Headless is gaining more and more traction. That’s because it lets one build a modern, fast and clean application frontend or website without worrying too much about how the UI intricacies impact the backend.
It’s everywhere – in the news and on social media, and enterprises are employing it for all sorts of applications. But here’s the thing: not all such deployments can reap all (or most) of the advantages headless has to offer.
For that reason, this article dives into the role of headless in the digital ecosystem and why enterprises are going headless.
1. Total Website Control
Going headless means gaining total control over the web presence. As such, the company can often make changes to their website and application frontend as they see fit without waiting for a developer or designer to do it for them. They can also update plugins and themes and make other tweaks without worrying about downtime or downtime costs because there’s no impact on the complex backend infrastructure.
Indeed, there are very few limitations on what one can do with the site once it’s headless, which is why many people choose this option over traditional hosting solutions.
2. Exceptional Brand Experience
A Headless CMS gives the freedom to create an exceptional brand experience for the customers. Since people who experience highly personalized shopping environments are “40% more likely to spend more than planned,” excellent customer experience becomes a must.
As such, the headless approach is a great way to create a user experience that’s consistent and predictable. You can develop a unique look and feel without worrying about affecting other sites or applications that may be using the same backend systems and CMS. This gives you more time to focus on creating engaging content and building relationships with your visitors.
3. Integration & Scalability
Going headless might be the answer if businesses are looking to increase their scalability. Having a headless CMS means they can store data in one place and display it in any way they want — without having to worry about how their content gets moved around. This helps with integration because it allows for more flexibility when building the website or application.
It can handle more requests and more data by using a single API call instead of having to hit the database for every request. This is especially helpful if enterprises need to integrate multiple databases or third-party APIs, as it allows them to do so without stressing about scaling issues.
4. Efficiency & Performance
The biggest reason for going headless is performance since 57% of IT and eCommerce leaders believe their current eCommerce platform cannot support their business for more than a year. You can have a great UI and design, but if a page takes too long to load, that’s where most of your visitors will leave.
One of the biggest problems developers face when building web applications is the time it takes to load all the content from the database and render it on a page. This process can take anywhere from 200 milliseconds (ms) or more than one second — depending on the complexity of the application’s data set. This delay is often caused by rendering HTML markup with PHP scripts.
Using a headless approach can often make pages load faster by disconnecting the complex server-side systems and the user interface. This way, the user won’t need to wait for all of the elements on the page to be downloaded before they see what they came for.
5. Better Security System
Headless browsers are also becoming a great way to keep the ecosystem secure. In effect, the front and backends are delinked. This means that if someone were to compromise the headless browser, they would only have limited access to other enterprise systems and wouldn’t be able to see any sensitive data.
Headless systems are also often updated more frequently than traditional browsers because there is no need for support. They generally work with Node.js, allowing developers to update their packages easily when new versions are released. This can be especially helpful when it comes to the team’s annual update cycle.
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Headless Application Areas
- Content Management: Headless content management is an excellent fit for any website with lots of content that needs to be updated regularly.
- Headless eCommerce: Headless eCommerce means you can build your eCommerce site rather than using an existing platform like Shopify or BigCommerce.
- Digital Asset Management: Headless digital asset management allows for managing all the images and videos one uses on their website.
- Automation & Infrastructure: Headless automation allows for creating scripts to automate business processes, like sending out emails or creating new blog posts when certain conditions are met.
Use Cases
Headless WordPress is a great way to quickly get the website up and running. It can be used for any website, from a simple landing page to a complex eCommerce platform. And there are many benefits involved:
- Easier to scale and manage.
- Lower cost of ownership.
- Higher performance and better user experience.
A headless approach to marketing is often more successful because it allows for cross-departmental collaboration and allows each team to use the best tools for their needs. Since the frontend can be changed without having major changes needed in the backend, the entire process can be made more agile and responsive.
Conclusion
With so many benefits, it’s easy to see why more and more businesses are turning to the headless approach. If you haven’t made the switch to headless yet, we can’t say it enough – make the jump! You aren’t just saving time and money – you’ll also be saving yourself a lot of headaches.
