The breakthrough of headless commerce driven by AI

Headless: from technical luxury to strategic necessity

At its core, a headless setup is about decoupling content, data, and logic from presentation. No longer does the website determine how content is used. Instead, content is managed centrally and made available to different channels via APIs.

Mattijs summarizes this clearly: “The term headless means that you have a CMS without a fixed front end. You manage content in one place and deliver it to multiple channels.”

That promise of flexibility has existed for years, but in practice it often proved difficult to realize. Especially for organizations with one dominant channel, usually a website or webshop, a headless setup introduces additional complexity. Plugins, SEO, performance, and standard functionalities that come out of the box with traditional systems had to be rebuilt in a headless setup. Mattijs refers to this as “headless for no reason.”

Jesse also points to the tension between modern headless architectures and the way search engines such as Google still operate: “In essence, with a headless setup you are placing a very modern technical approach opposite a channel that still looks at how a website should be structured in a fairly traditional way.”

AI turns headless into a logical foundation

What fundamentally changes this picture is the rise of AI as a new interaction and distribution channel. AI agents do not operate through visual interfaces, but through structured data and well modeled content. That is exactly where the value of a headless setup becomes clear.

Mattijs identifies this as a tipping point: “Where I would normally be critical of headless, I now think it suddenly becomes extremely important. With AI, a very powerful second channel is added.”

In a world where AI will become a primary user alongside humans, it is essential that content is not tied to a single front end. Product information, specifications, and shopping functionality must be available independently, so that AI agents can interpret, combine, and use them. Headless therefore becomes not a nice to have, but a logical foundation for AI driven commerce.

Content in a headless world: meaning over pages

In an AI driven landscape, the role of content changes dramatically. It becomes less about pages and rankings, and more about meaning, context, and structure. “Content is more important than ever, especially when it comes to visibility,” says Ties. AI is prompt driven. Questions such as “what is the best solution for this problem” or “which product fits this situation” form the starting point. Content that is well modeled in a headless setup, for example as separate fields, blocks, attributes, and FAQs, can be understood by AI far better than traditional, static pages.

Mattijs mentions adding frequently asked questions at the product level as a concrete example. Not as an SEO trick, but as explicit preparation for the questions an AI agent will literally be asked.

Ties also illustrates the importance of authority with a practical example: “Even with a good product, a brand can remain invisible in AI results. If an organization is still young, has few reviews, and hardly any external validation, AI simply sees that as an insufficient basis to recommend the product.”

From webshop to protocol: how transactions are shifting

The impact of headless extends beyond content and discoverability. The commercial process itself is also changing. Where a webshop currently serves as the central place for orientation, cart, and checkout, that process increasingly moves into the background in an AI driven world.

Mattijs outlines how AI agents can collect, compare, and store products from different providers, while the webshop functions as a backend for pricing, availability, and order handling.

In such a scenario, the webshop turns into a headless commerce engine: a collection of APIs and protocols that enable transactions, regardless of where customer interaction takes place. That could be a website, but just as easily an AI interface, marketplace, or another platform. This is where the role of the CMS clearly comes into focus as well. At WHITE, they see that systems capable of modeling content semantically, without locking it into fixed templates, are essential. That is precisely why, in this domain, they deliberately choose Craft CMS. Craft does not enforce rigid content structures, but gives teams the freedom to build content in ways that match the business and future channels.

Jesse puts it this way: “Whatever protocols AI may eventually impose for agentic shopping, with Craft CMS you can adapt or enrich them relatively easily.”

From a marketing perspective, Ties sees both opportunities and tensions emerging here, particularly around data and measurability. “First party data is a goldmine for retailers. It is the foundation for personalization, marketing, and customer relationships. If AI platforms take over an increasing share of that interaction and keep that data to themselves, the balance of power changes. That makes the playing field more complex and more strategically sensitive for retailers.”

Headless requires strategic choices

An important insight is that headless is not a goal in itself. It is not a guarantee of success, but a way to remain adaptable. “Headless is a strategy to be ready for the future. It is about making sure your technical setup does not get in your way later,” Jesse explains.

That adaptability becomes crucial once dominant standards emerge. Mattijs expects that one of the major AI platforms will launch an agentic shopping standard within six to twelve months, which will have a huge impact. He compares this to how iDEAL transformed Dutch e-commerce overnight in 2005. At that point, speed of adaptation becomes more important than perfection.

What you can already do today

While many developments are still in motion, there are already concrete steps you can take today toward a future proof headless setup.
 

1. Start with focus and authority. As Ties emphasizes, brands with strong substantive credibility are more likely to be included in AI results. Make deliberate choices about where you want to lead and build that position structurally. Not with superficial marketing content, but with in depth, question driven information that is also valuable for AI.
    
2. Next, invest in structure. Make sure content and product data are modeled independently of presentation. Think in terms of entities, attributes, and relationships rather than pages. That forms the foundation for headless distribution to AI, marketplaces, and other channels.
    
3. Make your data accessible. Allow crawling, including by AI, and ensure performance, scalability, and security are in order. Visibility starts with accessibility.
    
4. Be critical about platform choices. This does not mean everything needs to be headless tomorrow, but it does mean that new choices should not create technical dead ends. WHITE deliberately recommends platforms such as Craft CMS because they offer flexibility without locking organizations into today’s assumptions. Alongside this, you can also see that e-commerce platform Shopify is heavily engaged in this space. A few months ago, they entered into a collaboration with OpenAI and have been preparing the platform for the arrival of agentic commerce.
    
5. Finally, experiment. Test with AI interfaces, chatbots, and new ways of exposing content. Not to achieve immediate returns, but to learn how your content is interpreted. That knowledge will ultimately determine how quickly you can adapt.

Conclusion

The breakthrough of headless commerce is not driven by headless itself, but by AI. AI turns content, data, and architecture into strategic assets. Organizations that invest now in a flexible headless foundation create room to adapt as new standards emerge. The question is not whether this shift will happen, but who will be ready when the pace truly accelerates.