When investigating headless content management systems and whether it’s the right solution for your business, you will undoubtedly encounter various pros and cons. You can simplify this process by aligning the advantages and drawbacks of a headless CMS by comparing it with a classic CMS, making the decision process a whole lot easier.

What is a headless CMS?

Nothing to lose your head over, to be perfectly honest – yes, pun intended. When you boil a headless CMS down to its essentials, you will get a database with a simple user interface. It serves your data via an API to any client (website, mobile app etc.) that may depend on it.

Similar to database tables, a ‘content model’ is a core concept of any headless CMS that, when defined, gives structure to the data. Content model examples are concepts such as ‘Product’, Contact person details’, ‘Content page’ etc.

Content models contain fields that the end-user can fill in, producing a data object which is essentially your content. Data objects are an equivalent to a table row. Most self-respecting headless CMS systems will allow you to reference other data objects in order to form advanced structure and dependencies within the data itself. A foreign key, if you will.

Now you may be asking yourself “if a headless CMS is nothing more than a database, what use do I have for it? Why not simply have a database?”

Well, you could, but you would be missing out on some key advantages that a good headless CMS will provide you and your team.

What are the advantages of a headless CMS?

When working with a headless CMS, you will benefit from easier setup, simplified maintenance and will be working with a well-tested set of tools that make content creation and validation much simpler. A headless CMS will make your data available to any number of clients across platforms and programming languages, thus allowing you to create platforms instead of simple websites. To top it off, you will also have access to built-in support for data versioning, meaning that you can correct any mistakes without dealing with database backups.

Headless vs. classic CMS

So far, a headless CMS seems to have many advantages over a simple database, but what sets it apart from a classic CMS? Seeing how a classic CMS will usually be able to boast the same features, which of the two is better? Which one should you use? The answer depends on what you are trying to build.

If you’re building a website, a classic CMS is a perfect choice as it will allow your internal users to access it directly and preview any changes while editing the data. If you are dealing with a classic open-source CMS, you will perhaps be able to alter it and install custom plugins to allow more functionality.

But what happens when you want to build a complex platform? Imagine a project where you need to build several websites and mobile apps for both Android and Apple ecosystems which, in turn, share the data with the website. Hypothetically, the system may involve additional services that run on Linux and Windows servers. And what if you want to support third-party developers?

In this over-exaggerated scenario, a classic CMS fails to deliver, given that you would need to write your own API around it to satisfy all those apps and services. You will need to manage caching, security and data consistency, for example.

A headless CMS will provide these features to you ‘out of the box’ as the API is the primary way for you to interact with a client app, website or any other client. It allows you to specify security tokens that can only access a specific subset of data. By generating unique security tokens for each data consumer, you can create a safe way for any client apps to read and write the data that they have access to. Multiplatform compatibility is not a concern since you will generally be dealing with JSON, which every modern programming language can process.

Webhooks

Another powerful feature of a headless CMS is the ability to define and fire off webhooks. These are simple event-driven systems that send HTTP requests that you define to any URL of your choosing. For example, this allows you to notify all of your websites that a product description in the CMS has changed, and that the cache should be cleared to retrieve a fresh copy of the data.

What are the downsides of a headless CMS?

While boasting many advantages, a headless CMS is not perfect. It will put some obstacles in your way and make certain scenarios complicated to deal with. For example, difficulty in testing new features without affecting live environments, offline work for your client systems, and the fact that your data exists on a server which you don’t control.

‘Too long, didn’t read’ summary

A headless CMS is an advanced database with a simple interface. One should view it as a tool that will save you a lot of time and effort because it will usually come with powerful features for validating data, ensuring its safety and versioning. It will generally be stable and well tested. Another major benefit is that your data will be available to you via an API 24 hours a day/7 days a week. A headless CMS’s most important feature is that it bridges the gap between platforms and programming languages, as it will generally serve your data in the form of XML or JSON.

A common problem that comes with using a headless CMS is the lack of support for data separation for multiple environments (test, acceptation, integration, production, etc.). It will often be quite a bit of work to alter production without a lot of careful, manual editing of content types. Being always online is good when it works as intended, but if your clients lose connection to the headless CMS API, you may run into issues with data synchronisation. Finally, if you use a licenced headless CMS, your data will be behind a paywall.

Contentful’s new take on content as a service (CaaS – a sub-group of SaaS) simplifies the set-up and deployment processes, allowing developers to get started faster and spin up solutions that reduce businesses’ reliance on technical teams.

“Contentful is programming language agnostic, meaning teams can work in their preferred language and businesses moving into the model can keep content as it is without having to migrate data, for example, as they move from an HTML site to a React single-page application (SPA),” commented Andy Blyth, Technical Architect at DEPT®. 

