Your store works and orders come in, but you sense you could be selling more. The brake is often something that sounds dull: a slow site. A faster store sells noticeably more, and the good news is that to get there you do not have to throw away the system your team already knows. You can keep the part you work in every day and put a much faster site in front of it, one that brings better results. It is called headless, and here is what that means, in plain words.
A site just 0.1 second faster brought 8.4% more sales
In 2020 Google checked 37 large brands. When their sites got just 0.1 second faster, sales rose by 8.4% and the average order grew by 9.2%. The lesson is simple: a faster site sells more, and most stores leave that money on the table.
What is a headless store, in plain words?
A headless store is split into two parts. The part where you manage products, orders and stock stays exactly the one you know. The part the customer sees becomes a new, fast site. The two are connected and pass information to each other on their own. Shopify itself calls this approach headless commerce (Shopify, 2026).
Think of a restaurant. The kitchen is the part where you work: it does not change. The dining room is what the guest sees: you can redo it, make it nicer and faster, without touching the kitchen. Headless lets you renovate the dining room while the kitchen keeps cooking exactly as before.
That is the whole idea. The site in front gets faster and prettier, while the place where you do your daily work stays the same.
Why does speed decide sales?
Because people leave slow sites. In 2020 Google looked at 37 brands and over 30 million visits: a site just 0.1 second faster brought 8.4% more sales. And in 2022 Portent found that a site that opens in 1 second sells 2.5 times more than one that takes 5 seconds. Put simply, every second of waiting costs you customers.
Change from a 0.1 second speed gain across 37 brands. Source: Google, Milliseconds Make Millions, 2020.
Speed also helps you rank higher in Google. For the full picture of how a faster site turns visitors into orders, see our guide on how to speed up your website.
Why are most WordPress stores slow?
Because a WordPress page is put together from scratch every time someone opens it. The more add-ons (plugins) and the heavier the design, the slower it gets. The numbers show it: in 2024 only 40% of WordPress sites passed Google's phone speed test. For comparison, Wix scored 57%, Squarespace 60% and Duda 73% (Web Almanac, 2024). So most WooCommerce stores can easily get faster.
Share of sites that load fast enough on a phone, 2024. Source: HTTP Archive, Web Almanac 2024.
A headless site gets around much of this. Instead of building each page on the spot, it shows pages that are ready in advance and only asks the back part for things that change, like price or stock. That is where the speed comes from. It is not magic and the result depends on the build, but the room to improve is clearly there.
How it works: keep the back, change the front
The part you work in stays. Only the site in front of it is rebuilt, on a fast modern technology, most often Next.js. Both WooCommerce and Shopify officially allow this, so it is not a hack or a risk. Here is what stays and what changes:
- WooCommerce keeps your work area. WooCommerce officially lets a separate site connect to it and pull in products and orders. WordPress stays the place where you work every day.
- Shopify keeps your work area. Shopify also allows this officially and even has its own tool for fast storefronts (called Hydrogen). You still see and manage orders in the same Shopify panel.
- Next.js builds the fast front. Next.js is the technology that builds the new site. It shows pages that are ready in advance, which is why they open quickly (Next.js, 2026).
The point
Your daily work does not change. You add products and handle orders in the same place. Only the customer gets a faster site.
What if I do not want a monthly fee?
Then there is Medusa. It is a free program for running an online store, and you do not pay any monthly fee for it (Medusa, 2026). You pair it with a fast Next.js site, and the whole thing is yours, with no platform taking a cut on top.
Medusa comes with its own admin area, so you still have a place to manage products and orders. The difference from Shopify is ownership: no monthly fee and no limits set by someone else's plan. The trade-off is that you need a developer to set it up and keep it running.
For a growing store that wants full control and steady costs, Next.js plus Medusa is a serious modern choice. For someone who just wants to upload products and not think about the technical side, a ready platform may fit better.
How much does a headless store cost?
There are two kinds of cost: the program and the work. The program for WooCommerce and Medusa is free, while Shopify charges a monthly fee. On top of either, you pay for hosting and for building the new site. Here is how the program side compares:
| Solution | Program | Monthly fee | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| WooCommerce (headless) | Free | None | You pay hosting + build |
| Medusa + Next.js | Free | None | You pay hosting + build |
| Shopify Basic | Monthly | ~€27 / mo | + building the front |
| Shopify Advanced | Monthly | ~€384 / mo | For larger stores |
| Shopify Plus | Monthly | from ~€2,100 / mo | For large brands |
Cost of the program only, not the total cost. Shopify prices are in euro with monthly billing as of 2026; always check shopify.com/pricing. Sources: Medusa, WooCommerce, Shopify, 2026.
The honest read: a free program does not mean a free store. With WooCommerce or Medusa you skip the monthly fee but pay more for the build. With Shopify you pay monthly but get a ready platform. It is the same choice we explain in WordPress versus a custom site: pick by what matters more to you, lower monthly cost or less to look after.
Who is headless for, and who is it not for?
Headless is not for everyone, and that is fine. In some cases it really helps, in others it is too much. Be honest about where you are before you spend money on it.
A good fit when
- +Your site is slow and it costs you sales
- +You want a special design a standard template cannot give
- +You are growing and the platform starts to limit you
- +You want to keep your work area but speed up the site
Probably too much when
- -Your store is small, simple and already fast
- -You have no budget for a custom build
- -You rarely change the design
- -A standard template covers everything you need
Not sure which side you are on? That is exactly the kind of call we help with in our e-commerce store development service, with no push toward something more complex than you need.
From our experience: ElectroBoys
This is how we already build. ElectroBoys is an online store with thousands of products where WordPress stayed in the back while the storefront was built new and fast. The principle is the headless one: the place the owner works in is left untouched, and the customer gets a quick site.
The result is a fast store with thousands of products and no pile of add-ons dragging it down. You can see the full project in our ElectroBoys case study.
Frequently asked questions
Sources
All sources retrieved on 7 June 2026.
- Google, Milliseconds Make Millions, 2020 - web.dev
- Portent, Site Speed Is (Still) Impacting Your Conversion Rate, 2022 - portent.com
- HTTP Archive, Web Almanac 2024, CMS chapter, 2024 - almanac.httparchive.org
- Medusa, Open-source commerce platform (MIT, Node.js), 2026 - medusajs.com
- WooCommerce, REST API and Store API documentation, 2026 - woocommerce.com
- Shopify, Storefront API and Hydrogen, 2026 - shopify.dev
- Shopify, Pricing, 2026 - shopify.com
- Next.js by Vercel, The React Framework for the Web, 2026 - nextjs.org