What is a Headless CMS, and Should You Consider One?
Heard all the buzz about 'Headless' but not really sure what it is and why it's everyone's pushing it as the future of digital content publishing? We've got your back.
So what is a Headless CMS?
In the most basic of terms, a headless CMS is just a content repository (like an excel spreadsheet on steroids) that has APIs that can be accessed to present that content.
Because it decouples the content (think text, images, etc.) from the presentation layer (think website page, mobile app, etc.) you can have multiple different presentation layers that connect to it to provide the content they display. In other words, a single headless CMS can manage the content across your website and your mobile app and more.
Think of it like this - each publishing site or system as a unique head – a place where content lives or is published to. In a headless CMS this is flipped, so the content (aka the body) comes first. It is created centrally, inside the CMS, before being pushed out to each head.
Remember the marketing catchphrase of the early 2000’s ‘Content is King’? Well, here we are many years later still singing that same tune, with a headless CMS essentially bringing this concept to technical life.
Top 4 Benefits of Moving to a Headless CMS
1. Designed for Content
Headless CMS platforms are purely focused on content management, unlike DXPs that have a lot of complex features/functionality. This means they have a much more intuitive interface with visual editing and previewing making it infinitely simpler for editors to create content quickly and easily.
2. No More Templates
Headless CMS platforms use components to build pages (think banner, CTA cards, content blocks, etc), allowing you the flexibility to build out pages using whatever combination of components you want - without having to pay for a developer to build them.
3. Build a Best of Breed Martech Stack
By their nature the headless CMS is built to integrate, allowing you to choose whichever martech platforms you want for automation, CRM, CDP, etc. instead of the traditional DXP/CMS approach which tend to be walled gardens and more complex and costly to integrate with other systems.
4. Better Security and Lower Maintenance Costs
Instead of having to host the CMS software and maintain it, headless CMS platforms are SaaS products meaning they are inherently more secure and require much lower ongoing investment in maintenance.
Is a Headless CMS Right for You?
At Revium, we take an agnostic solution approach and therefore work with several industry leaders in the Headless CMS space. Selecting the right headless solution requires an assessment of your immediate business needs and potential future-state requirements, as there are many valuable headless solutions in market depending on the outcomes sought.
So how do you determine if a Headless CMS is potentially right for you. Do you:
Have projects that sometimes require custom design that can’t be accomplished with template-bound website platforms?
Have a content strategy and regularly create and update your website content, articles, products etc?
Manually rewrite, reformat, and publish content into multiple platforms and channels?
Experience bottlenecks waiting for your development resources to make content changes or support design updates?
Find more and more budget having to be allocated to hosting and maintenance for your web platform?
If the answer is yes to any of these, thena Headless CMS may be the right fit for you.
What are Your Headless CMS Options?
There are a ton of Headless CMS solutions in market right now, each with various strengths and weaknesses and choosing the right platform that’s both fit-for-purpose and fit-for-people requires careful consideration of a range of influencing factors.
At Revium, we have experience with a wide range of solutions such as Storyblok, Kontent.ai, Acoustic Marketing Cloud, Umbraco Heartcore, DatoCMS and many more. Navigating the choices can be difficult, but we partner with our clients to understand their unique needs and then go through a process to ensure they end up with the right Headless CMS to suit their business objectives.
In Summary
The ability to deliver seamless content experiences is the future of digital and we see Headless CMS platforms as the best way to embrace that future. Moving to a Headless CMS can will make it easier for you to deliver the most appropriate message to the right people, at the right time, via the right medium – all while analysing their behaviour, reactions and optimising the message they see next.
Want to know more about Headless CMS solutions or find out which one could be right for you? Why not have a chat to our expert team.