He further adds, “Contentful is constantly adding new features and functionality, allowing businesses using the service to evolve with the latest technology. Tagging has recently been released, grouping pages or objectives by characteristics or usage, which creates content classifications and eases the process of organising various components and multimedia files for editors.”

Chris Eccles, Technical Architect at DEPT® describes a Contentful project currently in development: “We’re working with an online learning provider that also performs English language tests for university, professional or migration applications. Contentful is populating the platform and we’re using its new web app, Compose. Setting up structured and reproducible fields is straightforward and the content management interface is the most intuitive I’ve ever seen. It uses a page-based model to streamline the process of adding and publishing content at scale, giving editors clear and flexible templates to quickly deliver uniform digital experiences, and in this case, across all of its programmes and courses.”

Contentful’s uncluttered interface experience helps reduce the level of intimidation and complexity for the user with simple logic and drag-and-drop features. Its ability to integrate with more no-code and low-code (NC/LC) tools means people from cross-functional teams have the ability to offset business demands for development, automate processes and accelerate digital transformation.

 

Making the move to microservices via integrated headless solutions like Contentful creates the foundation for growth, however that may relate to your business. It’s easy to look at a new piece of technology and relate to case studies that highlight how it helped other companies increase volumes of sales, but growth is more dynamic and often involves changing workflows, governance, supporting technology and even security needs. 

Overconfidence in a system’s ability to scale, without taking into account growing pains and unforeseen complexities can block innovation and lead to technical depth. In today’s ever-changing landscape, it’s difficult to predict what the future will hold, therefore, creating a solution built for change will underpin any avenue.

Over the years, DEPT® has supported various companies with the successful application of Contentful. We collaborated with global shipping container supplier CARU Containers on a digital transformation project that involved building a new B2B online store fuelled by Contentful and Salesforce. 

The new website was launched across ten countries as part of the refreshed CARU brand. Content pages were created to tell the story of the company, the employees, and each product. Additionally, there was content for social sharing and digital advertising: whitepapers, listicles, infographics and interviews. Content was displayed dynamically and adaptive to the language and country of each visitor, allowing one site to match up with an international audience. This content suite gave CARU positioning on LinkedIn, Google Ads, Microsoft Ads and the Google Display network. During the six month period of analysis and improvement, conversion grew by 400%, a sizable improvement that any company would be happy to see.

Content was also a key ingredient in transforming the 2021 Eurovision Village into a 3D Virtual World. The Eurovision Song Contest was streamed live, alongside additional DJ sets and performances and fresh content was served up daily throughout the nine-day festival. DEPT® integrated Contentful as the CMS, enabling a partnership agency to interact with guests and communicate updates in real-time, such as changes to the line-up.

We’ve also collaborated on projects for leading seafood supplier, Sykes Seafood; B2B travel company, Cartrawler; the Global Psoriasis Atlas; student discount platform, Totum; and the world’s number one chemical distributor, DigiB.

To stay ahead of the competition, agility and adaptability is a must. If your company has already implemented a headless stack but isn’t maximising its capabilities to their full potential, or is still weighing up the options, we’re here to help.

Contact us to discuss your digital landscape and how Contentful may be able to fit into it, perhaps by enriching your product information management (PIM) solution with marketing content or translating content in a mobile app.

I work on DEPT®’s client projects all the way through the lifecycle. That means I’ll get involved with the initial workshops help define the client’s requirements, develop  technical specifications and proofs of concept to demonstrate how DEPT® can help solve their challenges; as well as architect the final product. 

The primary part of my role is to lead the development teams that are delivering projects, supporting both front and back-end developers to resolve any technical blockers as quickly as possible. This could be anything that’s stopping them from completing their work, such as hard to replicate bugs or issues with external services. But I also get to collaborate with the wider team, working with designers to ensure the developers have all the creative assets they need to effectively build, and with QA (quality assurance) to ensure the objectives are met and the output quality meets our standards before delivering projects to clients.  

Face-to-face meetings between buyers and suppliers have always been central to building an ongoing relationship in the B2B world. Both parties benefit from the personal touch, and the ease of airing out any queries and sorting potential issues. With the coronavirus pandemic cancelling every booked face-to-face for the foreseeable future, buyers are now looking for a digital solution to the challenge.

At the same time, disruption to factory production has broken links in the global supply chain, creating the added challenge of buyers potentially needing to source new suppliers who are able to deliver. If lockdown measures have limited production or forced the temporary closure of a factory, these potential buyers need to be able to quickly find the solution that your business is offering. 

