Why you need a headless CMS
Traditional content management systems are still great for small businesses but headless CMS is the go-to for bigger brands. Why? Simple! They make the cross-deployment of assets way easier. But, if you have a traditional CMS now, should you switch right away or bolt it onto another project later? Today, we’ll explore why you need a headless CMS and why it’s not something you should wait on if you’re a bigger enterprise.
How does a traditional CMS work?
First, a bit of background. Until recently, any content for your brand would be uploaded locally across all your channels. That’s great if you’re a small business with a limited presence who wants the ease of everything all in one place. UDig explains that, if you’re a brand that “doesn’t need to share content with other digital properties, you may be best served by using a traditional CMS. You can get up and running fast and you’ll be able to manage your site from a single source. It’s also important to note that while a traditional CMS is typically a [single-site] solution, many of them have plugins to enable multi-site and/or API access to share digital resources with external applications. [But those] plugins come with their own challenges and benefits.”
However, if you have a lot of channels, sub-brands, a tonne of content, ambitious marketing campaign ideas or a partner network; you’ll want to look at a headless CMS.
What a headless CMS does
Going headless decouples your content from the front end. That means you have one central place to store all your assets; ready to serve any channel. This gets pushed out via API and your devs just have to worry about the presentation. That’s way easier and quicker. Plus, it removes any dependency between the front end, in-house servers and your content. This frees you up to look at other solutions that might be more suitable to your needs. A headless CMS is the best option when you are using JavaScript for your apps or websites, for native mobile apps, for static site generators, when you want to hyper-personalise your marketing or when you need to push content to several places at once.
How a headless CMS actually works
It works by delivering structured content via an API. Contentful, a leader in this space explains that the “structured content approach separates the various elements of [your] page into distinct components, such as author, title, body, image, image description, definitions, e-commerce information, product pricing, terms and conditions and more. All these components can still be assembled to create the same webpage, but they can also be reassembled to create various iterations of the webpage, [personalised] for a distinct audience, [reorganised] for a specific campaign or trimmed down for a mobile experience.”
Why you need a headless CMS
A headless CMS solves a lot of very specific problems for larger brands. First, it makes all your development more product-focused. This takes the content from projects for a single page to making a building block that can be used in many different ways. It removes restrictions for device support. And it increases the reach of your content to nearly every channel imaginable in an agile and continuous development cycle. Lastly, the costs to make something usable is minimal and any tactical debt is managed, not inherent. It’s not like a traditional CMS where you’re buying (and building) everything up front. But you need to plan and build the roll-out as its own project. That will ensure you create all the building blocks you need for brand-wide experiences.
So, if you think your brand might get better marketing campaigns, expand your reach or just improve the delivery of your content with a headless CMS deployment… let’s talk. Book a FREE call now.
