Headless commerce decouples your storefront's frontend from the commerce backend. You keep a reliable engine for catalog, cart and checkout, but build the customer-facing experience however you like.
The upside
Speed, flexibility and a premium, bespoke UX unconstrained by themes. For brands whose experience is part of the product — premium D2C, content-heavy commerce — headless can be transformative.
The cost
More moving parts and more engineering. If a well-built theme meets your needs, headless may be over-engineering. The decision comes down to how much your differentiation lives in the storefront experience.
For Metabu Cosmetics, a premium brand whose experience needed to match its products, a headless Shopify storefront was clearly worth it.