Supply chain disruption, combined with the difficulty of running in-person meetings, means the manufacturing sector must consider alternative options. McKinsey’s recent ‘Global B2B decision maker response to COVID-19 crisis’ survey covered what B2B decision makers are looking for when researching suppliers, tracking the importance of different digital features in this new marketplace. The survey looked at the UK, France, Italy, Spain,Germany, China, India, South Korea, Brazil and the US, and found that across the board, there’s an increase in demand for digital self-serve options that empower buyers to find their solution.

Onsite search is a priority

Across all surveyed countries, when asked “what ways of interacting with a supplier would be most beneficial to you when researching/considering suppliers going forward?”, the most popular choice was onsite search. Can a buyer visit the company website, search for the product they are looking for, easily find more information, and process their order? 

It’s important to consider this in terms of the purchase journey. Onsite search often comes early on; a quick guarantee that this company can supply the product they need. After the first point of contact, whether it’s a call, email, piece of direct mail or a self-initiated Google search or referral, the company website becomes the most important reference point, always answering questions that a potential customer may have.

For this reason, every manufacturer and supplier needs to ensure there is a search option onsite and that existing product and information pages are up-to-date with relevant information. Your CMS or commerce platform may provide a simple search feature to add to the site, but optimising the content for search requires a little more work. 

From a UX perspective, a visible and well-defined search bar will make it quick and easy for anyone to find products and information. This will result in fewer clicks and less time spent on the homepage. A faceted search will enhance the general search, enabling users to narrow down their search to category, price, product options and custom fields. All of this will improve the customer experience and help customers find what they’re looking for, quickly and easily. 

Having a well optimised on-site search also has the added benefit of providing further insight into what buyers are looking for and what the roadblocks to purchase are. This information is gold dust; it either shows demand, or it shows opportunity. For example, a product selling at a fairly low rate could actually be getting high search volume, indicating a potential opportunity for the business to push this product to the fore.

These search stats insights can also inform your business of developing trends in terms of customer demand or common difficulties. While there is nothing better than speaking one-to-one with a client about the challenges they are facing in the coming weeks, months and years, having clients visit your site and type their challenges into the search bar is a close second. Use this to tool your sales team with information on what common challenges are driving discussion in the industry. It’s also useful in optimising the messaging of onsite copy and any marketing campaigns your business is running. Reviewing search logs can also guide your business on what is currently missing from your site.

The preference for onsite search shows two important points. The buying and research process is digital-first and driven by self-serve opportunities. This shows a drift towards on-demand information, giving buyers the ability to research at their own pace. This is backed up by the second preference — live chat. Rather than scheduled phone calls or back and forth emails, buyers are opting for the on-demand option, enabling them to engage with potential suppliers when it suits their schedule.

Improving the customer experience with live chat & chatbots

A strong live chat system combines automated and staffed solutions. Like a customer service line, live chat conversations typically begin with a light automated opening that directs the visitor to the appropriate colleague for this conversation. Parts of this can be decided in the background, such as knowing which page the visitor is on and using this information to inform which representative joins the live chat. 

The added bonus for companies implementing a live chat or chatbot feature on-site comes through an extra customer services option; through a flow of automated responses, a chatbot can help current customers find a quick solution, taking the strain off of call lines.

When looking at the surveyed countries in Europe, there is a soft preference for sales rep led interactions, showing the importance of a personal touch, even in an increasingly digital market. Germany, Spain, Italy and the UK all name face-to-face meetings in their top three ways of interacting with suppliers; a major challenge during the lockdown period.

The clear lockdown replacement is video calling. What is often ignored is the idea of availability. It’s generally understood that if a buyer wants to call a supplier, they can pick up the phone and dial a number listed on the site. The culture does not yet exist around video calling, meaning companies need to make it clear that their sales reps are ready for video calls should a buyer want to talk face-to-face.

Update your site design with information about video calling as an option, and speak about it in your outreach and marketing. Proactive options include video consultancy sessions, organised on a one-to-one basis or a gated livestream, available to viewers that sign up. This broadcasts the point that your business offers video conferencing to current and potential clients that are still interested in face-to-face discussions. With sales reps working from home, keeping the CRM system up to date with information from these video calls is a top priority.

Looking across to the APAC region, Brazil and the US, digital self-serve options fill the priority touchpoints for buyers, from apps to websites to social media. Knowing that these regions prioritise digital and self-serve is useful for suppliers and manufacturers in Europe that sell internationally. 

