Hitting the ceiling of your Shopify theme -- custom sections are fragile, slow the site, and still can't produce the design your brand actually needs?
Running your web store and mobile app from separate product data sources because there's no shared commerce API, so inventory and pricing drift out of sync?
Headless Commerce Development
Custom headless commerce storefronts built with React and Next.js -- decoupled from your commerce backend, free from theme constraints, and fast enough that Core Web Vitals are a genuine asset rather than a liability.
We've shipped 100+ digital products and understand the tradeoffs of going headless. Not every brand needs it. The ones that do -- because their theme is limiting design, their mobile app needs a shared API, or their page speed is costing conversion -- need it built properly.
React and Next.js storefront with full design freedom, SSR/SSG, and sub-1s page loads
Shopify headless with Storefront API as the commerce backend and custom Next.js frontend
Composable architecture connecting Shopify, Algolia, Contentful or Sanity, and Klaviyo independently
Multi-channel commerce serving web, mobile, kiosk, and in-store from a single API
RaftLabs builds headless commerce storefronts using React and Next.js, connected to Shopify via the Storefront API or to custom commerce backends. We design composable commerce architectures that let brands use best-of-breed tools -- Shopify for checkout, Sanity or Contentful for content, Algolia for search -- without locking into a single platform. We also handle migration from monolithic Shopify themes or WooCommerce to a headless architecture. Most headless commerce projects deliver in 12--16 weeks at a fixed cost.
100+Digital products shipped
·Shopify + Next.jsHeadless stack
·FixedCost delivery
·12-14Week average delivery
A Shopify theme is a starting point. A headless storefront is a commerce platform built for your business.
Shopify themes give you speed to market. They also give you constraints: limited checkout customisation, design decisions locked to what the theme supports, a single rendering pipeline that serves web and nothing else, and performance that degrades as you add apps. Most brands hit those constraints between $5M and $50M in revenue, when the site needs to do more than a theme was designed to do.
Going headless means decoupling your frontend from your commerce backend. Your React or Next.js storefront communicates with Shopify, your content platform, your search layer, and your email tools through APIs. Each layer is the best tool for its job, and each layer can be replaced or upgraded independently. The tradeoff is build complexity -- a headless storefront is a software project, not a theme install. We've built headless commerce for brands across retail, consumer goods, and B2B. The result, done properly, is a storefront that loads faster, converts better, and can serve web, mobile, and in-store from the same data without duplication.
What we build
React and Next.js storefront
A custom storefront built with React and Next.js, connected to your commerce backend via API rather than a theme rendering engine. Product pages, collection pages, search, cart, and account are all custom React components -- designed exactly to your specifications without the workarounds that theme customisation requires. Server-side rendering and static site generation are used where each benefits performance: collection pages statically generated for SEO, cart and account rendered server-side for freshness. Incremental Static Regeneration keeps product pages current without a full rebuild. JavaScript sent to the browser is kept minimal through React Server Components, which cuts time-to-interactive on product pages where most themes send far too much client-side code.
Shopify headless
Shopify as the commerce backend -- products, inventory, customer accounts, orders, and checkout -- accessed through the Shopify Storefront API from a custom Next.js frontend. Shopify handles everything it does well: payment processing, fraud analysis, tax calculation, fulfilment, and order management. Your custom frontend handles everything Shopify themes cannot: pixel-perfect design, custom content structures, multi-market personalisation, and performance optimisation that goes beyond what Liquid allows. Shopify remains the source of truth for commerce data. Your team still manages products, collections, and orders in the Shopify admin. The frontend is the layer that changes -- from a constrained theme to a fully custom application your design system controls.
Composable commerce architecture
A best-of-breed stack where each component is the right tool for its specific job: Shopify for checkout and order management, Contentful or Sanity for editorial content and landing pages, Algolia for product search and filtering, Klaviyo for email and SMS triggered by commerce events, and a custom recommendation engine for personalisation. Each layer connects to the others through APIs and webhooks rather than a monolithic platform dependency. A product update in Shopify propagates to Algolia via webhook within seconds. A content change in Sanity updates the storefront without touching commerce data. If you want to switch your search provider in two years, that change does not require rebuilding your storefront or migrating your orders -- the composable architecture makes each layer replaceable.
