{"id":4250970,"date":"2021-07-01T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-07-01T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.deptagency.com\/insight\/scaling-digital-experiences-headless-cms\/"},"modified":"2021-07-01T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2021-07-01T12:00:00","slug":"scaling-digital-experiences-headless-cms","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/www.deptagency.com\/en-uki\/insight\/scaling-digital-experiences-headless-cms\/","title":{"rendered":"Scaling digital experiences with a headless CMS"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\n\t<\/svg>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\tBack to all articles\t\t<\/span>\n\t\n<\/button>\n\t\tScaling digital experiences with a headless CMS\t<\/h1>\n\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t<\/picture>\n\t\n\t<\/div>
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\n\t\tKaty White\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t1 July 2021\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n
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\n\t\t\tEvery business has a different growth trajectory. Technology that doesn\u2019t scale in the right directions can become a blocker to future growth, and is one of the reasons why a headless approach is increasing in popularity; as businesses can gain more flexibility and discover greater possibilities for customisation and personalisation. \t<\/h2><\/div><\/div>\n\n

There are several reasons for the shift towards headless architecture, but speed and scalability most often drive the decision to implement a headless technology stack.<\/p><\/div><\/div>\n\n

\n\t\t\tUnleashing the power of microservices\t<\/h2><\/div><\/div>\n\n

By combining best-of-breed platforms, with niche functionality specialised for commerce, search, payment or data management and so on, businesses can completely customise their front-end to suit their unique needs, as opposed to working with a predetermined tech structure provided by an all-encompassing solution.
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When these platforms are integrated with a headless CMS, brands benefit from a centralised content hub. This makes editing much easier: a change in one place is seamlessly deployed everywhere the content is located. Unification improves brand consistency and compliance, and gives marketers more freedom to launch and optimise campaigns in real-time. As a\u00a0certified Contentful partner<\/a>, DEPT\u00ae utilises the future-ready cloud-native solution to help organisations accelerate growth.\u00a0<\/p><\/div><\/div>\n\n

\n\t\t\tScaling omnichannel content management\t<\/h2><\/div><\/div>\n\n

Content consumption is evolving to be more fluid with audiences moving from one device and platform to the next, looking to be immersed and entertained without any interruptions. For brands to keep up with the demand for digital experiences, they need to move fast and avoid bottlenecks of multi CMS silos that can form in different markets or sub-brands when systems\u2019 aren\u2019t connected.\u00a0

Creating an internal single source of truth through the headless CMS connects departments and streamlines delivery. Push-button deployment moves content into production and radically increases the velocity of fresh content on a global, enterprise scale. Brands can better align content across channels, repurpose existing content to improve its impact and ensure the right message reaches each target audience. The possibilities are limitless. Contentful\u2019s open APIs work seamlessly with other tools or microservices and equip marketers to deliver a truly omnichannel strategy.\u00a0

The solution is not only favoured by businesses and their marketing teams, but also by digital builders, according to Depsters that were recently Contentful certified.<\/p><\/div><\/div>\n\n

\n\t\t\tAdvancing commerce and beyond\t<\/h2><\/div><\/div>\n\n

Headless commerce allows businesses to adopt new touchpoints without needing to rework everything else. Contentful\u2019s building block approach integrates with emerging technologies like AI-powered voice assistants, wearables, and smart applications, while still leveraging traditional channels like web, social media and SMS.\u00a0

\u201cA modern stack of integrated solutions is required for brands to keep pace with changing commerce by delivering relevant content when, where and how consumers expect it. Contentful runs on the world\u2019s leading commerce platforms, including CommerceTools and Amazon, advancing businesses\u2019 application of these platforms by supporting features such as\u00a0AWS Auto Scaling<\/a>,\u201d said Daniel Proctor, Senior Developer at DEPT\u00ae. \u201cWherever Contentful is integrated, its content delivery API (CDA) enhances performance with fast, flexible, caching that can be tailored to individual customer needs and locations. As a result, Contentful effectively manages large spikes in traffic, maintaining a strong cache hit ratio (CHR) and seamless scalability as businesses grow globally.\u201d

DEPT\u00ae\u2019s Solutions Architect, Andy Whitehead adds: \u201cThe Contentful Marketplace<\/a>\u00a0has so many applications available to extend its capabilities through third-party services. You can also write your own custom extensions to work for any different scenario. Contentful\u2019s in-depth documentation and software development kits (SDKs) simplify custom work and make collaboration between developers easier, whether that\u2019s joining a client\u2019s in-house team or getting caught up to speed when optimising the platform down the line with new functionality.\u201d\u00a0

Content delivery plays a key role in all industries, not just e-commerce. Moving quickly, without being held back by development constraints of some more traditional CMS platforms, is critical for conversion rates and is a growing requirement when building a stable solution at scale. This applies in a B2B context as well. More than\u00a080% of business purchasers<\/a>\u00a0surveyed by Salesforce want consumer-level customer experience, and more than two-thirds of respondents say that they have switched vendors to get it. There\u2019s a huge opportunity for B2B business owners to tap into through better technology and personalisation, considering\u00a077% of B2B buyers surveyed<\/a>\u00a0by Gartner described their most recent purchase as very complex or difficult.<\/p><\/div><\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n

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\n\t\t\n\t\tReducing development time\t<\/h2>\n\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\n\n\t\tContentful\u2019s new take on content as a service (CaaS \u2013 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\u2019 reliance on technical teams.

\u201cContentful 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),\u201d commented Andy Blyth, Technical Architect at DEPT\u00ae.\u00a0

He further adds, \u201cContentful is constantly adding new features and functionality, allowing businesses using the service to evolve with the latest technology.\u00a0Tagging has recently been released<\/a>, 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.\u201d\t<\/p>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\n\t