Maximizing Engagement with Headless CMS: A Marketer’s Guide to Content Agility

Content is everywhere. That’s right. This three-word sentence lives up to its name. When we look around ourselves, we will find that there is no end to it. Whether it's in the form of websites, applications, eCommerce, social media, OTT platforms, music streaming services, and almost any device that is internet-based.

There are a lot of good technology products and services around. But are they good enough for maximum user engagement? Are the services around it matching the user expectations? This is an interesting area to explore.

Users have short attention spans. Especially when bombarded with so many options and services. Every application or software is trying to be the number one customer choice.

Sure, you have got a great product. But how can you market it with speed? How can you use technology to keep up with user expectations? How can you deliver your services in an engaging and agile way?

Headless CMS provides ways to address answers to these questions. The wide adoption of headless CMSs for various services is a great example of its market presence.

So what is a Headless CMS? How does it help market, run, and manage services in an agile way? What features and benefits do they offer to push your services ahead even in a saturated market? 

Let’s try to get a complete picture of headless CMS in this post.

Linearloop has been developing software products for more than half a decade. We have also created very successful technology products. As an established and a  leading software development company, we are committed to keeping up with the tech industry. At the same time, it’s important for us to keep sharing our experiences and knowledge with the awesome software community out there.

In this post we will go through the following topics:

• What is Headless CMS?
• Content Agility: Why It Matters and How Headless CMS Can Help With It?
• How Can Headless CMS Benefit Your Business?
• Linearloop’s Expert Take on Headless CMS
• Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Let’s get started.

Headless CMS or a decoupled content management system provides ways to run and manage services or software without worrying about too much technical stuff, especially the backend part. It is focused on delivering content or data across multiple devices from a central platform. Okay. This definition might feel a little too abstract.

Let’s try to understand it in a more simple way.

Typical CMS

A typical CMS consists of a user interface or the frontend and a server or the backend. Now what happens in a typical or traditional CMS is that the frontend and the backend are closely connected or tightly integrated with each other.

In a typical CMS architecture, we can’t use the server data to create another frontend or the presentation layer. Even if we do it, it would require some serious modifications on the server code to present it accordingly across other frontends.

All the code logic and typical features of the software have to be written by the developers themselves. Both on the frontend side and the server or backend side. An important thing to note is that they are still very relevant to specific business requirements of a project.

Headless CMS

Headless CMS on the other hand separates the presentation layer or the frontend or the “Head” and the server part or the backend. The data is brought to the user interface with the help of APIs. In short, it is a backend-only architecture in which we can add the frontend of our choice.

Headless means the frontend can be designed as per the needs or the current head can be replaced with any other head.

For example, if we have an online store, there can be two very different technologies used to create a frontend for a mobile app and a frontend for a website application. The data and the backend logic remain the same for both. It's just the presentation that has changed.

The API acts as a bridge or protocol between the frontend and the backend.

The content of the data is nicely placed separately with all the data models and the data transfer and processing logic.

Think of it as a template. Once the data is filled in these templates, they are ready to be fetched by the frontend and utilized. This data transfer is through the API or Application Programming Interface.

Content agility is the way of creating, updating, and distributing content across multiple channels with speed. It plays a crucial role in keeping users engaged. As we mentioned in the synopsis section of the post, users have short attention spans. It is also justified. Since there are so many options to choose from, it is very important for services and especially for product marketing purposes.

Headless CMS enables product owners to market their products with agility. They provide features and tools that are usually pre-built and highly customizable without worrying about the code, server, and other technical aspects.

Headless CMS also has a dedicated system or framework that can help push the latest updates or changes more efficiently. Important workflows in a CMS are already in place like entering business data, data management, user permissions, roles, tracking and monitoring, and many other features. This helps to focus on running the business or applications better rather than making sure that everything is working fine with the code and other technical stuff. They can manage everything without much constraints and with speed.

Customers have high expectations from products. They want a personalized experience. Since most users spend way too much time with multiple devices, it is not easy to keep up with their needs. What makes it even more challenging is that they will not hesitate to abandon using a product if not satisfied.

Headless CMS provides ways to keep up with users' expectations. OTT platforms like Netflix use Prismic Headless CMS to deliver content to its users. In short, headless CMS is a very powerful way to run businesses.

The kind and volume of content that Netflix provides is a great example of it. We will also look at some more examples of business and technology heavyweights that utilize headless CMS for their operations.

