CMS is a vital tool for any organization to manage and enhance its online presence. However, we all know that everything changes drastically in this digital world, and CMS is no exception!
Enters headless CMS! Today, the organization’s primary focus is not on presenting lucrative content to its users; instead, it has shifted from the traditional to the headless way. It has become more about presenting useful data when and where you want to build trust. You can seamlessly present a blog, a customer’s review, or a flexible API in a headless CMS approach.
But what exactly are headless CMS, and why should we choose one for our website development? Discover many such answers in this expert post!
What is a Headless CMS?
Headless CMS is a term used in content management systems that decouples the content productions and content displaying capabilities. A headless CMS primarily consists of an API and backend that can be used to store and deliver the content. It is a robust technique that enables the developers to offer content as a service to its users. That means we can generate content and can display it using two different software.
Let us understand this with the help of a simple example. WordPress is a popular CMS widely used by almost all companies today for generating and publishing content. You can seamlessly add a new page, write content in it, and then publish it to any website you want.
But, what if you only need to generate content and not publish it on that particular website? What if you need that content for a Facebook Ad or a social media post? That is exactly where the headless CMS term comes to play!
The main aim of a headless CMS is to facilitate generation and storage of the content, whereas displaying it is a secondary aspect. Today, anyone can post a video or an image seamlessly using their smartphones. However, reaching an audience and building customers remains a tedious task for most of the online stores.
So, why to choose a CMS that can display stuff on your website? Instead, you should go for a headless CMS that can generate and store content and, more importantly, display it whenever and wherever you want!
Still not convinced? Here are the seven compelling reasons why to choose headless cms on your website!
7 Amazing Benefits of Headless CMS in Website Development
1. Better Flexibility
So, the first and foremost benefit of leveraging a headless CMS for your website is more flexibility than traditional CMS. With a headless CMS, you can seamlessly add your desired head to your site. It can be any blog, or a customer’s review or profile; you can seamlessly add it on your website, anytime you want.
Besides that, your developers can also enjoy faster website development with the desired programming language without any development constraints. A single piece of content can be used any number of times with different texts to enable faster web development. Plus, the headless CMS approach even offers seamless third-party integrations without any coding constraints.
That gives your developers the freedom to link your website with any complex third-party application.
2. Omnichannel Selling
Another benefit of headless CMS is omnichannel selling. Often it is seen that to lure more customers, we need to meet our product on different marketing channels. Now, to market your product across each of the channels, different platforms require your product’s information and availability. Also, to match the content across all touchpoints could be a tedious task for the developers.
However, with a headless CMS, we can simply eliminate all such issues! In a headless approach, the content is generated and stored in a centralized location. Whenever you need any content for either web app or a mobile app, you can seamlessly access that from that centralized platform.
In a headless CMS, the data is only stored, and you have the freedom to display it as many times you want on different platforms.
3. Seamless Integration
As discussed above, a headless CMS offers you to integrate your existing website with any complex system. We all know that third-party integrations are vital for the website’s success. You can perform any specific tasks like accounting, online payments, or even marketing with third-party apps.
With a headless CMS, it is much easier to connect the website with any front-end system. A headless CMS is simply an API, and the stored content is received in such a format that it can be manipulated, such as JSON.
4. Easy Customizations
There is no doubt that traditional CMS is customizable, but there is a limit in those systems. You could only develop and integrate a few of the systems on your website to operate without any glitches smoothly. However, linking many backend software may not be a smooth task in traditional CMS.
The picture is quite different from a headless CMS. You can seamlessly design your POS system, and can even integrate marketing automation systems and payment gateways with a headless CMS approach.
The traditional CMS focuses on storing and presenting content; that’s why they have more constraints. However, with a headless CMS, the presentation of content is secondary, and that’s why it has fewer restrictions and better customization capabilities.
5. Cost-Effective
When it comes to designing new sites and mini solutions for your website, headless CMS tops the game! With a headless approach, it is much easier to design and create new functionality on your website without any prior technical knowledge.
For instance, if your sales and marketing team wanted to design new mini landing pages to target more customers of your niche, they may not wait for them to develop it. Instead, they can directly use the pre-built templates offered by headless CMS to create those functionalities and mini-sites.
That not only saves your developer’s time but even saves a lot of front-end development costs! Many big companies like Sony and Starbucks use this kind of approach to building their landing pages or small ads.
6. Tailored User-Experience
We all know that customer expectations change rapidly in today’s tech-driven world—every year. Many companies introduce new offers and invest in robust designs to improve their user experience.
