Headless Shopify: when to use it and a migration checklist
Choosing headless Shopify means decoupling your front end (how your store looks) from your back end (how it works). You still use Shopify to manage products, inventory, and checkout, but you build a custom front end using frameworks like React, Next.js, or Hydrogen. So, when should you choose headless Shopify? Headless makes sense when you care a lot about site speed, performance, or want full design freedom. If your store is growing fast, or you serve customers in different regions, you may need headless ecommerce to support advanced localization, custom URLs, and better SEO. According to experts, headless is also ideal if your marketing team wants to create rich content, campaign pages, or storytelling layouts that Shopify’s built-in themes can’t easily support. Some top business signals that mean you might need a headless migration are: your page load times are hurting conversions; you want to scale into new markets; you need a modern tech stack (CMS, PIM, CRM); or you want...