Headless CMS development for super-scalable websites & apps

We architect robust content management solutions using a headless approach, delivering scalable and highly efficient frontends and applications.

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Digital Experience Platforms

Transform customer experiences and achieve high-level integration across all platforms with DXPs.

Omni-channel Solutions

Deliver powerful experiences across multiple channels with a headless approach to content management.

Microsites & Applications

Significantly reduce time to market for microsites & integrated applications with headless CMS implementation.

Headless CMS Developers

We develop Headless CMS solutions built for scale

Through our belief in API-first implementations, we build impactful customer experiences that are both scalable and highly consumable. Leveraging the composable approach of Headless architecture, we develop full-service solutions that enable growth and scalability of content and digital experience delivery.

What we do

High performance websites & apps driven by headless solutions

Data Architecture

A headless approach negates the traditional constraints of complex data structure

Multi-channel Solutions

Deliver experiences across all channels with the same headless API

Microsites & Apps

Leverage the same architecture to reduce time-to-market for microsites & apps

Decoupled Frontends

Deliver superior multi-channel experiences with decoupled frontends

Application-free

Reduced maintenance & higher reliability with an application-free implementation

High Scalability

Headless solutions can often be scaled immediately, with minimal development overhead

Device-agnostic digital experiences with an API-first approach

We develop and integrate headless solutions to drive powerful experiences across various channels and devices.

Efficient integrations through the API-first nature of headless content management.

Reduced infrastructure costs, resulting in a stronger long-term ROI.

Achieve greater stability from the decoupling of front and backends.

Significantly faster time-to-market for new microsites and applications, leveraging the same API.

Tech we use

Leveraging best-in-class technology to architect powerful Headless CMS

Strapi

Using Strapi to build headless CMS powered by APIs

By leveraging Strapi's API-first approach to content management, our Headless CMS developers create integrated omnichannel experiences.

Contentful

Highly scalable CMS as-a-service for building scalable apps

With Contentful's innovative tooling, we architect composable content management structures that optimize delivery of digital experiences.

Headless Drupal

Headless implementations powered by a robust, trusted CMS

We leverage Drupal's modular approach to develop powerful headless content management systems that are scalable & API-first.

Sanity

Data-first headless CMS for better efficiency with content management

Through the use of Sanity's data-first approach to content management, we develop headless CMS solutions for content at scale.

Storyblok

Highly flexible headless CMS for building user journeys

We empower brands with headless CMS development for Storyblok by enabling better design & delivery of brand experience & customer journeys.

Cosmic

Highly scalable headless CMS for content-heavy use cases

As an official Cosmic partner, we leverage the CMS's scalability to implement rich, content-first, websites & applications.

We develop data-oriented headless solutions to power all of your apps

At the heart of all headless approaches is the belief that content is king. With a headless approach to content management, data exists in its own right. Your content isn't tied to a front-end, website or single application.

A headless CMS exposes its content via APIs, making it possible to consume the data within any kind of frontend or application. That means that the same CMS is able to deliver content across any channel, with no restrictions.

What does headless mean?

In the context of web and application development, the term “headless” refers to the process of decoupling the frontend from the backend.

Older, legacy applications traditionally approached the front and backend from a single source of code, with a CMS that powered both. A headless approach consumes data from various points via APIs, which provide raw data, which is then mapped into a frontend interface and displayed to an end user. This process allows for the development of much more intuitive frontend experiences, and for a backend that is more secure, scalable, and stable overall.

What is Headless CMS?

Traditionally, a CMS would serve as a single point for delivery of both the frontend and administrative backend. With Headless CMS, the goal is to decouple these two major components of an application—allowing the technology for the backend and frontend to be better tailored to the needs of each.

Is Headless CMS development worth it?

Whether the move to headless is right for your business depends on unique needs that are specific to your applications and how they operate. Reimplementing monolithic applications can have a profoundly positive impact on any business. It’s important to speak to a Headless CMS development agency to determine the scope and breadth of how reimplementation of your current stack can best serve your business.

The future of headless CMS

The web has seen significant shifts in recent years, in terms of how applications are developed and subsequent best practise. Part of these changes involve the use of decoupled backends, the implementation of microservices to power different parts of your applications, and a general shift to Javascript-powered web technology to aid in rapid development and increase code reusability and maintainability. At this point, it's clear that headless & composable architecture are here to stay, largely down to the level of flexibility businesses can achieve with this approach.

Our development & integration arsenal

Headless CMS Development
Headless Commerce Solutions
Complex Data Architecture

Continuous Delivery
Omni-channel Solutions
Integrations & APIs

Headless CMS & E-commerce

Headless commerce provides a new way for businesses to develop fast, scalable commerce solutions that offer greater control of the user experience and customer journey. Enhancing the customer journey for retail businesses is a key factor in achieving successful conversions and engagement. By applying the same approaches used in Headless CMS development, commerce can be efficiently decoupled.

