Headless Web Design

Headless that loads in under a second.

Headless web design built for sub-second mobile load, complete SEO control, and zero CMS attack surface. Astro and Next.js frontends pulling from Shopify Storefront API, WooCommerce REST, or WordPress. Server-rendered HTML by default. Hydration only where the interaction needs it.

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Taylor Rupe, Co-Founder & Lead Developer, B.S. Computer Science at Savo Group
Co-Founder & Lead Developer, B.S. Computer Science ·
★★★★★ What some of our clients had to say

"Michael is an expert at technical SEO who can align both product/business goals with organic traffic increases. He not only brings traffic but relevant converting traffic to the sites he works on."

Sean F.
Sean F. Founder, WorkSimpli

"I can't say enough good things about these guys! Amazing company and I'll continue to refer them to everyone I know!"

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Ryan Newman Owner, Newman Electric

"Michael delivered everything he promised and more. He has been responsive to our requests and intuitive about our needs. I highly recommend Michael for your web design and SEO needs."

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William R. Personal Injury Lawyer

"We contracted with Michael to develop a series of websites concentrating on attorney marketing and the results have far exceeded expectations. Their results-oriented approach to marketing services delivers a strong return on investment."

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Thomas C. Criminal Defense Lawyer
The architecture

What headless actually means in code.

The CMS or commerce platform stays where it is. The customer-facing site gets rebuilt as a custom Astro or Next.js frontend pulling data through APIs. Same back office, different front end.

Backend

Shopify · WooCommerce · WordPress · Sanity

Editorial workflow, products, orders, content stays here

Storefront API · REST · GraphQL · webhooks

Frontend

Astro · Next.js

Server-rendered HTML, schema at template level, hydration only on islands

Static or hybrid render → edge cache

Edge

Cloudflare Workers · Vercel · Netlify

Asset CDN, image transforms, edge-cached HTML

Sub-second response, anywhere on Earth

Browser

A real human on a phone

Sees the page in under a second. Doesn't see the spinner.

Should you go headless?

A three-question test before any rebuild conversation.

The honest answer for most stores is "stay stock." Run through these three before scoping a headless project. We turn down clients on this test every month.

Q1

Is your stock platform hitting your performance targets?

Mobile PageSpeed above 70, LCP under 2.5s, INP under 200ms, conversion rate stable across devices. If your numbers are green, the platform isn't the bottleneck.

YesStay stock. Headless is overkill. Skip the rebuild conversation.
NoContinue to Q2.
Q2

Can your design and layout be expressed in Liquid (Shopify) or PHP (Woo) themes?

Custom theme development can solve most layout, branding, and template constraints inside the platform. Expensive but cheaper than headless. Only when the templating engine itself can't express what's needed does headless become necessary.

YesCustom theme on stock platform. Cheaper, faster, fewer moving parts.
NoContinue to Q3.
Q3

Do you have engineering capacity (in-house or retained) for ongoing headless ops?

Astro builds are mostly static and need minimal upkeep. Next.js apps with dynamic routing, ISR, and API routes need real engineering attention. Make sure the budget covers both the build and the year-two maintenance.

YesGo headless. Astro for content/marketing, Next.js for app-heavy. We can run ongoing engineering on a retainer.
NoReconsider scope or budget. A headless build without ops capacity creates two problems instead of one.

Ready to Grow Your Business?

Hand-coded websites, real SEO, and a team that picks up the phone. Family-owned, serving businesses nationwide.

Custom Websites That Convert

Hand-coded from scratch. No WordPress, no templates. Every site comes with the SAVO Dashboard for real-time analytics and lead tracking.

Custom websites

Every project is scoped to your needs. We'll assess what you need and give you a straight quote.

Bundle with SEO & Save 25%

Add SEO and the website build cost drops 25%.

Book a Call

Prefer to just talk? (360) 838-6304 · Book a call · Mon-Fri, 9am-6pm PST

In code

What a Savo Group headless stack actually looks like.

Three patterns that show up in nearly every headless build. Real code, edited only for brevity.

Pattern · Storefront API query

Pulling products from Shopify, server-side.

A GraphQL query against the Shopify Storefront API runs at build time (or on demand for dynamic pages). The HTML ships pre-rendered to the browser — no client-side fetch, no loading spinner, no JS-render trap for Googlebot.

