Headless Content Management: Time To Do It!

With the wave of technology and various trends in the way people interact across the web available today, it is easy to say that the internet is now exceedingly different from how it was two, five, or ten years ago. The key to a successful run on the web is to keep up with the change. The way we publish content for the web means an immeasurably optimistic change for you and your business. This change is to go headless in your content management, in which by all means, you should join in.

Headless content management advances a multitude of benefits that your regular content management is not able to do. Going headless gives you the ability to deliver structured content in an easy-to-use, handy dandy, point-and-click manner, which is perfect not only for content management itself but also for the equally important search optimization (SEO) deal.

Way more appealing than traditional CMS, the headless route is most chosen for its efficiency in creating a safer and higher-performing website. The desired flexibility and cross-platform interoperability in a content management system are achieved by Headless CMS, which could not be satisfied by the traditional or the legal CMS from years ago.

Do you want to build a new site or redesign an existing one? Or are you considering if you can improve your online and content marketing efforts with Headless CMS? Read on and be convinced of the advantages of a headless content management system and why it is highly recommended by developers. It is high time to do it!

We now live in a multichannel world

Research says that 51.3% of people now spend more time searching the Internet on mobile phones than on desktops. US Consumers own on average 3.5 connected devices each. With this growing trend, it can be foreseen that the augmented reality and virtual reality (AR/VR) market will expand from $5.2b in 2016 to more than $162b in 2020.

There is a need for a new way of managing web content in this multichannel world. For years, many developers have been using the traditional CMS systems, also termed monolithic CMS systems, that handle the content in a database as well as the entire presentation layer.

Among these traditional CMS systems, the widely known players in the market include WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla. Although these systems have been around for over ten years, they still aren’t suited for today’s multichannel online environment. They still work on rigid business processes.

Many people view content on various devices and channels. Allowing the readers or website visitors to consume the content seamlessly across their varying devices would mean great success in content management, hence possibly converting engagement to sales.

It requires a whole new mindset in structuring, organizing, managing, and presenting content. Unfortunately, traditional CMS systems have just websites in mind and although they do support structured content, the multichannel approach is an afterthought for them and does not support the new paradigm well.

Many companies have now realized the need to be agile and have been gradually moving their systems to the Cloud. They recognize that running systems internally is less efficient and lacks the flexibility and speed they need in today's dynamic world. While traditional CMS systems are in a cloud environment, they weren't designed as Software as a Service (SaaS) products and lacked the benefits of a proper cloud-first solution.

Taking all these things into account, it is no wonder that headless content management continues to be preferred. Headless CMS can remedy many of the existing problems brought about by traditional and monolithic content management systems.

Headless CMS - next generation in content management

A cloud-first headless CMS currently defines the new era of content management systems. If you're choosing a CMS today, you need to consider whether a monolithic digital experience platform or a new cloud-first headless CMS product is best for you.

If you want a CMS that allows you to manage and deliver content as well as access it from your applications using an API, then Headless CMS is the perfect choice for you. Unlike traditional CMS solutions, headless CMS does without the presentation layer (the "head") to dictate how the content displays. Instead, you control the presentation entirely with your code.

Because of this, headless CMS is also widely known as decoupled CMS. Fundamentally, a decoupled CMS separates the front-end from the back-end. This makes it easier to make changes to either side without overly affecting the other, which can potentially bog down and delay any content management work.

A headless CMS or decoupled CMS is the ideal solution for the fast-paced multichannel world. It enables you to use the same content across multiple channels—website, mobile app, digital assistant, virtual reality, smartwatches, etc. It follows the content-first approach to your engagement with your audience. In other words, content creators no longer have to wait for development teams to catch up.

Not only that, the whole website’s security is even more guaranteed because of the nature of a decoupled CMS. After all, even if you give a lot of people access to the content management side, it'll be hard to affect the server-side or the back-end without specific permissions. Fewer accidents will happen.

Headless content management systems allow structured delivery of content that is desirable for SEO purposes. In addition, it'll be easier for the content creators in your team to organize the things they publish. With all these benefits, it is hard not to take a hard look at using a headless CMS for one's website.

Headless CMS and convenient landing page builders

Many marketing teams rely on various campaigns to deliver their message. They use different tools and services to help them. It can be a big challenge because they have content in many places and it is not organized. It also lacks a clear workflow for getting the experience designed and published.

In the future, personalization and omnichannel marketing will be a significant standard for digital marketing. Businesses are short-staffed in the development department and much of their current content is spread out in different places. There is a lack of technical ability to create an own bespoke Digital Experience Stack.

All of these are huge challenges that marketers and website owners deal with each time a redesign or website update is on the horizon.

But with the help of headless CMS technology, the headache can be dialled down.

With that said, WebriQ offers a new way for customers to use the internet. WebriQ has the latest technology that makes it easy for people to use the internet. WebriQ is made by many different people with many years of experience.

