Why should you choose/use a Headless CMS?
In this previous article, we talked about Headless CMS, their main features and differences compared to traditional CMS. Now, we’re going to explain why a Headless CMS is more cost-effective than a traditional CMS.
Headless CMS is simple and flexible
First of all, a Headless CMS leaves your development team free to choose their favorite stack of technologies. Yes, you got it right. (And this is awesome for your developers!)
In traditional CMS, the front-end layer is closely linked with the back-end layer and it is, thus, necessary to follow specific rules and use fixed programming languages. This is totally different compared to a Headless CMS allowing developers to work autonomously and be free from the technological constraints imposed by a traditional CMS. APIs embedded in Headless CMS, can be directly “called” from the front-end code that is being developed, without developers needing to learn new technologies or programming languages.
Plus, a Headless CMS enhances digital products’ flexibility! It enables your development team to easily and quickly add more complex third-party platforms. Headless CMS also lend themselves pretty well to micro-services’ architecture.
Headless CMS ends all your troubles with the server infrastructure
Another great advantage of Headless CMS is that they don’t need the server infrastructure’s setup and management. This means a smoother and easier management of your app and your development team can exclusively focus on the front-end and user experience. I’m pretty sure they will thank you for this too!
Headless CMS reduces your digital products’ time-to-market
Headless CMS helps your development team to reduce your digital product’s development time and also, your content creator team to optimize their working process.
Development team: from a technological point of view, everybody knows that back-end development requires different skills and long development time. Headless CMS enable developers to sharply reduce this waiting time by speeding up to 80% your app release time.
Content creation team: there are as many advantages regarding content creation. First of all, content creators can focus on creating quality content without worrying about how this will appear in various front-end layers. This also allows you to reuse specific content in several different digital properties or to mix it with other content in multiple ways.
Headless CMS favors omni-channel strategies
Omni-channel is probably one of the most interesting features of Headless CMS. Nowadays,contents are gaining more and more importance in brands and organizations’ digital strategies. In addition, the fragmentation brought about the advent of new technologies forces brands to create and publish their content on different digital touchpoints: on-site experience, website, web app, mobile app, internet of thing, etc.
A Headless CMS acts as a single container of all your brand’s contents, from which you can manage their publication on all your digital properties. Having a single content hub, rather than different platforms for any communication channel, also favors a similar user experience across the multiple brand’s touchpoints, fostering coherence and relevance in the communication with your customers.
Headless CMS is future-proof
As you have learnt from this article, Headless CMS keep content management and architecture separate from their display (front-end). This allows your app to be future-proof.
For example, it enables you to create a new rebranding for your digital product (whether it’s a website, a mobile app, or any other digital solution), without needing technical changes to the back-end or CMS. You wouldn’t even need to enter your content again, which is so stressful and takes you long time.
Besides, Headless CMS are defined as future-proof because they can be embedded in future technologies and devices. If new devices are created in the future, as in the case of today’s smart speakers, it wouldn’t be hard for your development team to connect them to your Headless CMS and share your content across these new tools.
Headless CMS is less expensive
Headless CMS allow your development team to have a faster and more direct approach in implementing new features for your application. This, in turn, allows them to save loads of development time and to save money too.
For example, if your product team wanted to create a new feature for your mobile app, they should first design and develop a back-end and a CMS, that is necessary to store and manage the contents they want to display in the new section. Instead, if they use a Headless CMS, they will immediately start creating the front-end layer without waiting a long development time nor worrying about the platform’s management.
Headless CMS is scalable
In Headless CMS, back-end and front-end are two separate elements. This means that it’s possible to tweak the back-end, e.g. to update or increase the number of features, without the app stopping the service or decreasing its performance. This enables you to make your app grow without the need for off-line phases leading to a disservice for your users.
Headless CMS is always up-to-date
Headless CMS are always up-to-date and don’t need any kind of management or technical maintenance. This means loads of time saved for your developers and, last but not least, a tedious task they don’t have to deal with!
Headless CMS is scalable and more secure
Secure: a Headless CMS is secure because APIs form a “protective layer” between the content management platform (namely, the CMS) and the application’s front-end! Given that the platform where contents are published is not accessible from the CMS database, the use of a Headless CMS allows reducing the risk of DDoS attacks. Moreover, the content published on the front-end may be protected or encrypted.
Scalable: most of the Headless CMS on the market manage the server infrastructure’s horizontal scalability. This feature allows them to automatically manage peak traffic without leading to annoying slowdown or service interruption.
Radio Bruno, one of our customers, values this feature a lot, particularly, when during live events the number of users accessing their mobile app increases by 10 times in a few hours!
These are 9 reasons why adopting a Headless CMS may make things easier for your development team! But be careful, it isn’t always the case! Yes, you got it right. Headless CMS aren’t suitable for any of your company’s needs or any kind of team. If you’d like to learn more about that, in this article we’ve deepened the topic.