With the rise of many channels to offer consumer products and services, companies need to rethink their architecture. This is not limited to the actual solutions but also focuses on the enterprise architecture. How do you want to connect your systems, store the data, and ensure a consistent experience across channels? Ensuring a consistent experience is easier said than done; it often requires a complete replacement of (legacy) systems. In this article, we will look at how you can offer an omnichannel experience and how a headless CMS comparison can help you move ahead.
Replacing legacy systems
To ensure an omnichannel experience, you need to have modern front-ends for your services. When doing so, you can easily interact with (legacy) back-end systems. Therefore, it makes sense to replace the front-end systems first. You do need to ensure that you can communicate with a modern front-end. The best way to do so is by introducing a Vue CMS, which is supported by a javascript-based front-end.
The traditional Content Management System
To understand what a modern CMS can do for you, let’s first look into what a traditional CMS can offer you. The traditional CMS providers are often open-source and well-known on the internet with names such as WordPress and Joomla!. They combine front-end and back-end into a single solution, which can be “upgraded” with modules known as plugins. However, as the front-end and back-end are glued together, there is not much option to offer content to other systems. The content and its mark-up are made for the CMS and will look different on other systems. Although there are integration options through plugins, these often create a messy web of spaghetti in your architecture.
Introducing a modern-day headless CMS
When you introduce a headless CMS, it does what it promises: it does not have a head (i.e., front-end). The content is created in a back-end system that has an intuitive interface for the administrator, but no front-end for the user. Instead, it makes use of APIs to provide the content to other channels. When you have a modern front-end, you will be able to show the content with ease. This holds for any channel: from web applications to websites, portals, and smartphone apps.
Headless is your headstart
When you want to drive your organization’s pivot to an omnichannel strategy, you should start with being able to provide the content to multiple channels from a single system. This allows you to ensure consistency and help you to create a single source of truth. No more differences in product information and mark-up problems.
When it comes to interaction with the front-end, a headless CMS also offers you the possibility to have advanced capabilities. For example, some functionalities allow you to do A/B testing on pages and create customer profiles to tailor content. Hereby you become flexible and tailor your content to the needs of your customers.
If you want to learn more about these types of CMS, you can do multiple things. For example, you can start by conducting a headless CMS comparison of the leading tools in the market. This allows you to see what suits your requirements, and also learn more about the functionalities available.