Headless CMS. What is it, and should your website have it?

But what is it?

Headless or headless CMS is a way to build up the systems associated with a website. The bottom line is that instead of building a website with all web solutions in one and the same system, where everything from fonts and issues are linked to and limited by the same system — a headless CMS consists of several different parts. Content and design are neither dependent nor limited on each other. In short, everything you see in the frontend comes from several different backend systems.

A CMS (Content Management System) is a system where you can create, store, publish, and modify content for websites, online stores, apps, and intranets. It is also often referred to as publishing solution, publishing system or content management system.

What do you get then?

What's great about a headless CMS is that you can choose to use the industry's best solutions for each task. So called best of breed. Here in Increo we like to use React for front-end development and for example Sanity, Umbraco or Wordpress for the backend. The website becomes an ecosystem of various specialized microservices. Then you get great systems that are both scalable and flexible. If you have ambitions to be a data-driven company that takes digitalization seriously, this is the way to go.

Alternatives

Although we at Increo have extensive experience with and prefer headless-based solutions, this is not always the right thing to do. If you need, for example, a less complex website that will communicate a simple message and open up inquiries, no/low-code solutions such as Webflow may be more correct. Our own website increo.no is created in just Webflow, because the point of it is to inform and make us available for inquiries. In addition, it was important that the page had low complexity and short time to market. But if our system were to be anything more, like Moestue Grape Selections (which requires large ERP systems with space for every possible whimsical detail) a headless CMS solution will be unrivaled.

Headless vs Coupled CMS

Coupled, or combined CMS was formerly the industry leader. In a coupled solution, you build the entire website in one and the same silo. Where the MACH architecture of a headless solution is flexible, a coupled CMS is monolithic. Wordpress is an example of a publishing solution that traditionally created web pages with coupled CMS, but which today can also be used for headless solutions. With a headless solution, you have the ability to have a backend system especially suitable for handling all data and all content, which via an API hub can distribute the content to any location you want. Be it different audiences, different websites, different brands. Whether it's member club or app and with the ability to manage it through the same backend system.

Are you going to have Vipps?

Or Whole Home? What about Klarna? If your website feels outdated, there is a narrow case for a headless website. Design and additional features can be redone — without changing the rest of the user interface. When a website is built headless, it is built up in various systems from the very bottom. Therefore, design changes, or additional features such as Vipps will not affect the rest of the website.

Although a headless solution requires a somewhat larger cost at the start, you will quickly save a lot of time and money on further development and system replacements. The all-in-one system that a coupled solution is difficult to create the value needed when customer expectations for good digital solutions are sky-high. It is understandable that it can be a bit difficult to take market share in a new industry with a solution that was innovative in 2013.