How to Migrate Your WooCommerce Store to a Headless Frontend (Step-by-Step)

Moving a WooCommerce store to a headless frontend is one of the most impactful architectural changes you can make. It separates the rendering layer from WordPress entirely, giving you sub-second page loads, full control over your frontend code, and a deployment workflow that belongs in 2025 — not 2015.

This guide walks through every step of the process. Not theory. Not vague advice. Actual steps, in order, with the configuration details and gotchas that other guides leave out. If you have already read our introduction to headless WooCommerce, you understand the "why." This is the "how."

Prerequisites: what you need before starting

Before touching any code, make sure these are in place. Missing any of them will stall you mid-migration.

You do not need to be a React expert. If you can read JSX and understand component props, you can build a headless storefront. The WooCommerce REST API handles the heavy lifting — your frontend is primarily rendering data it receives as JSON.

Step 1: Configure your WordPress backend

Your WordPress installation needs to become an API-first backend. This means enabling the REST API, configuring authentication, and setting up CORS so your frontend can fetch data from a different domain.

Enable and verify the WooCommerce REST API

The WooCommerce REST API is enabled by default, but you need to generate API keys. Go to WooCommerce → Settings → Advanced → REST API and create a new key pair. Set the permissions to Read/Write — you will need write access for cart and checkout operations. Store the Consumer Key and Consumer Secret securely. These go into your Next.js environment variables.

Verify the API is responding by hitting your store's endpoint directly: https://yourstore.com/wp-json/wc/v3/products. You should see a JSON response with your product data. If you get a 404, check that pretty permalinks are enabled in Settings → Permalinks — the REST API requires them.

Configure CORS headers

Your Next.js frontend will run on a different domain (or port during development). Without CORS headers, the browser will block API requests. Add this to your theme's functions.php or a custom plugin:

add_action('rest_api_init', function() {
  remove_filter('rest_pre_serve_request', 'rest_send_cors_headers');
  add_filter('rest_pre_serve_request', function($value) {
    $origin = get_http_origin();
    $allowed = ['https://yourstore.com', 'http://localhost:3000'];
    if (in_array($origin, $allowed)) {
      header('Access-Control-Allow-Origin: ' . $origin);
      header('Access-Control-Allow-Credentials: true');
      header('Access-Control-Allow-Methods: GET, POST, PUT, DELETE, OPTIONS');
      header('Access-Control-Allow-Headers: Authorization, Content-Type');
    }
    return $value;
  });
});

Replace the $allowed array with your actual domains. During development, http://localhost:3000 is essential. In production, use your headless frontend's domain.

Authentication for cart and checkout

Product data can be fetched without authentication (it is public). But cart operations, customer data, and order creation require authenticated requests. For server-to-server calls from Next.js API routes, use the Consumer Key and Secret as query parameters or via HTTP Basic Auth. For client-side cart operations, you will need a session-based approach — more on this in Step 4.

Step 2: Set up your Next.js project

With the backend configured, create your Next.js application. This will be the new frontend for your store — every product page, category listing, cart, and checkout will be rendered here.

npx create-next-app@latest your-store --typescript --tailwind --app
cd your-store

Create a .env.local file in the project root with your WooCommerce credentials:

NEXT_PUBLIC_WORDPRESS_URL=https://yourstore.com
WC_CONSUMER_KEY=ck_your_consumer_key
WC_CONSUMER_SECRET=cs_your_consumer_secret

Create a WooCommerce API client

Build a reusable API client that handles authentication and error handling. This is the foundation every page and component will use to fetch data from your WordPress backend:

// lib/woocommerce.ts
const baseUrl = process.env.NEXT_PUBLIC_WORDPRESS_URL + '/wp-json/wc/v3';

export async function wooFetch(endpoint: string, options?: RequestInit) {
  const url = new URL(baseUrl + endpoint);
  url.searchParams.set('consumer_key', process.env.WC_CONSUMER_KEY!);
  url.searchParams.set('consumer_secret', process.env.WC_CONSUMER_SECRET!);

  const res = await fetch(url.toString(), {
    ...options,
    next: { revalidate: 60 }, // ISR: revalidate every 60 seconds
  });

  if (!res.ok) throw new Error(`WooCommerce API error: ${res.status}`);
  return res.json();
}

This client uses Next.js Incremental Static Regeneration (ISR) by default, meaning product data is cached and revalidated every 60 seconds. You get the speed of static pages with data that stays current. Adjust the revalidate interval based on how frequently your products change.

Step 3: Build product pages

Product pages are the core of any WooCommerce store. In a headless setup, each product page is a React component that receives data from the WooCommerce API and renders it as static HTML at build time.

Dynamic routes with generateStaticParams

Next.js App Router uses generateStaticParams to pre-build pages for every product in your catalogue. At deploy time, Next.js fetches your product slugs and generates a static HTML page for each one. The result: every product page is served from the CDN edge with zero server-side rendering.

// app/products/[slug]/page.tsx
import { wooFetch } from '@/lib/woocommerce';

export async function generateStaticParams() {
  const products = await wooFetch('/products?per_page=100');
  return products.map((p: any) => ({ slug: p.slug }));
}

export default async function ProductPage({ params }: { params: { slug: string } }) {
  const [product] = await wooFetch(`/products?slug=${params.slug}`);
  // Render your product page component
}

For stores with more than 100 products, paginate through the API ingenerateStaticParams to capture every product. The WooCommerce REST API returns a maximum of 100 items per request, so loop through pages until you have them all.

