Find the best content management system for your business with Contentful’s easy-to-follow guide for choosing traditional or headless CMS.
Businesses are adapting to rapidly evolving customer expectations, investing more in technology to deliver digital experiences faster. As companies move to omnichannel content delivery, digital teams need more flexibility and scalability to accelerate this transformation.
Many companies struggle with moving beyond a traditional CMS. Initially built for managing websites, traditional platforms were created to store and publish content as well as design elements all in one place. However, this limited how businesses could deliver content across multiple channels. Headless CMS became an ideal solution to provide the needed scalability and flexibility to deliver content faster.
Small businesses are still surviving without a digital presence; while 60% of small businesses invest in a website, 40% still choose not to invest. But for many brands, today’s content needs to extend well beyond the limitations of the traditional CMS. Companies large and small are developing mobile sites, digital displays, and apps at an increasing rate, and customer expectations have never been higher.
When businesses try to capitalize on personalization at scale, they often encounter barriers to the portability of customer data and unfulfilled technology expectations. In order to evolve and compete in the digital-first era, companies experiencing rapid digital transformation may explore a shift from legacy systems to more scalable content solutions that blend well with the modern tech stack.
Here are a few examples of how headless CMS has helped global brands across industries future-proof their stacks and increase productivity:
When investing in a new content platform, organizations should seek out the best CMS for their current and future needs. Find out how to choose the right CMS for your business and why many companies choose headless CMS to support their digital transformation journey.
A CMS, or content management system, is a software application used for web development that allows content creators to manage, edit, and publish content to a website from a user-friendly interface. The traditional architecture of the CMS is an all-in-one or “coupled” enterprise content management system that pulls digital assets into one place for managing and publishing content.
A traditional CMS allows content creators to manage and display content to a website with an all-in-one solution. The most popular CMS for small-scale operations and personal websites, the traditional CMS packages all content and digital assets together, in a monolithic architecture that tightly links the frontend and backend of the website.
A traditional CMS platform comes with built-in themes and templates, and a frontend that can be customized and edited as needed. Because everything is together, users can quickly manage and publish content without technical expertise or coding required.
One of the best advantages of a traditional CMS is that the software is simple to set up and use. Everything from content management to the design is grouped together, making it easy for users to manage and publish content. Other advantages include:
A headless CMS is a content management system that provides the content as data over an API. This type of content platform differs from a traditional CMS because the presentation layer, or the visual representation of a website in a browser or mobile device (also known as the “head”), is not coupled/attached to the CMS. In short, the term “headless” essentially means that the presentation layer is separated from the body. By storing content separately from the code used to build the presentation layer, a headless CMS can manage all of an organization’s content, no matter its destination, enabling teams to quickly launch content and products across channels.
A headless content management system allows more control over how content is delivered across multiple channels. Without a designated frontend, a headless CMS gives developers and content creators more flexibility in design. Headless content management system benefits include:
Without the limited functionalities of a legacy CMS, companies across industries can rely on a headless CMS to design large-scale and unique digital products that stand out from their competitors. Here are some reasons why a headless CMS may be the best content management system for your business:
With headless CMS, companies like Bang & Olufsen (B&O) were able to use their content platform to meet their customers’ needs in different regions and languages. This allowed them to improve their digital customer experience that led to a threefold increase in their ecommerce conversion rate.
While traditional architecture may work for basic websites, companies looking for a more flexible, scalable content management system solution should choose a headless CMS. Businesses need content infrastructure to handle the many dimensions of scale, including the ability to support complex integrations, customizations, additional features, and functionality.
Contentful provides companies ways to optimize their digital ecosystems and power digital experiences. With flexibility in pricing, businesses can scale their content platforms with a centralized hub for structured content, powerful delivery APIs, a customizable web app and JAM-stack ready CMS to create and deliver content faster.
With a more flexible content solution, businesses have more opportunities to produce content-driven experiences in shorter amounts of time. If something doesn’t work, a headless-style solution enables them to pivot, meet the expectations of customers and keep a competitive edge.
To learn more about how the next generation of content management solutions can help your organization deliver better digital customer experiences, check out The ultimate guide headless to CMS.