Multi-channel commerce
A single commerce backend -- Shopify or a custom API -- serving your web storefront, mobile app, in-store kiosk, and retail tablet from the same product catalogue, inventory, and pricing data. A price change in the backend is live across all channels immediately. A product going out of stock is reflected everywhere without manual channel-by-channel updates. Channel-specific content -- mobile app banners, kiosk-specific product descriptions, in-store pricing for specific customer tiers -- is handled at the API layer through channel identifiers rather than by maintaining separate catalogues. This gives you one place to manage commerce data and multiple channels that display it correctly, without the synchronisation drift that comes from running separate systems per channel.
Performance and SEO optimisation
Core Web Vitals audit of your current storefront to identify the specific bottlenecks -- Largest Contentful Paint on product images, Cumulative Layout Shift from late-loading content, Interaction to Next Paint from heavy JavaScript. Image optimisation pipeline using Next.js Image with modern formats (WebP, AVIF), responsive sizing, and CDN delivery. Product pages statically generated at build time and served from edge CDN nodes closest to the user. Structured data on product pages -- Product schema, BreadcrumbList, FAQPage -- for rich snippets in Google Shopping and search results. React Server Components to cut client JavaScript to the minimum needed for interactivity. The result: product pages that load in under a second on a mid-range mobile device, which is the performance bar that moves conversion rates in paid traffic.
Migration from monolithic to headless
A structured migration from your current Shopify theme, WooCommerce, or Magento installation to a headless architecture, planned to avoid downtime and revenue loss during the transition. The migration starts with an assessment of your current platform: which customisations are in the theme, what apps are installed and what they do, where your content lives, and what the migration order should be. Data migration covers products, collections, customer accounts, and order history. We run the headless frontend in parallel with the existing site during QA -- the new storefront is tested against real data before any traffic moves to it. A phased cutover moves traffic by device or by page type rather than all at once, so issues surface without affecting your full customer base.
Frequently asked questions
Headless commerce makes sense when your current platform's constraints are costing you money in a measurable way. The clearest cases are: page load times above 3 seconds on product pages, which is a provable conversion drag in paid traffic; design requirements your theme cannot meet without fragile workarounds; a mobile app that needs a shared product and inventory API rather than a separate integration; or a need to serve multiple channels from one backend. Headless does not make sense if your theme is performing well and your growth constraints are elsewhere -- marketing, pricing, product, or operations. We will tell you directly in scoping if we think headless is not the right lever for your situation. The build cost is real, and it only makes sense when the constraint it removes is also real.
No. The most common headless Shopify architecture keeps Shopify's checkout intact. The custom Next.js frontend handles your storefront -- browsing, search, product pages, cart -- and then hands off to Shopify's native checkout for payment processing, tax calculation, and order creation. Shopify Plus gives you more checkout customisation options through Checkout Extensibility, which lets you add custom UI blocks to the Shopify checkout without leaving it. This means you keep Shopify's PCI compliance, fraud protection, and payment gateway relationships while getting a fully custom frontend. If your business has requirements that Shopify's checkout cannot meet even with Plus -- complex B2B pricing, multi-currency checkout with local payment methods, or custom order workflows -- we can design a custom checkout, but that adds cost and removes some Shopify guarantees.
A typical headless migration runs 12--16 weeks from scoping to launch. The first two weeks cover architecture design: which commerce backend, which content platform, which search layer, and what the API contracts look like. Weeks three through ten cover frontend build -- components, pages, integrations with each backend service, and QA against your actual product catalogue. Weeks eleven and twelve cover parallel running: the headless frontend is live on a staging URL, tested with real data while your existing site stays live. The final two weeks cover cutover: DNS change, monitoring, and any post-launch fixes. The migration path is more important than the build itself. We plan the cutover to minimise the window where your site is at risk, and we document the rollback plan before we start.
A Next.js storefront connected to Shopify via the Storefront API -- product pages, collection pages, search, cart, and account -- typically runs $40,000--$80,000. Adding composable architecture with Algolia search, a content platform integration (Sanity or Contentful), and Klaviyo event wiring adds $20,000--$45,000. A full migration from an existing Shopify theme or WooCommerce installation, including data migration and a parallel running period, typically adds $15,000--$30,000 to the base build cost. Multi-channel API work -- serving a mobile app from the same backend in parallel -- varies by channel complexity. Cost depends primarily on the number of page types, the complexity of your product catalogue, and the number of backend services the frontend integrates with. We scope every project before pricing.
Talk to us about your headless commerce project.
Tell us your current platform, where it's limiting you, and what you need the new storefront to do. We'll scope the right architecture and give you a fixed cost.
