Headless CMS for creating the modern web

Since Tim Berners-Lee developed the first page at CERN in 1989, websites have advanced significantly. Today’s websites can provide users with rich content experiences that are comparable to native applications, as opposed to basic information and links to other pages. Of course, creating and maintaining those pages has become more difficult.

New methodologies and technologies are required to construct and design those places and achieve those objectives.

In order to assist businesses maintain their websites more effectively, headless content management systems (CMS) are becoming more and more popular. However, in order to fully utilise them, you must comprehend them in the context of your procedures.

Web development styles: traditional vs. modern

In the past, HTML was used to create websites. These early websites were straightforward text-based experiences that developers would manually change and maintain. Because of how time-consuming this was, more tools were developed to make creating and developing websites simpler. However, the engaged web developers managed, constructed, and planned everything in one location. Content and code were kept together.

The web experience has been richer over time with the addition of additional graphics, videos, animations, and dynamic components. Sites expanded in size and complexity to become the cutting-edge interactive experiences that consumers now take for granted.

The number of website stakeholders has increased dramatically in recent years, as have the demands placed on the site to produce significant economic results. For those in charge of managing locations, this has made implementation more difficult. Hanover Research found that 19% of marketing and IT leaders stated changes take four to six months, and more than half (59%) said it can take more than a month to make a basic modification to their website. Agile, iterative marketing strategies are invariably hampered by these timelines, missing out on chances to engage clients and seal deals.

Dividing the infrastructure technology stack into a front-end and a back-end component is one way to help in this situation. The content that is included into the site as it is created is pulled from the back-end into the front-end, which gives the user’s experience of the site.

This enables other teams to post content and manage brand assets while developers can focus on developing websites and writing code. The ability of these teams to work concurrently without interfering with one another or the website is crucial. Each team may accomplish its own objectives more quickly and effectively by dividing up the design and development of websites.

Today’s developers have adopted new tools for the front-end. Jamstack, which combines JavaScript, APIs, and Markdown, is becoming more and more well-liked because it gives developers the ability to create websites that are served to users at run-time. Technically speaking, this makes it simpler to create the websites and speeds up loading, which enhances user experience.

On contrast, all of the content and assets need to be stored in the back-end infrastructure. A headless CMS offers the content that is utilised to populate sites at runtime, and marketing or content experts can manage material in the CMS instead of depending on developers to make updates for them. This strategy is becoming more and more popular; according to IDC, the market for compelling content management systems, such as headless CMS, will increase by 14.8% year from now until 2026.

This change enhances how those various teams collaborate on website projects, but it also necessitates some adjustments to the current workflow. Each team is more productive when tasks are divided up, yet stronger teamwork can still increase the total outcome. Teams must cooperate in parallel to do this and collaborate more successfully.

Managing objectives through teamwork

In order to get the most out of this new approach, you have to look at the goals that you have in place as well as other teams involved. This will involve you understanding how goals are measured and the metrics that each team is working towards, as well as how activities work alongside each other. 

To supply new features for the website or to integrate a new integration, for instance, your developer team can operate in two-week sprints. The main objective for your marketing team will be a comprehensive rebrand across numerous sites that will be carried out over the course of two months, with all the sites transitioning at the same time.

The objective of IT operations and security will be to maintain site security and availability while responding to any new issues or modifications to website components or CMS systems as they are made available. Each team must work on a variety of distinct priorities and cadences as a result.

Hanover research reveals that both marketing and IT leaders believe they have a duty to manage websites. 81% of marketing leaders believe they are in charge of upkeep and upgrades, while 59% of IT say it falls under their purview. The truth is that certain aspects of the web experience fall under the purview of both parties. Multiple teams must work together to achieve their goals in the current day, which calls for a more nuanced and collaborative approach.

Each team must work on its objectives collaboratively rather than in isolation in order to accomplish this. In actuality, this necessitates more communication amongst teams regarding their objectives within the broader context of website operations and development. Teams may find it simpler to communicate with one another as a result.

You may reestablish the connection between marketing and IT by using a headless CMS. Each team is more productive on its own territory when using Jamstack and headless CMS. The most important thing is that you can cooperate while still achieving your goals.

A headless CMS, for instance, enables the marketing team to update its brand assets and then conduct testing alongside the development team to ensure that these assets display correctly across various website builds, such as mobile. Then, rather than each site needing to be updated independently, this can be updated centrally to ensure that all connected sites have the same appearance and feel. The way modern developers prefer to work matches perfectly with this version control strategy.

WebOps and collaboration

This was altered by DevOps with the adoption of fresh release management techniques like continuous integration and continuous deployment. Automation handles the transition from original development through testing to production deployment, which is becoming a typical practise for CI/CD pipelines. WebOps, or website operations, can also be approached with the same mentality.

The supply of software is made simpler and more effective by DevOps, while the management and delivery of websites can be facilitated by WebOps. The productivity of the entire team—from developers and designers to content editors, stakeholders, and more—can be increased through collaboration and automation thanks to WebOps. The outcome should be a cross-functional web team that can develop, test, and release website changes more quickly and effectively than if the various departments worked in silos or got in each other’s way. Despite the fact that each team will have its own objectives, they ought to be able to work together to achieve them.

This procedure is made simpler by switching to a headless CMS strategy. Teams of marketers and content creators can support their own needs and then collaborate with the involved technical professionals to guarantee that their objectives can be met. This entails defining roles in teams with more clarity and anticipating any conflicting priorities.

There are around 1.14 billion websites in the globe, and 252,000 new websites are published every day, according to Siteefy, especially as more businesses pursue digital transformation plans that ultimately depend on their online presence for success. The combination of headless CMS installations and front-end site design can help everyone perform in a more agile and efficient way as demand for websites to create user experiences grows.