Headless commerce glossary
Short reference entries on headless, composable, frontend, and ecommerce architecture terms.
B2B Ecommerce
B2B ecommerce is selling to companies through a digital storefront. The buying behaviour, account structure, and pricing model differ from D2C. A serious B2B storefront ships those differences out of the box.
Composable Commerce
Composable commerce assembles best-of-breed services for every layer of the ecommerce stack through APIs. Commerce, search, CMS, payment, CRM, and PIM each come from a specialist vendor.
Ecommerce Frontend
The ecommerce frontend is the layer shoppers see and interact with. It renders catalog, product pages, cart, checkout, and account flows. The commerce backend runs behind it and feeds it through APIs.
Frontend as a Service
Frontend-as-a-service is a productized delivery model for headless commerce storefronts. The merchant licenses a pre-built storefront instead of building one from scratch.
Headless Commerce
Headless commerce is an architecture where the storefront and the commerce engine are separate applications connected by APIs. The shopper sees one site. The team operates two systems.
Headless architecture
Headless architecture is a design pattern where the frontend and the backend are built as separate applications and communicate through APIs. In ecommerce, this means the storefront is decoupled from the commerce engine.
Total Cost of Ownership
Total cost of ownership is the full sum of what an ecommerce platform costs over its lifetime, not just the license fee. License, build, operations, and the people who keep it all running.
API-first commerce
API-first commerce is an approach where every capability of the commerce platform is available through an API before it is available anywhere else. Storefronts, apps, and integrations consume those APIs rather than depending on the platform's built-in interfaces.
Core Web Vitals
Core Web Vitals are three measurements that capture how a storefront feels to a real shopper. They affect SEO ranking and conversion. Frntkey targets the green threshold on all three out of the box.
ERP integration
ERP integration is the data flow between an ecommerce platform and an ERP system. It keeps orders, stock levels, product data, and customer records in sync so finance, fulfillment, and the storefront all see the same reality.
Headless CMS
A headless CMS stores and delivers content through APIs without rendering any user interface itself. The CMS owns the content; a separate frontend application decides how to display it across web, mobile, and other channels.
Headless checkout
A headless checkout is the cart, address form, shipping, and payment flow rendered by a custom frontend rather than the commerce platform's built-in pages. The backend still owns cart state and order creation through APIs.
Jamstack
Jamstack is an architecture pattern where markup is pre-rendered at build or request time, JavaScript adds interactivity in the browser, and APIs supply dynamic data. The pattern started as a static-site movement and evolved into a broader model for fast, decoupled web applications.
MACH Architecture
MACH is an acronym for Microservices, API-first, Cloud-native, and Headless. It describes an architectural approach where each capability is a separate service, exposed through APIs, hosted in the cloud, and delivered independently from the frontend.
Microservices commerce
Microservices commerce is an architecture where an ecommerce platform is built as many small, independent services rather than a single application. Each service owns one capability. They communicate through APIs. It is the M in MACH.
Monolith vs Headless
A monolithic commerce platform bundles the frontend and backend into one system. A headless commerce setup separates them and connects via API. The choice shapes cost, speed of change, and how locked-in you are.
Multi-market Ecommerce
Multi-market ecommerce serves several countries from one operational stack. Currencies, languages, tax rules, payment providers, and shipping rates all vary per market. The frontend has to handle all of them on the same codebase.
Order management system
An OMS tracks orders from placement to delivery or return. It manages order status, allocates inventory, coordinates fulfillment across warehouses and stores, handles partial shipments, and processes returns. It sits between the commerce platform and the warehouse.
Product information management
A PIM is the system where product data is authored, organized, translated, and prepared for publishing. It holds titles, descriptions, attributes, specifications, images, and variants, and feeds that data to the commerce platform and other channels.
Progressive web app
A progressive web app is a website that behaves more like a native mobile app. It loads fast, works offline or on slow networks, can be installed on a home screen, and can send push notifications on supported platforms.
Server-side rendering
Server-side rendering is a way of generating a web page where the HTML is built by a server at the moment the page is requested. The browser gets complete markup on the first response and can start displaying content immediately.
Static site generation
Static site generation is a rendering strategy where every page is built into a plain HTML file at build time and served directly from a CDN. There is no per-request server work. Every visitor gets the same pre-built file.
Storefront API
A Storefront API is the shopper-facing API exposed by a commerce platform. A headless frontend uses it to read catalog data, manage carts, complete checkouts, and access customer accounts. It is distinct from the Admin API used by back-office tools.
Webhook vs API
A webhook is how one system tells another that something happened. An API is how one system asks another for the current state. Headless commerce uses both, constantly, for different jobs.
iPaaS
iPaaS is a cloud service that connects business systems to each other. It moves data between an ERP, a commerce platform, a warehouse system, and a CRM on a schedule or in real time. Merchants use it to keep stock, orders, and customer records in sync.
PIM — Product Information Management
A PIM is the source of truth for product information: names, descriptions, attributes, images, translations. It sits between the suppliers and every channel that displays a product.