Benefits of Headless for Your Agency

Keith wiped his sweaty forehead. He could hear his heart thumping over the laboured breath. He has been running for the last 2 hours. Scratch that, he has been running for the last 2 years, since he started his business: selling custom furniture online. So, why is he running? 

Digital Innovation Gap

Keith, like 70 percent of business leaders, is trying to keep up with customers’ expectations in terms of digital experience. In order to succeed, however, he needs to be better equipped. 

The digital abilities of a business are directly tied to revenue, but a lot of business leaders are struggling to offer custom, personalized, omnichannel customer experiences with outdated tools. If you can relate to this struggle, it’s time you hear more about the headless CMS (Content Management System).

What is a Headless CMS?

A headless CMS is a back-end only content management system built as a content repository that makes content accessible via API (Application Programming Interface) to be displayed on any device and channel.
The term “headless” refers to the concept of removing the front-end, the head, from the back-end, the body. This, essentially, means you can add any “head” to  your “body”, making the headless CMS a very friendly hydra.

1. Benefits of Using a Headless CMS Now that we know what it means, let’s find out how a headless CMS helps Keith’s business  close the digital innovation gap and deliver digital experiences in a scalable, repeatable way.
2. PLATFORM INDEPENDENCEAs we found out in the definition, a headless CMS is independent from any platforms. This type of CMS makes your content accessible via API and you can display it on any device without having to make any changes. Simply put, Keith would be able to reach brand consistency across channels and meet the customers on all devices, offering them an omnichannel customer experience.
   Having this cross-platform support will also increase Keith’s speed to build, speed to market and time to value.
3. FREE TECHNOLOGY CHOICEAnother great benefit is that you are free to use your technology of choice to connect the back-end to any of the “heads” or front-ends. Once the content is ready Keith’s developers can load it to a website, mobile app or any other channel using their preferred framework.
4. PERSONALIZATION AND LOCALIZATIONWhen you choose a headless CMS to deliver future-proof digital experiences and content you get the added benefit of personalization, localization and optimization.Keith knows that more than 80% of the customers say the experience a company provides is as important as its products and services. A headless CMS would help Keith’s content team to unify content management and seamless integration with personalization, localization, and optimization tools. They would be able to create a connected marketing stack and deliver personal digital experiences.
   Additionally, seamless integration means they can forget about slow waterfall workflows and, consequently they will have more time for content creation.
   Using a headless CMS, Keith can now easily unlock new revenue sources. He can reach a global audience because headless CMSs offer full localization support and a translation workflow for all types of content and assets: rich text, URLs, SEO metadata, and responsive images.

1. Architecture and Integration

Due to the separated nature of the headless CMS, Keith can choose the technologies that fit his current architecture. Each of the technologies is independent and acquired individually, giving him complete freedom over his technology stack. His developers can query the content via API and distribute it to any channel from a single source.
Especially since Covid-19 has pushed the market towards a digital-first economy, having this complete autonomy and control over your technology stack is more important than usual, helping companies stay ahead of the curve in a globally competitive market. 

1. FLEXIBILITY AND SPEED

A headless CMS overcomes the challenges of siloed content that is managed manually. More than that, Keith’s content team can make fast changes that are implemented across all channels, minimizing the impact of redesigns and product changes.
Some systems, like Storyblok, offer modular content blocks. These blocks can be reused in different situations and open up the possibility to automate a portion of your content creation process through using Intelligent Content, moving  towards data-driven, automated content creation.
The developers team, as stated before, also enjoys the benefit of flexibility by being able to work with any modern language stack.
To summarize, Keith’s business would increase reuse, flexibility and experimentation for practitioners while allowing technical professionals to build and deploy in short iterative bursts.

1. COSTS AND LICENSING

We established that Keith’s team has complete freedom over the technology stack and optimize it to their specific needs. Choosing what tools you need also saves you money, by only buying the tools you need and by paying only for as long as you need them. Once a tool becomes obsolete, it can easily be removed from the stack and replaced with something more useful.

Trying to find the right headless CMS, from a costs perspective, would be easy for Keith. Most systems are available at different prices, according to the features they include. This way, once again, you only pay for what you and your business needs.

1. ONBOARDING AND ADAPTING

Having an optimized stack has the added benefit of fewer tools that need to be implemented. Each tool is compact and specialized, by definition, so Keith’s team would get onboarded very quickly and they would also win time by only learning to use the tools specific to their activity.
In addition to that, by building a technology stack based on your team’s experience you will considerably shorten the time of implementation of the new system.

1. UPDATES AND SECURITY

Although it’s listed last, security is a major deciding factor when it comes to choosing a CMS for your business. Headless CMS platforms protect against security risks due to its decoupled nature. Most systems use API to provide content that is read-only. Additionally, that API can be placed behind an application and a security layer.
Generally, headless CMSs leave the rendering of the content they deliver client-side, rather than server-side, reducing the impact of any possible DDoS (distributed denial-of-service attacks).

Apart from these broad aspects, each tool Keith’s team uses is offered by an individual expert provider, which initiates updates regularly and in small sizes, reducing the overall security risk. Furthermore, if a problem arises in one of the tools, it will not affect the rest of the stack. These isolated issues pose a much lower risk and are much easier to control.

Key Takeaways

At the heart of every digital experience lies content. The way you approach your content delivery will impact your business and revenues. If, like Keith, you are aware that customers expect an omnichannel digital experience, brand and content consistency, and personalized content, then you are already a step closer to closing the digital gap. Choosing a headless CMS, like Storyblok, for your business will empower you to offer authentic digital experiences and to meet your clients’ needs on any device, in a secure way and keeping your resource utilization at a low level.