Headless CMS provides flexibility in many forms. This not only helps to manage everything centrally but also to do it in a reliable way. They also remove some technical barriers which can be a huge area of concern, both from the cost and operations point of view.

Below are the important ways in which headless CMS can benefit your business:

Agility in Content Delivery

Headless CMS provides efficient ways to deliver content with speed. Since the data comes through the APIs, most of the things are already taken care of from the server side. All we need to do is to use these API endpoints or routes and plug them into the frontend of our choice. This makes the process very fast. The updates can happen in real-time. This makes them even cooler since everything works in agile ways.

Personalized Content and Localization Capabilities

User expectations and requirements vary. This is a key to product and marketing success. Headless CMS allows for the creation and delivery of personalized content. On top of that, it also offers the capabilities for better localization. Taking the example of Netflix again, the content in one country may or may not be the same as in other countries.

AI/ML Capabilities

Headless CMS also has features of Machine Learning algorithms. Recommendation systems can be seen in many e-commerce platforms. They are difficult to implement themselves with the traditional methods. They also require considerable resources and computing power to run with in-house hardware. Headless CMS provides these features as well making them even more desirable to provide personalized recommendations for content or products using Machine Learning capabilities.

Scalability Options

Headless CMS offers numerous add-on features and resources. These resources can be utilized as per the business requirements. This also helps to get a reliable system in place with options to scale up or down. It makes them one of the best ways to run any business with less worries about scalability.

Enables Usage of New Technologies and Advanced Features

Headless CMS also is really good at including new and better technologies in its framework. This makes the product owners and marketers leverage new technologies without worrying about implementation. Things like real-time chat functionality, Chatbots, automated operations, and more can be integrated easily with these as well.

Better Content and Operations Management

Headless CMS is built to be flexible. The schema, model, fields, and relationships for the data to be used by the frontend are also easy to define using headless CMS. For example, the same Headless CMS can be used for two or more very different businesses. Most of the functionalities are fully customizable making them a good choice to get up and running with one’s business.

Dashboard and Analytics for Monitoring

Headless CMS also provides features to keep track of business performance. For example, the KPIs can be defined and analyzed for better decision-making. Implementing one’s own dashboard like traditional CMS is not easy. Headless CMS is known to offer feature-rich systems for better management of business, data visualizations, and more. This can help monitor the effectiveness of content strategies and optimizations accordingly.

Scope for Experimenting

Headless CMS brings the frontend and backend together by abstracting everything behind the scenes. Since the logic is already there for most functions and use cases, this makes it easier to test or experiment with new trends. This also helps in testing prototypes for quick validations. Based on the outcomes, the strategies can be adjusted efficiently for better customer experience and improved results.

Read More: A Founder's Perspective: What it Takes to Build a Great Product

In this post, we went through the ecosystem of headless CMS. We went through some very important questions regarding it. We have been working with software product development technologies for many years now. We consider headless CMS to be one of the most effective ways to build a reliable, future-proof, and highly scalable business.

Our expert developers are committed to using the right technologies that suit your business requirements. Based on our experience and expertise in various domains we have some expert recommendations for you while considering a headless CMS for your business.

Use-Cases for Headless CMS

Headless CMSs have been a very popular choice for mid and large-size corporations. We recommend it for:

• eCommerce platforms
• Complex Websites with dynamic needs and requirements
• Internationalized applications and websites
• Medium, Large, and Enterprise-level projects
• Custom Applications for Improved User Experience

Why Should You Care Using Headless CMS

The benefits of headless CMS are very obvious in terms of usage and its excellent capabilities. Some major areas where headless CMS can contribute while developing modern apps include:

• Enables the creation of high-performance apps
• Great for SEO for improved visibility on the Internet for more and better lead generation
• Excellent for scalability
• Security and reliability comes out of the box
• Improved reusability features
• Easy to update and maintain
• Feature-rich and highly customizable for most use cases

When Not To Use Headless CMS

There are also cases where Headless CMSs should be avoided. We will not call them cons since they depend on the business requirements of product owners. Regardless, let’s check them out:

• Not recommended for very simple and static web pages
• Not recommended if there are budget constraints
• For an Enterprise-level application, developer expertise is crucial.

I hope you enjoyed reading the post. At Linearloop, we love to experiment with new and latest technology. Only then we are able to develop great products that make a difference. Headless CMS is one of those technologies that we would definitely recommend.

Thank you for being here and reading till the end. See you all soon with another technology post.

Cheers 😊!