Do we need a headless CMS with Shopify headless?

An experienced agency partner may recommend a headless CMS in combination with Shopify for a headless storefront build-out.

This is because – while Shopify excels at commerce – we don't feel that it excels at content. Our team has a rich experience in content management systems (spanning over ten years), and we therefore feel fairly well-placed to make this assertion. In comparison with Shopify, many CMSes simply do the job of content management better.

For this reason, for brands who place priority on rich storytelling and interactive content, we often recommend coupling Shopify with a best-in-class headless content management system when architecting a headless storefront.

This allows for greater control of content beyond Shopify's native fields (and metafields), to create a more holistic, rich editorial experience that translates into stronger storytelling on the frontend. Many of the brands we speak to who're already on Shopify are either struggling with raw HTML markup, or experiencing restrictions with theme sections in their Liquid templates. 

A headless CMS can be architected with the appropriate fields, rich text areas, and drag-and-drop sections in precisely the way that makes sense for your content – allowing you to create stronger pages in less time. Shopify's "content" entities work, but they aren't nearly as rich as the options available in a strong headless CMS such as Sanity, Contentful, or Strapi.

We're familiar with a range of headless content management systems, and can advise you on best-fit selection based on your marketing and editorial goals. Some headless CMSs are open source, with others strictly as-a-service.

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Is a separate CMS really necessary?

No. If you don't use content & rich storytelling as part of your on-site user journey, it'll be fine to forgo a headless CMS as part of a headless Shopify build-out. In this case, we'd expect your storefront to consist primarily of products & collections, besides a few standard pages which can be templated.

Can't we just use Shopify as the CMS?

Yes, this is possible – but might not be ideal. It honestly depends on what the consumer-facing content looks to achieve, and its desired level of "richness". The amount of content will also factor into this decision, because large amounts of content spread across a growing number of pages is really going to be best served by a dedicated CMS. 

Shopify does provide the ability to add content as entities through Metaobjects, but these are fairly limited in contrast to what you can typically do with a feature-packed, fit-for-purpose CMS.

How will the CMS communicate with Shopify?

By and large, it doesn't need to – unless the headless architecture dictates that product data is stored principally outside of Shopify and then synced-in. Where the CMS does need to interact with Shopify, this is usually conducted via hooks or lifecycles.

Hooks (not necessarily to be confused with webhooks) and lifecycles are event-triggered functions that execute on response to a specific action occurring. Within Shopify’s own ecosystem, you can think of them similarly to Shopify Flow. 

There are a few ways of configuring and managing how your store shares data between Shopify and a headless CMS.

• Option 1: Shopify is used for all product-centric data, while the headless CMS provides rich content management facilities that are used to create marketing-related and editorial data for the storefront.
   
• Option 2: The headless CMS is used as the single source of truth for all storefront data, including products and collections, and these are synced back to Shopify via API. It’s also possible to not sync product with Shopify at all in a headless setup, in cases where you don’t track inventory, and particularly if your pricing strategy is account-based and therefore variable depending on the user and items/options in their cart. 
  
  In this case, Shopify’s primary function for the storefront becomes solely that of checkout and transaction handling.

There are a million different ways that we can configure the synergy between Shopify and the headless CMS, and each build is often unique in the requirements it presents. It all depends on a) your preference and b) what’s going to be easiest for your internal team over the long term. Of course, c) what makes most technological sense factors into the equation as well. 😉

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Can we use drag-and-drop, or visual editing?

Depending on the chosen headless CMS, yes. Some headless CMSs don't provide a drag-and-drop functionality, which can make it slightly trickier for your marketing and editorial teams, relative to their experience and knowledge of the field structure. 

However, headless content management systems have come a long way as of late, and several do provide drag-and-drop and visual editing interfaces. This can be achieved easily when using Sanity, Strapi Static Preview, or Netlify Create (which can be integrated with various CMSs).