Increasing agility with headless

If you operate internationally, the already complex task of managing localisation is currently heightened, given the varying level of COVID-19 restraints in your operating markets. To speed up the delivery of localised messaging, content and microsites, you can consider moving to a headless technical architecture for your content management. 

A regular CMS connects a single front end (the sales channel that a customer interacts with), to a single back end (the operational side that processes payment and data and keeps the channel running). In this setup, changes to the front end must be reflected in the back end. This creates a fair amount of work if a company is running multiple websites, an app, or mobile-specific sites, as any updates must be repeated across each sales channel. A headless CMS connects each front end into a single back end. This means edits can be made to the front end without requiring a constant update to the back end. Launching new sites or creating an app for these new markets is a much more agile process with a headless architecture. For more of a deep dive into the benefits of headless and when to consider it, check out our recent article about ‘Moving with speed and agility with headless systems.’

It’s important to remember that this shift has been accelerated by the COVID-19 crisis, rather than being caused by it. The drift towards digital and self-serve options in the B2B space is part of an industry-wide move to online and on-demand that’s been building momentum over the past couple of years. Reorienting your operations to be more digital ensures relevance during the pandemic, but also provides a platform for the company to stay at the forefront of how buyer and supplier relationships function.

Each adjustment the business makes now should factor in the multi-year strategy for the business, an initial change that leads to a much wider digital transformation. Now is the perfect time to review your digital roadmap and accelerate the digitalisation plans that will make the biggest impact as we enter a period of recovery. To get started, check out our article, ‘How to Create a Tactical, Strategic Response to COVID-19’

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The process of building an ecommerce platform can seem like new ground to many B2B CEOs. Understanding the array of software options on the market, learning new phrases like ‘headless commerce’, being able to distinguish between a CMS and a DXP. These surface level barriers can scare some away, but by digging a little deeper, every company head will find themselves in familiar territory.

A successful B2B commerce platform is built on an in-depth understanding of the customer. Awareness of customer needs. Knowing what causes friction in the purchasing process and how to work around it. The leadership team are experts in their industry and know what makes their customer base tick. By stripping away the excessive acronyms and complicated definitions, B2B commerce comes down to knowing what customers need.

At its very core, digital transformation is about making your company’s assets go further. Can the innovative thinking of the leadership team be implemented quicker? Can insights gathered from customer data be applied to other areas of the business? Can consumers be given an easier path to purchase? Digital transformation magnifies strengths by focusing on scalable improvements.

Brenntag: building a digital chemical business

For Brenntag, a German chemical distributor operating in 76 countries, implementing a digital transformation began with an appreciation of their industry. Brenntag’s world, the chemical sector, is heavily physical. However, digital transformation touches on each aspect of the business. At every turn, innovative digital approaches could be used to optimise and improve the efficiency of internal processes, and ease the experience of customers.

The process of digital transformation was split along internal and external improvements that could be made. Working with DEPT®, the company put together a system of Internal Tooling that set out to improve the efficiency of their everyday, internal processes. This includes features like Brenntag Source, an application for reviewing supply chain data. 

Use existing supply chain data to help your clients

The Brenntag Source feature can be used to filter data on different suppliers, giving Brenntag the information they need to engage in informed face-to-face negotiations with suppliers.

For the customer, this information can be turned into tracking software, keeping the buyer updated about the delivery of their purchase, and also informed about the sourcing, materials and manufacturing of their order. Good customer experience is what drives repeat purchasing, particularly in the manufacturing sector where trust is a key business driver. This added value can be what sets the company apart from its competition, as it puts the customer at the centre of the process, answering every question they may have.

On the external side, Brenntag Connect was created, an ecommerce portal that provides customers with information on the chemicals and orders that Brenntag provides, as well as a platform to track their security data, invoices and orders.

Make repeat purchasing a top priority

When planning a B2B commerce platform, it is important to think of the sector specific rules that affect how it can be used. Due to the regulated nature of the chemical industry, Brenntag Connect is only available for customers that have gone through an intensive onboarding process. This means that users of the platform are likely to be committed, long term customers, therefore making repeat purchasing easy was a top priority. To this end, Brenntag implemented an automated repeat business function.

One of the key challenges for any commerce platform project is to establish a long term strategy. To start putting a system like this in place, put together a list of needs that the platform must fulfil. From this information, build a digital roadmap that outlines the steps your business will take over the next three years, each time responding to a customer need.

Digital transformation is a step-by-step journey, not an overnight makeover. By beginning with priority areas based on customer needs, your company can start serving customers better and begin the process of learning and adapting your e-commerce approach. 

Like any map, the route is liable to change based on real time information. Data capture is a core need for any project, informing and ensuring that the decisions and actions taken are correct. What we measure, we can affect. In terms of a digital roadmap, see the data as you would see live traffic updates. Be ready to get past roadblocks by adapting the route.