We offer a service that is free to use. You can create your own landing pages and microsites. There are limitations on the number of people using it at one time, but you can always make more sites if you need to. With this serviced approach, WebriQ provides design services for your site as well as unlimited traffic and conversions.

To know more about this service, please check out our Webriq Studio and the custom landing pages you can build there. We guarantee that you will love it!

True headless-first versus "me too" headless CMS

It seems that many traditional coupled or decoupled CMS systems provide REST API and claim they are "hybrid" or "also headless." Be that as it may, you should be aware of important details that make a big difference between a CMS with a headless or "API- first" approach in mind from the very beginning versus a CMS for which the API was an afterthought.

WordPress REST API falls into that category. You will often discover that this REST API may not even make such content available, or the way the content is provided makes it useless for other channels, like a mobile app.

To straighten the fact, a modern headless CMS has an API-first approach. Its creators usually pay much attention to the API, and the whole solution enables its full power. Traditional CMS products often provide just a pure REST API, lacking the additional elements that ensure the APIs' high scalability and security in real-world applications.

Usually, they don't offer a Content Delivery Network (CDN) to provide global coverage or high speed or high service availability, negatively impacting its overall performance.

SaaS CMS versus CMS hosted in the Cloud

The most revolutionary aspect of the headless approach is that it enables CMS vendors to provide a CMS in a proper multi-tenant Software as a Service model. This wasn't possible with traditional CMS models that combined both content management and content presentation.

One of the main reasons is that traditional CMS vendors only provide single-tenant managed hosting or Platform as a Service (PaaS) hosting for their products. Such models, however, don't unlock all the benefits of the Cloud.

Selection of the major players in the Headless CMS market

Now that we know how beneficial a headless CMS can be, the next question is which headless CMS option should you use? Let's take a look at the following:

Contentful

Founded in 2013, Germany-based Contentful offers an API-driven headless CMS. Contentful's RESTful API gives developers full programmatic control of content, digital assets, and translations. The Platform also takes advantage of caching techniques and external CDN integrations to enable the delivery of API payloads in the sub-100ms range.

It can display JSON snippets, a rich-text editor, and content modelling features that will allow marketers to arrange individual fields and content modules such as text, images, and calendars.

Directus

Brooklyn-based Directus is an open-source headless CMS and API. Built using Vue.js., Directus manages custom-schema SQL databases directly. The idea is that developers can create custom databases based on specific project needs without learning a proprietary framework or being forced to build using particular technologies.

When the database is ready, Directus' API or SDKs can be connected, resulting in a customizable interface that business users can use to manage database content for their websites and applications.

GraphQL CMS - GraphCMS

Giessen, Germany-based GraphCMS is an API-first CMS that entered the market in 2017. The product is based on GraphQL, a data query language that some developers consider to be the successor to REST.

GraphCMS allows you to develop a hosted GraphQL backend for your application to define relations, structures, and permissions of your application data. It also comes with several tools to create and manage your content, including text editors, asset management, workflows, user roles, and multi-lingual support.

Prismic

San Francisco-based Prismic is a SaaS headless CMS that comes with a visual editor, custom type builds, multi-language support, and full revision history.

Besides native integrations with eCommerce platforms like Shopify and Magento, Prismic comes with a scheduling and project management tool to enable collaboration and workflow management. Prismic provides developers with a development kit for their preferred programming language or framework.

Sanity

Launched in 2015, Sanity is an open-source headless CMS that was developed in Oslo, Norway. Built on JavaScript and React.js, Sanity features a WYSIWYG rich text editor, which allows you to embed editable data in running text and defer markup to render time.

It also comes with a Sweet Query API that enables you to cache multiple queries on a single request. Sanity also provides real-time collaboration, live previewing, and content versioning.

Strapi

France-based Strapi is an open-source headless CMS built on Node.js. It enables you to develop and manage multiple APIs. The front-end agnostic platform features an extensible and customizable admin panel, plugins, asset management, and several security layers, including CSFR, CORS, P3P, and XSS.

While the technology will differ from vendor to vendor, the most significant difference you'll feel is the level of service and support the vendor will provide during deployment and after that. Going headless isn't the most painless transition your brand will make, so be sure to choose a vendor with a history of giving hands-on assistance and support expertise.

Conclusion

Indeed, a headless CMS or decoupled CMS is definitely superior for website owners and content marketers. This technology keeps improving as well due to the growing demand and awareness.

Couple that with a convenient landing page builder and microsite builder and you have a powerful tool for producing web pages that will take your business to the next level.

To keep up with the trend of today’s market, it is now high time for you to take advantage of what Headless content management systems can do for you. The headless CMS options mentioned above are a good place to start. See which ones fit your needs and be on your way to a better content management process and higher-quality website.

If you need help in setting up a high-performing website making full use of headless CMS functions, we here at WebriQ are more than happy to help. Send us a message anytime to know more about Webriq Studio and our other services. Let us get started with your headless CMS journey!