What’s a headless CMS? Do you need one?

15 Nov

Marcus Nyeho lt, Symbiote’s Head of Technology, demystifies the headless CMS for you and explains why larger organisations that communicate across a range of digital channels have the most to gain from a headless CMS.

A typical CMS (Content Management System) has a website (the head) that shows customers content that comes from an attached database (the body).

However, people now get their digital information in a range of ways that don’t always involve websites. If you’re using a standard CMS it takes a lot of effort to individually create and publish content to all the places people now expect to find it: on apps, on all of your organisation’s websites, via notifications or apps on mobile phones or smartwatches, social media, digital billboards, e-newsletters, online ads, emails or texts.

A headless CMS, on the other hand, stores content without being linked just to a website. It can instantaneously configure and push out your content to all kinds of different digital locations, using APIs (Application Processing Interfaces).

What could this look like? A single sales campaign could be created in a headless CMS by sales, marketing and communications teams then, without creating separate pieces of content, it could appear on every digital channel they choose, from digital signage or voice assistants, to online ads, screens in vehicles or apps on smartphones.

If an organisation scales up, or a new digital channel emerges, a headless CMS setup can accommodate that without any trouble.

So, do you need a headless CMS? If you’re someone with a non-technical background who needs to launch a website without paying a developer, then I think you’ll be fine with a traditional CMS. It’ll adequately manage a website with basic e-commerce for small businesses or local brick-and-mortar stores.

Larger organisations that communicate across a range of digital channels have the most to gain from a headless CMS. It frees them up to concentrate on their customers, rather than getting bogged down trying to constantly adapt to an increasingly complex digital landscape.