🇨🇦 We're all Canadian, after all

Headless eCommerce is the future. We’ve discussed this as Columbia Care rolled out its discovery tool, and we covered the basics when I posted pictures of Prince, mustachioed and shirtless.

But, I’m sorry, it continues to be super relevant. It’s why companies that focus on content management systems (CMS) are raising oodles of dough:

It’s also why platforms that directly support headless builds are raising big piles o’ money:

🍁 Why are you talking about Canada?

Jane entered the Canadian market this week by partnering with High Tide, a leading cannabis retailer with nearly 90 retail shops across the country.

High Tide wanted to deliver a custom user experience online - akin to retailers of their size in traditional verticals. By building on headless APIs, here’s what they came up with:

🏡 Home page

A few call-outs:

• This doesn’t look like anything you’ve seen - template or otherwise - and that’s the point. However, though High Tide designed the experience, they relied on a sophisticated data infrastructure to deliver content, inventory information, deals / specials, etc. - to their home page

• All of the important stuff - store selection, call to action (2 of them!) to join the Cabana Club (High Tide’s banner here is Canna Cabana, and the Cabana Club is their loyalty program), cart info, etc. - easily accessible on the very first page you see. This baby is built for commerce - not for storytelling

  • That’s contrary to most major retailers in both the US and Canada, btw: as a retailer, your website is not as much of a brand builder as convenience, selection, customer experience - so why clog the first few pages up with pictures of mountains and a story about your retail adventures? Put a convenient menu on the front page and stop being precious

• One click away: you can either Shop Deals or click on that flower and - voila - you are shopping

🏡 Product Description Pages

Here, we see some Spinach.

Multiple images, cannabinoid details, description, deal pricing, fulfillment details, add-to-cart, another CTA for Cabana Club. This is all you need.

However, I really like the execution of the suggested upsell:

Based on product similarity and propensity data, the system can show you other products you might really enjoy. Major AOV (average order value) enhancer.

🏡 Membership

They convinced me to sign up for the Cabana Club, of course, and now I can see personalized recommendations, order history, the location I most-recently shopped, previously viewed products, etc.:

🏡 Checking out

When you’re ready to check out, you are routed to a white label checkout screen - should look familiar if you’ve used Jane or Leafly.

🏡 What does it mean?

High Tide’s execution of headless eCommerce means that there is just as much of an appetite for a custom digital experience in cannabis as there is in any other industry. It is also a vote for a hybrid model of digital go to market - build the front-end, but buy the infrastructure.

It’s not the last one, either - early adopters in the industry are growing out of templates, and growing into personalized, unique digital experiences.

📚 tl;dr

• CMS companies and headless eComm companies are raising lots of money, because the appetite to control a unique front-end is ravenous

• High Tide launched a new headless eComm experience for their Canna Cabana banner, built on Jane Roots

• They wisely opted for a conversion-heavy ordering funnel, rather than a waste-of-space storytelling template

• This isn’t the last headless build we’ll see this year

• It is Thursday