customer touchpoint can turn into a sales opportunity while the commerce side is managed from a single backend.
More personalisation for customers - Headless commerce gives brands the tools to build custom experiences that shoppers can’t get anywhere else.
Fast websites: Because the front-end is decoupled from the back-end, developers are free to create as they please instead of being tied to the confines of a traditional Content Management System (CMS).
Business Opportunities in Headless Commerce
Convert your own ecommerce website to Headless. This choice is usually taken by larger ecommerce brands - make sure to do your research before going down this path.
Build products across the stack and unbundle Shopify. Each step of the ecommerce value chain is an opportunity to build products.
Build a specialist agencies with in-house headless developers or with a technology partner that can provide headless solutions at scale. 68% of those who are currently evaluating the use of a headless tech approach would use an external agency to implement.
Innovate on unique applications of Headless Commerce. If you look up examples of implementations of headless, it will universally be boring examples of businesses that improved page speed & conversions. That’s because we’re at the beginning of this change and businesses are picking at the low-hangin fruits of headless. Now let’s think about Innovation. For example, how can we use IoT to enable ecommerce?
Further Reading on Headless Commerce
Do you want to add anything more about Headless Commerce?
3 Tweets
One of the best threads we’ve ever read. A long but useful thread for managers and subordinates on how to build alignment in the team.
Compounding is a slow but powerful process. That’s why we write this newsletter each week.
We recommended Kahneman’s book ‘Thinking, Fast and Slow’ last week and wanted to provide a balanced narrative. The Tweet below talks about an issue with some ideas from the book. Here’s a detailed critique of Kahneman.
2 Podcasts
Semiconductor Supply Chains with Sanjay Gupta by Interpreting India
The Indian government has allocated ₹76,000cr ($10 billion) to develop semiconductor manufacturing in India. But is that dream possible even with that much money?
This episode of Interpreting India is a solid discussion on the difficulties of building a brand new industry from scratch - you might have all the willpower and money but where will you get the supply chains for components, expertise and machines? We highly recommend this episode.
A companion piece to better understand the world of semiconductor manufacturing is this episode by the Acquired Podcast about the history of TSMC, the largest semiconductor manufacturing company in the world. In fact, listen to the TSMC episode first, it is well worth its 2.5 hours length.
Disease Specific Health-tech, A platform to connect D2C Brands with Content Properties, Content Repurposing Agency by The Indian Dream
In our latest Business Munchies 🍿 episode we talk about:
🎯 Vertical HealthTech or Disease Specific Platforms - Health startups are starting to move away from generic horizontal plays, such as Practo, to more disease-specific solutions. Veera Health is focused on helping women with PCOS, Ultrahuman wants to help you understand your Glucose levels and Carer is improving Cancer patients' lives.
🎯 D2C <> OTT Content - Across 74 episodes of Ted Lasso, Apple products are shown 704 times - 300 iPhones, 120 MacBooks, 40 AirPods. We discuss a platform to help D2C Brands partner up with Production houses and do collaborations for shows and movies.
🎯 Global Content Repurposing Agency from India - With most brands focusing on Content Marketing, how can they ensure they get the most bang for their buck with each piece of Content? Through Content Repurposing. India has the talent base and low labour costs to build a Content Repurposing Agency to serve global clients.
1 Article
What Is the Metaverse? A Beginner’s Guide to Tech’s Latest Obsession
We’ve struggled to understand the hype about the Metaverse. VR and AR games are cool but they’re just a niche application.
This article is the first article that we’ve across that explains:
why the metaverse could have far reaching consequences beyond just games.
the concept of the metaverse with historical context that helps us understand its evolution.
And all of this is explained in a manner that’s easy to digest.
TID’s Book Recommendation
An Introduction to APIs by Brian Cooksey
The future is API-centric - it’s important for you to learn the basics.
API’s are Application Programming Interfaces that enable software to exchange data and functionality easily and securely. For example, I could create a script that connects with Twitter’s API and sends an email to everyone I know if somebody tweets about ‘The Indian Dream’.
And you don’t need to know coding to use API’s anymore.You can create powerful workflows by linking API’s using No Code tools such as Zapier and hundreds of others.
But you need to start somewhere. This book is a great starting point to understand API’s.
That’s it from us this week! Share this with your friends, family and colleagues who want to stay on top of Market Trends and Business Ideas & Opportunities!
Until next week!
Sahil & Sid
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