Why modern marketers and digital producers are going headless
Every once in a while, a technology comes out that radically changes what developers can build for my fellow marketers. We hear about it at a periphery. Until we see the cool case studies though, it doesn’t mean anything to us. It’s just code and repos, which basically translates to “stuff that doesn’t help me meet my KPIs.”
I’m going to highlight a technology that allows marketers and web producers to be more creative and reach more people, IF we’re willing to part with our traditional tools and ways of thinking.
It’s time to lose your head.
Figuratively speaking, of course. It’s time to use headless content management technologies. This approach allows content creators and front end developers to use their own independent languages, tools, and workflows, rather than relying on a standard CMS or eCommerce platform. Content is simply delivered in a machine readable format called JSON. Designers and developers then gain a lot more freedom to use content wherever and whenever it makes sense.
That sounds like boring gibberish. Why should I care about this?
Because traditional CMSes or eCommerce solutions allow you to rock this:
You could be rocking this:
By going headless, you can instantly ship and edit content into any app your developers can build. Content can be served at a specific location, and across multiple devices at the same time.
Developers can use your content in any way, at a much bigger scale, and in any device. A/B or multivariate test. Personalize content for users using advanced AI. Customize digital displays. Heck, pull content from another API, structure it, and ship it on your digital properties. If developers can build it, you’ll have a centralized dashboard to ship content to it.
I don’t think that we as marketers recognize the capabilities that are already out there. We haven’t even built many digital teams who can accommodate this shift. Yet.
You wouldn’t force your homebuilder to use a single material for your house. Why are we forcing developers to use PHP or Java for our projects? Why must they stick with MySQL when they can launch databases that handle many more concurrent reads and writes, even in a graph? Just like the materials that build skyscrapers and homes, different programming languages, databases, and developer tools excel at different tasks.
A decoupled approach makes more sense
And WordPress’s founder Matt Mullenweg is moving in this direction. WordPress moved much of its front end off of PHP, and now uses JavaScript for sites hosted at wordpress.com. This translates to more lightweight, flexible, and scalable websites. They moved their API into the core codebase, so that content can be pulled out of WordPress and into other apps. So the biggest CMS on the internet is getting there. It’s time for us to move beyond the boring website of yore.
Developers aren’t building these experiences very often because marketers are not asking for them. We’re sticking to our traditional way of doing our jobs. Most traffic is mobile, and there are more connected devices than human beings. What’s holding us up? Why can’t we customize that kind of content too?
So what’s the state of headless solutions?
The technology is there. It’s up to us to start using it.
Currently you can use WordPress’s new lightweight version, dubbed “Calypso,” on WordPress.com. Any developer can use their API though. Here’s a blog post that explains how to go headless with WordPress using React.
There are a variety of other Headless CMSes, including Kentico, GraphCMS (built on top of the popular GraphQL project), Contentstack, Canner, Prismic, and others.
Contentful offers “content infrastructure.” Their API goes beyond the traditional page-centric approach to content, hence, they do not consider themselves a CMS. Contentful may seem complex at first, but it is excellent for using content across various channels.
By leveraging Heroku, a frontend developers can easily deploy and scale stacks in all sorts of languages.
It’s time for content creators and developers to get out of each other’s way. Now we can.
The web has fundamentally changed since the CMS first came out. Just as we moved from building websites in Dreamweaver to the CMS, it’s time that we move past traditional CMS thinking. The web will ultimately be a lot more interesting.
