The world of eCommerce has undergone a tremendous transformation over the last few years. According to data from the US Department of Commerce Retail Indicator Division, eCommerce sales in the US were $870 billion in 2021, a 14.2% increase over 2020 and a whopping 50.5% increase over 2019.
Customer habits have changed as they've been exposed to a variety of new channels for online shopping. Nowadays, a potential customer can browse a brand's social media profile on Instagram or TikTok, toggle to the catalog of top products, and then navigate to the main website to make their final purchase.
With customers now capable of going through the entire buyer's journey on their smartphones or tablets and access to a host of new channels, the digital experience presented to them has never been more critical.
Brands need a high-quality and immersive front-end interface to deliver appealing experiences that entice visitors and turn them into customers. Brands that have opted to embrace headless commerce often enjoy the benefits of selling on multiple channels but may struggle to create the right front-end experience for their customers. That's where the new concept of front-end as a service enters the fray.
This article will explain what it is, the benefits, why some headless CMSs absolutely need it, and why hybrid platforms like dotCMS don't.
What Is Frontend as a Service?
Frontend as a service (FEaaS) is a way to build and deliver engaging frontend experiences, particularly in eCommerce. It enables you to combine various components to build a front-end interface faster and more cost-effectively.
Gartner's Composable Commerce Must Be Adopted for the Future of Applications research highlights that given the importance of the front-end experience today, many companies may find it difficult to source the developer talent they need. To counter this, a number of frontend as a service vendors have appeared to fill the gap.
Frontend as a service allows developers to pull different components from multiple sources and combine them to create a front-end interface. For eCommerce stores, this could include a search bar, a checkout icon, product images, written content descriptions, promotional videos, and more. These elements can come from a CMS, an eCommerce platform, a CRM, or any other tool in the tech stack. They can then be pieced together using FEaaS, saving developers the time they typically spend building these solutions from scratch.
Benefits of Using Frontend as a Service
There are several reasons why frontend as a service is becoming so appealing to brands looking to enhance the customer experience.
Composability and Microservices
The principle of composability is growing in popularity among modern enterprises that demand more flexibility and freedom when building their software stacks. Breaking down large monoliths into microservices and then integrating them with each other using APIs provides that flexibility and freedom. Frontend as a service and the vendors who offer it follow these same principles and allow businesses to leverage MACH architecture.
Ease of Use
Frontend as a service is easy to use as the component-based approach enables developers to easily select the different pieces they want to use for the frontend and fit them together like a puzzle.
Faster Time to Market
While monolithic approaches to eCommerce can make it difficult for brands to launch quickly and pivot campaigns to react to new customer demands, FEaaS allows brands to go to market faster with new campaigns and products.
Reduced Workload for Developers
Since developers don't need to construct the entire frontend experience from scratch, their workload is greatly reduced, and they have more time to focus on other high-ROI tasks.
How does FEaaS work?
FEaaS works by providing pre-built frontend components that developers can customize and reuse. These components can be integrated to construct a website or app interface without requiring developers to build every aspect. This allows the frontend to be tailored to the developer's specific needs and wants while also quickening development time and decreasing complexity.
FEaaS is different from traditional monolithic architectures, where the frontend and backends are tightly coupled. By enabling a composable headless architecture, FEaaS offers enhanced flexibility and integrations with other Application Programming Interfaces (APIs).
The process of FEaaS includes:
The FEaaS provides the pre-built components for frontend architecture.
Frontend developers utilize the appropriate modules to build a customized frontend structure that enhances the customer experience.
Developers access the components through APIs that help them integrate them with backend data sources.
The data orchestration layer ensures that all the components are unified properly for a smooth user experience.
The frontend components are hosted on a cloud infrastructure, allowing scalability and quick loading times.
Cost efficiency
By reducing the developer workload and development time significantly, labor and ongoing maintenance costs are also decreased. Platforms also have scalable pricing models or subscription-based pricing, so businesses only purchase what they need. This makes FEaaS a cost-effective solution since you’re not paying for features you don’t need or won’t use.
Integration abilities
Since FEaaS platforms support composability, they have great integration abilities. Developers can utilize plugins or APIs to boost functionality and adapt to other systems. These platforms also often provide tools and frameworks that let you integrate your own back end.
Reduced maintenance
Another way that FEaaS platforms reduce developer workload is by handling maintenance tasks and providing ongoing updates. This is a major benefit to busy development teams, who won’t have to take time away from other important work to maintain the FEaaS. FEaaS also offers a reduced risk of system failure because each microservice is treated as a separate entity. Therefore, the entire system won't go down if a single microservice or component does.
Improved Customer Experience
Since FEaaS provides an easy-to-use interface, speedy loading times, and optimized web performance for omnichannel content delivery, customers receive a better experience. When they don’t have to wait for your pages to load or have trouble switching between devices, they’re more likely to return to your site and purchase your products.
What features do FEaaS platforms provide?
The benefits of frontend-as-a-service platforms are vast, streamlining the frontend development process and enhancing the developer and user experience. The features that come with FEaaS can vary based on the platform. However, they often include:
Frontend frameworks: FEaaS providers may include frontend frameworks to help developers create website and app interfaces, including React, Angular, Vue.js, etc.
Reusable components: FEaaS platforms provide reusable components that can be used to build different functions, including buttons, menus, accordions, checkout carts, and more.
