Q&A with Colin McGraw: When going headless on Shopify makes dollars (and sense)

At Rebuy Momentum, we're diving into some of the most important trends shaping ecommerce today. One of them? The rise of headless commerce on Shopify.

Coding on the mind: Colin McGraw, Senior Web Engineer for Rebuy.

Colin McGraw, a Senior Software Engineer at Rebuy, has been living and breathing headless development for years. Before joining Rebuy, Colin built and scaled ecommerce solutions across industries, specializing in API-first architecture and custom development. In short: he knows this world better than most.

Ahead of his Momentum session, I caught up with Colin to break down the basics of headless, who it’s right for (and who it’s not), and how merchants can start experimenting without diving into a full rebuild.

How do you define headless commerce, and why is it becoming such a hot topic in the Shopify world?

McGraw: Headless commerce is about separating the backend—where your products, orders, and customer data live—from the frontend—what your shoppers see and interact with. On Shopify, this means Shopify manages your data, but you have total freedom to build any frontend experience you want.

It's blowing up right now because API ecosystems have matured, open-source tools have gotten better, and Shopify itself has released new frameworks like Hydrogen and Oxygen that make headless development more accessible.

What types of merchants should really be thinking about going headless—and who might be better off sticking with a traditional Shopify theme?

McGraw: Headless shines in enterprise. According to 2024 data, 91% of enterprise brands are adopting headless in some form, and 27% are fully headless already.

If you're a high-traffic, high-sales brand, those small improvements in flexibility and performance start making a huge impact. Also, if your UI needs are highly custom—like immersive 3D experiences or gamified storefronts—headless makes a lot of sense.

If you're a smaller merchant without complex technical needs, sticking with Shopify’s native themes gives you a ton of out-of-the-box value with less overhead.

You talk about headless being a trade-off between convenience and extensibility. Can you break that down for us?

McGraw: Running a traditional Shopify theme is about as convenient as ecommerce gets. Shopify handles everything for you—customer accounts, checkout, all the basics—right out of the box.

When you go headless, you unlock full extensibility. You can build anything. But you’re also taking on more complexity. You lose automatic access to certain features like third-party app widgets and need a development process more similar to managing a software product.

It's about evaluating where you need simplicity versus where you need total creative freedom.

There are a variety of technology options for headless storefronts on Shopify, all driven by the Shopify Storefront API.

What are some of the common misconceptions or overhyped promises you’ve seen around headless builds?

McGraw: The biggest misconception is that going headless automatically makes your site faster. It doesn't. It can improve performance, but only if your developers know how to optimize for it.

A lot of the benefits—performance, deep integrations, custom experiences—require ongoing development and maintenance. It’s not "set it and forget it." Headless opens the door—you still have to walk through it.

What are the biggest benefits merchants can unlock by going headless—especially when they’re using tools like Rebuy?

McGraw: Flexibility is the name of the game. You get total control over your UI and your infrastructure. If you're using Rebuy, you can customize Smart Cart and other tools more deeply by working directly with our APIs.

Another big plus is co-locating all your frontend code in one place—which makes development, debugging, and scaling much easier. You’re not juggling scripts across apps and platforms anymore.

Headless commerce is enabled via sales channels and integrated in the Shopify admin. Left: Headless storefront with Hydrogen. Right: A traditional storefront. 

For merchants considering headless, what are a few low-lift ways to dip their toes in before committing to a full migration?

McGraw: Shopify makes it easy to gradually adopt headless using the Storefront API. You could start by building a small embeddable widget—like a product grid—for a secondary site or marketing page.

You’d install the Headless Sales Channel in Shopify, grab your API keys, and start experimenting without touching your existing store.

It's a low-risk way to get familiar with headless development and evaluate whether it's worth the bigger investment.

Can you give us a sneak peek at some of the real-world use cases you’ll be covering in your Momentum session?

McGraw: Definitely. I'll be showing a real example of a Hydrogen and Oxygen setup inside Shopify’s admin. We'll walk through how deployments and previews work in this environment versus a traditional theme.

I'll also touch on how Rebuy's Smart Cart is evolving—we’re working on making it even easier to integrate into headless builds with React components—and how merchants can unlock serious flexibility by combining Rebuy with headless.

If someone’s on the fence about going headless, what’s one question they should ask themselves before making the leap?

McGraw: The big one is: "How complex are my technical, UI, and content requirements?"

If you're constantly running into roadblocks with Liquid, hacking together JavaScript workarounds, or needing deep custom integrations—those are signs it might be time.

Budget matters too, of course, but the main thing is whether your business needs justify the extra complexity.

What have you been reading, watching, or listening to lately?

McGraw: I've been watching The Righteous Gemstones—hilarious show with Danny McBride and Walton Goggins. And I'm rereading all of Terence McKenna's books. His takes on technology and humanity’s increasing complexity are fascinating, especially when you zoom out and think about how fast ecommerce and tech are evolving.

Catch Colin McGraw at Momentum!

Want to learn more about headless architecture? Colin will break it all down live at  Momentum 2025. Get your tickets now: https://www.rebuyengine.com/momentum.

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