// src/pages/products/[handle].astro — server-rendered
const { handle } = Astro.params;
const query = `
  query GetProduct($handle: String!) {
    product(handle: $handle) {
      title
      description
      priceRange { minVariantPrice { amount currencyCode } }
      images(first: 10) { nodes { url altText } }
    }
  }
`;
const { data } = await shopifyClient.request(query, { handle });
Pattern · Astro islands

Hydration only on the parts that need it.

Most of a marketing or product page is static. There's no reason to ship a 200KB React bundle for content that doesn't change. Astro's island architecture lets us hydrate only the interactive components — the cart drawer, the variant selector, the search box — and ship plain HTML for everything else.

<!-- Static HTML — ships to browser as plain markup -->
<ProductGallery images={product.images} />
<ProductDescription html={product.description} />

<!-- Interactive island — hydrates with client:visible -->
<VariantSelector
  variants={product.variants}
  client:visible
/>

<!-- Cart drawer hydrates only when needed -->
<CartDrawer client:idle />
Pattern · Webhook-triggered revalidation

Editor saves in WP. Live site updates within seconds.

A common headless bug: editors update content in the CMS but the front end doesn't refresh because revalidation is misconfigured. We wire a webhook from the CMS to a Cloudflare Worker that triggers an on-demand rebuild of the affected pages — typically under 30 seconds end-to-end.

// src/pages/api/revalidate.ts — Astro server endpoint
export const POST: APIRoute = async ({ request }) => {
  const sig = request.headers.get('x-wp-webhook-signature');
  if (!verifySignature(sig, WEBHOOK_SECRET)) {
    return new Response('unauthorized', { status: 401 });
  }
  const { slug, type } = await request.json();
  await revalidatePath(`/${type}/${slug}/`);
  return new Response('ok');
};
The numbers that justify it

Stock platform PageSpeed vs headless on the same site.

Typical mobile PageSpeed scores across stack patterns we audit. Headless is the only path to consistently green Core Web Vitals on commerce. Stock platforms with apps drag from yellow into red.

Stack Mobile Desktop LCP
Stock Shopify (default theme) 38 72 4.2s
Stock Shopify + apps 24 58 5.8s
Headless Shopify (Astro) 96 100 1.1s
Stock WooCommerce + Elementor 19 42 6.4s
Headless WordPress (Astro) 95 100 1.3s

Numbers reflect typical PageSpeed scores from sites we audit, not best-case lab data. Real production performance varies by hosting, image weight, and third-party scripts. Real measurement is part of every Savo Group feasibility audit.

The migration playbook

Twelve checks every headless migration has to pass.

The migration risk is what kills most headless rebuilds. Broken redirects, lost schema, indexation drift. The playbook below runs on every Savo Group headless engagement.

01 Pre-launch
  • Crawl baseline of current site captured (URL inventory, current rankings, traffic per template)
  • Schema audit on existing site so nothing of value gets dropped during the rebuild
  • URL-by-URL redirect map drafted, validated against the actual sitemap (not regex shortcuts)
  • Cart, checkout, and account flows mapped between current platform and headless front end
02 Build + staging
  • Astro/Next.js front end built against the API (Storefront, REST, or GraphQL)
  • Schema preserved at template level: Product, Article, FAQPage, BreadcrumbList, Review
  • Webhook + ISR or revalidation tested so editor changes ship to live within seconds
  • Edge config tuned: cache headers, image transforms, compression
03 Cutover + post-launch
  • DNS cut at low-traffic window with rollback plan ready
  • Search Console resubmitted with new sitemap, change-of-address tool used where applicable
  • 404 log review daily for 14 days, weekly through day 60, to catch redirect edge cases
  • Ranking and traffic deltas tracked against the pre-migration baseline weekly
Headless · technical questions

The seven questions technical buyers ask.

Ready to Grow Your Business?

Hand-coded websites, real SEO, and a team that picks up the phone. Family-owned, serving businesses nationwide.

Custom Websites That Convert

Hand-coded from scratch. No WordPress, no templates. Every site comes with the SAVO Dashboard for real-time analytics and lead tracking.

Custom websites

Every project is scoped to your needs. We'll assess what you need and give you a straight quote.

Bundle with SEO & Save 25%

Add SEO and the website build cost drops 25%.

Book a Call

Prefer to just talk? (360) 838-6304 · Book a call · Mon-Fri, 9am-6pm PST

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