To keep their digital transformation on track and ensure, Brenntag built DigiB, a digital innovation hub that operates autonomously from Brenntag. The organisation aims to rapidly accelerate their technological innovation across the business, running small scale projects that have the potential to scale, and aiding the implementation as Brenntag finds new, more efficient ways of operating.

The guiding motto of DigiB is “create it, launch it, learn from it.” Rather than taking the time to perfect every single release, adding months to the lead time, DigiB focuses on putting new projects into the marketplace. Release a smaller scale project. If it works, scale it up, if it doesn’t, take a step back and learn from the problems that users experienced. This way, every project is a worthwhile endeavor, creating a ‘succeed or learn’ mentality that fosters a strong corporate mentality.

Being able to create a company-wide culture that believes in the digital transformation project matters, as each department is able to offer input on how the key business goals can be achieved. Sales teams will be speaking to current and potential customers day in, day out. Operational teams will be using the internal tools each day, able to give feedback on what works and what is still missing. 

Each business will have a different priority when it comes to building a B2B ecommerce platform. This depends on the customer needs in each sector, and any pressures that are placed on the business by industry regulations. The list below looks at some of the most common priorities, though each business is different.

Making product discovery clear and simple

Companies with a wide array of available products or services will benefit from making sure that the site is built to provide easy-to-understand information on each product. On each product page, aim to answer any question the customer could have; keeping the customer on the product page means more proximity to the checkout.

Easy product discovery also means clear categorisation of products. Many B2B suppliers and distributors provide highly specialised products; it is the company’s responsibility to make finding the appropriate specialised product simple. The less friction in the buyer’s journey, the more likely they are to purchase.

Enabling site search

An undervalued benefit of building an e-commerce platform, site search is an obvious boost to user experience, but also an important data gathering tool. For many visitors, site search is how they engage with the site. It’s the bridge between each page, expediting the process of finding a product to buy. In terms of user experience, various features can be implemented to aid their search, such as autofill, search correction suggestions, and the ability to filter results. For visitors that are used to the features offered by Google, these additions to site search are less an added bonus and more of an expectation.

With site search implemented, make sure to review the analytics software to follow the journeys that users take around the site. Each business spends a good chunk of time trying to understand buyer journeys; this feature gives users the ability to track each journey to purchase.

By putting an advanced search tool in place, your business is able to see the key information that customers gravitate towards. It also Indicates missing content that the business should create – the questions customers are asking but not finding the answer to. The business can also see which additional purchases are considered, but not added to the basket, showing potential sales activations to use. Working with Omron, DEPT® used site search analytics and the onsite tracking software Hotjar to see how the architecture of the site was impeding users from checking out.

Putting all this together, the information can be used to provide a much more personalised experience for each visitor. Personalising the shopping experience boosts e-commerce sales, in DEPT®’s ‘What Do Consumers Really Think Of Personalisation?’ study, we found that 38% of consumers would spend more if a brand uses personalisation relevant to their needs. For Omron, this resulted in a tailored experience based on whether the visitor self-identified as a distributor, a system integrator, an employee, an end user, or a member of the press. Giving the appropriate information led to a 20% fall in bounce rate and a doubling of the average number of pages visited per session.

Logistics, lead time and availability

For a B2B commerce platform, providing detailed information on the manufacturing, shipping and delivery time is a key addition. Availability too, as nothing is more frustrating than finding the right product only to see it’s unavailable. This information is vital to future planning. It helps the customer plan their purchases and ensures they fit the time scale of their project. In an increasingly eco-conscious economy, being able to review shipping options and sourcing of products also allows the company to make the right decision based on environmental impact.

As a B2B supplier, think of the common questions that customers would ask, and that your business would ask of a supplier. Aim not only to answer these queries, but to make the answers highly visible and in close proximity to the purchase.

Product comparison

For suppliers that offer a wide range of similar products, particularly those that specialise in a particular niche, giving site visitors the ability to compare products is an important benefit. Not only can they compare in detail each product, they are also more likely to make the right purchase, boosting their opinion of the brand and making the customer more likely to return.

Crawl, walk, run

Whether your business is highly fluent in digital projects or new to the space, the journey to running a market-leading e-commerce platform begins with the first step. Rather than aiming to release the perfect platform, begin with agile projects. Focus on making an impact sooner rather than later and seeing what can be proved and what can be learned. Steady rollout of further features will create a system of constant improvement, always aiming to iterate and optimise. Each success will be reflected by customer sales and preference for your business.