With the help of a headless CMS, you can cut costs and offer an enhanced UX. The headless CMS provide the same enhanced content and features across all the devices, thereby compelling your users to become loyal ambassadors for your brand. Additionally, a headless CMS even offers accessibility to the developers who are struggling with web accessibility.
They can seamlessly frame a complaint and can offer the same enhanced user-experience across all the devices.
7. An Extra Layer of Security
Last but not least, we have a secure website. Security and privacy are the two major concerns that are still prevailing in the digital market. People today get easily trapped in online thefts and fraud that most of them now fear shopping online.
That problem was persistent with traditional CMS; however, headless CMS changed the scenario! You can seamlessly configure your website’s components without needing any content management tool as headless CMS doesn’t display the content. The headless CMS doesn’t require any database, and so data breached problems can be easily solved.
Additionally, headless CMs even provide you an extra layer of security by offering authentication services and security protocols.
5 Best Headless CMS Examples
Those were some of the compelling reasons you should choose headless CMS for your website development. Now that you are aware of headless CMS let us quickly get through all the popular headless CMS tools that most developers love today!
1. Directus
Directus is an excellent choice for those who are looking for a completely customizable website. Written in JavaScript, this particular open-source CMS offers compelling functionalities like asset management, messaging gateways, internal extension points, versioning, and so on. Directus uses REST API.
Likewise, other traditional CMS, Directus, is powered by PHP, so developers don’t feel utterly new while working on this headless CMS tool. You can get both the free version and hosting options that you can leverage to design your website.
2. Cockpit CMS
The Cockpit is a simple headless CMS tool that you can use to manage your unstructured content. The developers can use multiple frameworks and development languages while maintaining complete control over content management. With Cockpit, you can eliminate the unintentional mistakes over plugins and settings that may hamper your website’s performance and credibility.
Although updates and support are lacking in Cockpit CMS, it offers flexibility while working on projects. So, the developers need to be very careful while writing the codes, as no one will be reviewing them here. Likewise, the security features of the Cockpit CMS are also not very good and sturdy. All in all, it is a perfect headless CMS tool for small projects requiring minimal details.
3. Contentful
Contentful is again a mighty and flexible headless CMS specially built for the newcomers. With this advanced and detailed headless CMS, one can simply start creating data entries on the go. However, as you delve further, you can witness the depth of this headless CMS. It is also one of the most affordable CMS for small and medium scale businesses.
Your developers are entirely free to add any functionality; the API takes care of the content generation and storage. Moreover, if you are familiar with working with a structured architecture, then you may have to get in touch with content modeling and search-based management. All in all, this learning curve can be very beneficial for your developers in enhancing their portfolio.
4. ButterCMS
ButterCMS is an easy-to-install headless CMS tool that enables seamless transfer of data from your traditional CMS to the advanced headless CMS. Besides that, another most significant selling point of ButterCMS is its compelling and amazing SEO support. The SEO support can boost your page views, and even allow your bloggers to create and publish content faster.
All that led to better leads and increased conversion rates. Although the UI is straightforward, it can be customized as per the project. However, the templates are not so standard, and the CMS is still under improvements. But, the support from this CMS is speedy and effective!
5. Kentico Cloud
Last but not least, we have Kentico Cloud, a powerful and flexible headless CMS. It is one of the best headless CMS with excellent UI and is equally adaptable for newcomers and experts. If you publish content on a lot of different platforms, then Kentico Cloud is a perfect choice as it centralizes all your content in one place.
You can get a free version of the Kentico Cloud for beginning your work. Although, if the users are more and the continent calls for API, then the price may increase. If you are looking for a headless CMS with excellent UI and multiple built-in modules, the Kentico is the tool for you!
Don’t let your competitors use the Headless CMS first!
So that was everything about headless CMS and its benefits with examples. To conclude, we can say that the customer needs and the global market scenario is changing drastically with the change in time. Today, posting a video or launching an online website is simple; however, increasing the leads and traffic and enticing the users is somewhat a tedious task.
Hence, to make this work more accessible, you should regularly invest in robust technologies and the latest trends. Headless CMS is one such aspect that can assure success for your online business. Got more questions regarding headless CMS? Whether you want to ask more or design a headless CMS for your organization, we are always there to help you!
We have years of experience developing the latest and trendy software solutions and applications for many industries. Get in touch to discuss your project ideas and get a free 30-min consultation from our experts on your first visit!
