What is Jamstack

We’ve already written about the Jamstack architecture here, but let’s repeat one more time what Jamstack stands for and why we love this architecture so much. JAM stands for JavaScript, API & Markup and is a web development practice based on the core principle of decoupling the front from the backend.

Adopting such decoupled architecture allows you to pre-build the entire frontend into static pages during the build process and serve them directly from a CDN. This way, thanks to third-party APIs is possible to leverage many functionalities such as authentication, payments, content management, etc without the hurdle of building them internally.

Why adopt Jamstack for your ecommerce

#1 Need for speed. Jamstack allows your ecommerce to be blazing fast. Okay, everybody knows that faster = more sales, but how much? Well, in the case of Amazon, just 100 milliseconds of extra load time cost 1% in sales. You heard it right. Performance shouldn’t just be a concern, but a top priority.

#2 Focus on what matters. Separating backend from frontend allows your developers to focus on the presentation layer (what the customer sees and experiences) without agonizing over what’s under the hood.

#3 Be ready for the future. It’s time to get rid of that old monolithic platform and adopt an architecture that is conceived for an omnichannel world. Thanks to a headless backend you will be able to serve all functions and data via API, across a set of new sales channels. E.g. the metaverse.

#4 Handle scale and security easily. Your ecommerce goes viral? No problem: you don’t have to use server-side rendering for every single page requested thanks to the CDN. And you’ll always be safe since most of the processing and sensible data are handled in the API layer reducing space for attacks on the frontend side.

Why we use Commerce Layer

Commerce Layer is a composable commerce API for developers, we use it because it was built to natively support the Jamstack architecture. Commerce Layer permits employing a single backend to serve all presentation layers.

As its founder said “Commerce Layer is best suited for makers and innovators rather than theme buyers” and we strongly believe that our customers fall in the category of innovators. On top of that:

Its APIs are blazing fast: 100ms average response time

It supports multi-country configuration

Its platform is highly reliable: 99.99% uptime

Commerce Layer works perfectly with Contentful which is our favorite headless CMS and it can be used with Gatsby or Next.js -or any other static site generator really-. 

Still skeptical about static ecommerce websites?

We understand your valid reasons, yet let’s try to debunk some myths.

You can’t offer dynamic experiences - False. Things like cart, checkout, search etc can be handled with third-party tools. Actually, it’s better to do so. 

Build time is a pain - It was true, but not anymore. Gatsby and Next.js released incremental build options so you don’t have to rebuild all of your website pages for minor changes.

Conclusions

Ecommerce websites are not as dynamic as we paint them, if you think about it, the only information that needs to be served in real-time is product availability and prices. The Jamstack architecture offers plenty of advantages and headless commerce platforms, especially Commerce Layer, can, and will, take your ecommerce to the next level.