Handling product variations

Variable products (sizes, colours, configurations) require additional API calls. Each variation has its own price, stock status, and image. Fetch variations alongside the parent product and build a client-side selector that updates price and availability without a page reload. This is where a headless frontend genuinely outshines traditional WooCommerce — variation switching is instant because the data is already loaded.

Step 4: Cart and checkout integration

Cart and checkout are the most complex part of a headless WooCommerce migration. Unlike product pages (which are read-only), the cart requires stateful, authenticated interactions with your WordPress backend.

Cart session management

WooCommerce manages cart state server-side using PHP sessions. In a headless setup, you need an alternative approach. The two main options are:

The WooCommerce Store API (/wp-json/wc/store/v1/) is the recommended approach. It provides endpoints for adding items, updating quantities, and managing the cart via a nonce-based session token. The API returns the token in response headers, which you store and send with subsequent requests.

Checkout flow

For checkout, you have two strategies. The first is building a fully custom checkout in your Next.js frontend — this gives you complete control over the UX but requires integrating payment gateways directly (Stripe Elements, PayPal SDK, etc.). The second is redirecting to the WordPress checkout page for payment processing — simpler to implement, but loses the performance benefit at the most critical step.

Step 5: SEO migration

SEO migration is where most headless projects stumble. Get this wrong and you will lose rankings that took years to build. Get it right and you will likely gain rankings thanks to improved Core Web Vitals. Our headless WooCommerce SEO guide covers this in depth, but here are the critical steps.

URL structure and redirects

Your new frontend must use the same URL structure as the existing site. If your products live at /product/blue-widget/ in WooCommerce, they must live at /product/blue-widget/ in Next.js. If you change URL structures (even removing a trailing slash), set up 301 redirects for every old URL. Next.js handles this in next.config.js:

// next.config.js
module.exports = {
  async redirects() {
    return [
      // Example: old category structure to new
      { source: '/product-category/:slug', destination: '/categories/:slug', permanent: true },
    ];
  },
};

Structured data (JSON-LD)

WooCommerce (usually via Yoast or Rank Math) generates Product schema, BreadcrumbList schema, and Organisation schema automatically. In a headless frontend, you must generate this yourself. Embed JSON-LD in your product page's <head> using Next.js metadata:

XML sitemap

Generate a dynamic sitemap that includes all product pages, category pages, and content pages. Next.js App Router supports this natively with a sitemap.ts file. Fetch your product and category slugs from the WooCommerce API at build time and output valid XML. Submit the new sitemap to Google Search Console immediately after cutover.

Step 6: Parallel running and testing

Never do a hard cutover. Run both frontends simultaneously while you validate every page, every product, and every checkout scenario.

The parallel running strategy

Deploy your Next.js frontend to a staging URL (e.g. staging.yourstore.com or a Vercel preview URL). Your existing WooCommerce frontend continues serving traffic on the live domain. Both frontends hit the same WordPress backend, so product data, orders, and customer accounts are shared.

Run through this validation checklist before cutting over:

Step 7: DNS cutover and go-live

Once testing is complete, the actual cutover is straightforward. You are changing where your domain points — from your WordPress server to your Next.js hosting provider.

The cutover process

Update your domain's DNS records to point to your Next.js hosting provider (Vercel, Netlify, or your server). If you are on Vercel, this means adding a CNAME record. DNS propagation typically takes 15 minutes to a few hours, during which some visitors will see the old site and some will see the new one. Both are functional, so there is no downtime.

Your WordPress backend does not move. It stays on its current server, now serving only API requests. This is a good time to review your WooCommerce hosting strategy — a backend-only WordPress installation has different hosting requirements than a full-stack WordPress site.

Post-cutover checklist

Common mistakes that derail migrations

Having worked with dozens of WooCommerce headless migrations, these are the mistakes that cause the most damage. Every one of them is avoidable.

Estimating cost and effort

The cost of a headless migration depends on your store's complexity. A simple store with 50 products and standard checkout is fundamentally different from a multi-currency store with 10,000 SKUs, custom pricing rules, and three payment gateways. For a detailed breakdown, read our headless WooCommerce cost guide.

The investment pays for itself through improved conversion rates. A store doing $50,000/month in revenue that improves conversion rate by 10% gains $5,000/month. The migration cost is recovered within the first month or two.

Using WPBundle for your migration

Building a headless WooCommerce frontend from scratch means solving cart session management, checkout flows, payment gateway integration, product variation handling, coupon logic, shipping calculations, and tax computation — all before you write a single line of storefront UI code. WPBundle provides a production-ready Next.js storefront with all of this already built, tested, and optimised.

Instead of spending 200+ hours on infrastructure, you focus on design and content. The migration checklist shortens dramatically because the hardest problems — the ones covered in Steps 3 and 4 of this guide — are already solved. For a complete pre-launch walkthrough, see our headless WooCommerce migration checklist.

Related guides

This tutorial covers the technical migration process. For the broader picture — architecture decisions, cost planning, SEO strategy, and API choices — these guides fill in the gaps: