Let’s go Headless

By Kim Spithill on 13th October 2021

Over the last few years, medium to large organisations have spent hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars bringing forward digital transformation initiatives. 

Zion market research states Global content management software market is expected to generate around USD 123,500 million by 2026, at a CAGR of around 16.7% between 2019 and 2026. The exponential growth in digital content across various enterprises is one of the major factors likely to fuel the growth of the content management software market globally over the forecast time period. Source: Zion Market Research

One sizable local example is James Hardie, who delivered a whole new website and trade engagement website. This digital transformation initiative leveraged Headless CMS technology.

REIWA, Western Australia's largest real estate institute, recently went live with their new members portal, built on Salesforce's CMS. This was an extensive program undertaking, and Mav3rik implemented the solution. 

So, with part of this investment going to building businesses' first CMS or transitioning to the new headless CMSs, which enable a more flexible breed of CMS offerings —ultimately targeting better digital engagement, brand, audience connection and growth.

Content Management Systems

CMSs traditionally were used to build, maintain and publish new content to websites. Today with a raft of digital delivery mediums, using a traditional CMS to manage all the content, format, and distribution to multiple platforms has become complex more on that later.

Typically CMSs were used to build, maintain, and publish new content to websites. Today, with a raft of digital delivery mediums, using a traditional CMS to manage all the content, format, and distribution to multiple platforms has become complex. Read on to find about why you should be building a Headless CMS to enable your enterprise to thrive in the digital age.

Digital Transformation and content

Brent Haslop, says that "Digital transformation is part IT project, part business strategy. It's knocking down silos, updating disparate legacy structures, and embedding current business philosophies alongside fast-paced development models to keep up with new revenue opportunities and changing consumer expectations." He talks about content management being the centre of digital transformation. That digital transformation has given businesses creative ways to get in front of relevant audiences over the web, mobile VR and Chatbots). 

There have long been solid arguments that content is king, now we talk about customer experience being the key to long help customer engagement and loyalty. But what of all this technology and reach without relevant content?

Content infrastructure refers to the content management system, but headless starts with the content model, similar to how great websites start with solid information architecture.

Remember, content is a strategic advantage. Serving it up wherever required and perfectly matched to your audience is the strategic advantage . It's brand awareness, customer engagement, the value that connects your audience to your business.

Why change from traditional to headless?

CMS driven websites are nothing new, and a good CMS driven website has thoughtful information architecture, page templates and modules that organisations can leverage throughout the entire site. 

User experience is used to provide an engaging and loved customer experience. The design focuses on a consistent experience across multiple devices, even if native apps are predominantly "native" but contain web pages.

Businesses need flexibility and scale that provides efficiencies and no degrading customer experience; if anything, headless enables this better.

What exactly is a headless CMS?

What worked for managing content and assets as one repository no longer serves digital platforms. You can no longer target and deliver relevant content to the multitude of mediums effectively and efficiently.

A standard Headless CMS decouples the assets management and content repositories from the front end layer. Think of it as the backend and the frontend.

The content gets delivered to your target mediums via APIs, known as an API first approach. Put it this way; a headless CMS gives you the ability to have multiple heads. Web, mobile, smartwatches, even VR and AR.

The Salesforce CMS

Salesforce CMS allows data to be presented visually. Image courtesy of Salesforce

The Salesforce CMS is considered a Hybrid Content Management System where you create your content in one place and then deliver it anywhere to keep the conversation going.

Sounds headless, doesn't it? Well, yes, it is, so before you commit to a platform like Contentful for Headless CMS, explore and consider the Salesforce CMS and how it enables your digital strategy.

Adi Kuriganti GM and SVP, Community Cloud and B2B Commerce at Salesforce, says, "We built Salesforce CMS to help empower teams, from novices to experts, to create content, and then it deliver to any channel – all connected to customer data."

With Salesforce CMS, anyone in your team can create content. It's easy to manage content across your entire site, interactive platforms, verticals, regions and more.

No developers! Do you like the sound of that? Update content and delivery anywhere whenever you want, and no need to submit tickets to a backlog to get a developer resource to do the work for you.

Connected customer, 360 views, insights, the Tableau CRM, it's all at your fingertips because Salesforce CMS is built natively on the world's best CRM. That enables personalised interaction, information and relevant engagement to every single customer. 

Alternative CMS Platform options

Numerous CMS and website platforms have matured to provide easy interactive templates designs and full custom frontend UI development. It would not be fair if I didn’t reference a couple of the big ones. 

Sitecore references Headless CMS as "Headless CMS architecture separates backend content functions (like creation, management, and storage) from frontend functions (like presentation and delivery)." 

Contentful  "Our content platform provides the central hub for creating, editing, and managing your content, and the tools to publish it on every digital channel. It's API-first, fully extensible, and scales up for the most demanding digital experiences."

WPEngine  "Atlas includes dynamic Node.js and Headless WordPress in one package with your choice of a modern framework. No haggling with multiple vendors on pricing, build requirements, or troubleshooting. Work with one trusted partner in WP Engine, recognised globally for award-winning customer service excellence."

Let's say from a Headless architecture or framework, Salesforce, Contentful and more are all on par.

What sets Salesforce CMS apart?

Give Geoff McCartney a bell on  0499 169090, or email geoff.mccartney@mav3rik.com

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