Third-party integrations: Most FEaaS providers feature third-party integrations that help enhance functionality, such as social media platforms or payment gateways.
Hosting and deployment: Certain FEaaS providers offer hosting services that help developers easily deploy their frontend applications.
Custom styles: Most FEaaS platforms allow for customizing the pre-built modules with CSS or theme overrides.
Visual editing tools: Many FEaaS platforms have interfaces that let users build and visualize their frontend content without using extensive code.
Optimization: FEaaS can offer performance optimization features like content delivery networks (CDNs) and code minification to boost page load speeds.
These features are ideal because developers don’t have to go through the trouble of building them themselves from scratch. Frontend as a service also provides other services to developers that can simplify their lives, including constant software updates for optimal performance, customer service access, scalability tools, and more.
What does FEaaS provide to users?
Along with providing helpful features and benefits for developers, FEaaS can offer several advantages to users, such as:
Faster loading speeds on apps and websites, thanks to global CDNs
Consistent user interfaces across devices and browsers because of pre-made modules
Minimal downtime during peak usage times due to the hosted cloud infrastructure and automatic scaling ability
Safe data transmission, since many platforms offer regular security updates and are designed to protect user data
These user advantages contribute to a better user experience, which is beneficial for any business. User experiences can directly impact customer loyalty and satisfaction.
When to use FEaaS
FEaaS can offer many benefits to businesses, but these platforms may not be ideal for all situations. If you’re wondering when your business should be using FEaaS, consider these use cases:
If you have a quick time-to-market that requires fast development, consider a FEaaS since you don’t need to spend time building frontend interfaces from scratch.
If you have an eCommerce business that needs features like shopping carts, product displays, etc., consider using a FEaaS, as integrations are simple.
If you’re utilizing headless CMS and need a customizable frontend solution to showcase content, FEaaS is an ideal solution.
If your development team is limited and needs to spend their time on more critical tasks than building frontend interfaces, FEaaS is suitable because it doesn’t require maintenance or building the frontend interface components.
If your business is looking to boost efficiency, performance, and user experience, using a FEaaS can be beneficial. If your business has a traditional content management system, using FEaaS won’t be necessary because the frontend is already tightly coupled with the back end.
Why You Need FEaaS For a Pure Headless CMS
Frontend as a service is especially useful for eCommerce brands, but the concept has applications for other use cases as well. However, the reality of the situation is that companies that opt for a pure headless CMS are likely to need frontend as a service.
For brands with a pure headless CMS, it provides the missing or rather subpar content authoring component. Many frontend as a service vendors also cater to less technical users as they can make both their lives and developers' lives easier. Here are some of the reasons why you'll need FEaaS when using a pure headless CMS:
Low-Quality Frontend Experience
Headless platforms decouple the front-end presentation layer from the backend content repository. While you're able to store content as you would in a traditional CMS, on the frontend, you're getting APIs and not much else.
For many companies and developers working with these platforms, this can be hugely beneficial as it provides increased freedom and flexibility to choose different frontend frameworks.
However, what developers gain in freedom, marketers, and oftentimes the customer loses in quality. After the frontend is created, it still needs content to attract customers. Since many pure headless platforms neglect that content authoring experience, marketers aren't always able to capitalize on the flexibility of a headless CMS as they would want.
Expensive Developer Dependencies
Since so much developer input is required to get the most out of a headless CMS, many companies must employ large teams to get everything done. This negatively impacts the bottom line, especially when businesses want to be as cost-efficient as possible. In addition, it makes companies dependent on these developers for more than they thought they might need since marketers aren't able to do much content management without them.
Frontend as a Service with dotCMS: A Universal CMS
Pure headless systems require FEaaS assistance, but content management systems that go beyond headless, or even hybrid headless, have frontend as a service built in. A Universal CMS offers both headless content delivery via APIs and a traditional content editing interface for marketers. Therefore, they typically don’t need a separate FEaaS. Some of the features of a Universal CMS include:
API-first Architecture
A universal platform like dotCMS features an API-first architecture, which prioritizes API as the main way to access and manage content. This makes it easy for developers to build applications and integrate content on any platform, including websites, apps, IoT devices, and more.
By utilizing an API-first architecture, developers gain access to the flexibility and scalability of omnichannel content delivery. API-first architecture also allows development teams to work on many APIs at the same time and prioritizes collaboration, which can lead to faster development. It can also enhance the user experience by creating APIs that are readable by humans and machines.
Universal Visual Editing
dotCMS also offers Universal Visual Editing (UVE), our comprehensive interface for editing pages. It lets developers preview pages before they go live, along with editing and rearranging content and layouts. Developers and marketers can also set rules, configure experiments, run workflows, and more.
UVE provides a What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG)-like editing experience for headless setups. The drag-and-drop builder and preview mode are ideal for creating visual experiences and visualizing what pages will look like when they’re live. This enables real-time content adjustments across various channels, which enables invaluable quick adaptations without needing to wait for data analysis.
dotCDN
Content delivery networks (CDNs) are used to deliver content quickly to users in different areas, enhancing the user experience and improving SEO performance. dotCMS offers dotCDN, which enables headless CMS to provide faster content delivery through a globally distributed network of servers. This global network of servers provides fast, reliable, and secure delivery of content to end users. By doing so, performance and user experience are enhanced.