Your CMS is the hub of your digital content, and it’s critical to make the foundation of flexible APIs and content structure right. Choosing the right CMS will ensure that your digital experiences are built to meet future demands. And most importantly, it will give you developers and editors the freedom to innovate.
Make sure the headless CMS you choose pleases multiple stakeholders and is the right fit for your organization’s needs.
But what things to check in a headless CMS? Here, we will uncover seven features of a future-proof headless CMS, which you should consider when choosing a content management system for your organization.
Contents
Top Features of A Future-proof Headless CMS
APIs Tailored To The Requirements
A headless CMS is a back-end management system, making content accessible through API for display on any device without a built-in presentation layer. APIs can help you drive better content management strategies and experiences. The more powerful the APIs are, the better the experience is.
So, when looking for a headless CMS, check for a comprehensive, complete, and flexible API to update, create, and fetch any content. If you need to build or customize APIs tailored to your organization’s needs, ensure the CMS supports this. GraphQL is one of the best methods for building APIs as it supports all types of clients and is flexible.
Structured Content
Headless CMS allows structuring the content according to the purpose and meaning. For example, bigger topics and themes are broken into chunks and used in multiple ways. And small chunks of content are assembled and presented together as bigger topics. This also allows writers to focus on the content itself rather than how it is styled or rendered.
Choosing a CMS that enhances your power to create value-driven and rich content, like articles, training courses, and products that can be reused is recommended.
Intuitive And Responsive Authoring Interface
A headless CMS is an excellent option for businesses that want to create responsive and dynamic websites or those who want to easily update their content without having to rely on a developer.
You can go for a headless CMS that has an intuitive and responsive authoring interface as it makes content editors more effective and productive. Ensure that the authoring interface offers a logical overview as a tree structure and supports permissions and workflow.
Image Handling And Block Editor
How quickly the images are rendered greatly impacts the user experience. This is why developers often focus on streamlining access, optimizing, caching, and delivering images. A headless CM has the potential to handle thousands of images.
You should choose a headless CMS that mitigates common issues related to handling images with features like focal point support and automatic scaling for hassle-free and fast editing.
Also, go for a headless CMS with a user-friendly block editor that enables editors to manage assorted content hierarchies and create page-oriented content.
Permissions And Version Control
When creating a website and content, there is a range of different people who contribute to it. Everyone requires a different level of access. That means you need a system that allows users to be assigned as editors, administrators, or contributors. Each designation refers to a different authority level.
In addition, ensure that the headless CMS has better version control. This allows you to keep track of edits and easily revert to past versions without updating the live website.
Accessibility
Why is it critical to have accessible content?
- Making your site accessible allows you to reach 15% of global internet users with a disability.
- It empowers the team to work more efficiently.
- It improves the machine-reading and search engine indexing of your site.
By making your site accessible, you can ensure that your digital experience can be accessed by everyone. You should look for a headless CMS that doesn’t put any limits on accessibility.
Multiple Environments To Support Development Process
Last but not least, when choosing a headless CMS, ensure it supports your development process and provides multiple staging, testing, and production environments.
Multiple environments allow you to have more than just dev and prod, like Q&A environments or staging. In headless CMS, every environment uses its own API key to its own project.
Takeaway!
There are plenty of options when it comes to headless CMS. Each has its own pros and cons. All you need to do is consult with a reputable and experienced website development agency, like Exemplifi and know which can fit your needs. Above are some features which you should check in a headless CMS. Make sure the CMS you choose has all the features so that you can be ready for future challenges and give your customers the best experience.
To ease your work, here we have listed the top headless CMSs:
- Kontent by Kentico
- Magnolia
- Agility CMS
- Contentful
- Butter CMS
- Contentstack
- Bloomreach
- Netlify
- Sanity
- Strapi