Headless CMS & Jamstack

Headless CMS development is closely linked with Jamstack, because headless solutions commonly implement a Jamstack approach, making the two synonymous in many respects. The core foundation of Jamstack places value on a component-based approach to a technology stack. Headless CMS implementation is a natural factor in this equation, acting as a source of data that is separated from the other layers of the stack.

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Traditional vs Headless CMS

Traditional vs Headless CMS

What makes Headless CMS different?

Key differences between traditional and headless content management systems.

Traditionally, content management systems were responsible for powering both the frontend and backend of a website. In contrast, Headless CMS decouples the frontend from the backend, allowing both to operate entirely independently. This approach brings with it many advantages above a traditionally-implemented content management system, such as improved speed, heightened levels of security, and infinitely greater flexibility for both the frontend and the backend.

Traditional content management systems have existed for decades, but the idea of Headless CMS is a more recent development. Due to the potential business advantages that leveraging headless CMS development provides, a growing number of organizations are today choosing to switch from traditional monolithic applications to headless implementations.

Traditional CMSs provide both an administrative backend (to manage website content), as well as a frontend to display content (typically in the form of pages) to end users. This approach means that both the front and backend are served from the same server environment, run on the same programming language, and require a persistent database connection. What’s more, the most popular (traditional) content management systems are PHP-based, which is known to be a challenging programming language for developing rich frontend experiences. The modern web applications of today (PWAs, for example), run on Javascript, which is far better suited to developing progressive frontend experiences that are capable of delivering more engaging interactions and user journeys.

Furthermore, because legacy CMS require a database connection in order to deliver website content, pages load more slowly and are prone to frequent errors. The frequent database connections have a tendency to increase the amount of resources required of the server, and this problem only grows as more content is added to the database. Intensive backend operations will have a direct impact on the website’s frontend and users’ browsing experience, as the two are operating within the same server environment. Infrastructure providers have historically tried to mitigate this by upselling additional services such as load balancing for resource-intensive content management systems, but this isn’t efficient for businesses looking to scale their website or application while limiting the impact on costs. Regrettably, these problems are only compounded as content is added to the CMS over time, or as traffic increases and puts servers under more strain.

With the frontend of traditional content management systems requiring a connection to the database, these websites are prone to security flaws that are easily exploitable by bots or malicious users.

Headless CMS development does-away with these common problems of traditional content management systems, by decoupling the frontend from the CMS backend, allowing a frontend to be served purely with Javascript (offering a superior user experience), and without relying on a direct connection to the database. Taking it a step further, headless implementations are well-known for their ability to deliver superior pagespeed that significantly rivals that of traditional, monolithic CMS or web applications.

Over the last few decades, it’s become increasingly clear that the approach utilized by traditional content management systems lacks the flexibility required for emerging businesses to break through their constraints. The aim of Headless CMS development is to reduce the barriers associated with scalability, complex data, and the implementation of effective frontends that are built to convert.

More on Headless CMS

How are Headless CMS hosted?

At their core, the aim of a headless CMS is to provide a way to easily create and edit your content. This content/data needs to be hosted somewhere, as does the CMS itself. Headless content management systems are either self hosted (eg. Strapi, Headless Drupal), or are provided as a SaaS offering (i.e. Contentful, Sanity, Storyblok).

Whether a self-hosted or SaaS offering is right for your business depends on your needs in terms of scalability and control. Self-hosted options will generally provide an unrivalled level of flexibility and control, though require more hands-on maintenance by an in-house team or agency partner. SaaS CMS on the other hand, offerings provide a reliable, maintenance-free experience with minimum uptime SLAs and ready-to-use APIs supplied out-the-box, requiring minimal up-front configuration.

Can my existing CMS be used for Headless?

It depends. Oftentimes, The answer is yes—as most content management systems today support Headless implementation via built in APIs. Even for content management systems that don’t offer native APIs, usually plugins exist to make this possible, or alternatively this can be developed as a custom implementation. However, whether it’s the most desirable solution is a different matter.
Content management systems that aren’t built API-first could potentially require large amounts of development work in order to achieve what is required to effectively implement them as part of a headless solution to building your application. Legacy content management systems that don’t natively support REST or Graphql APIs will require custom development of a potentially large number of bespoke endpoints to consume and send data back and forth from the CMS. Additionally, such content management systems may be largely incompatible with the progressive nature of Headless and composable architecture, and are likely to be clunky and resource intensive. Legacy CMSs have typically been built with programming languages that are less desirable in the era of the progressive web, require outdated server infrastructure, and feature largely bloated code bases which have been historically prone to insecurities.

In general, when considering reimplementing your CMS to support a new, API-first approach, it’s a good time to consider whether the cms still meets the changing needs of your application.

However, some traditional content management systems have undergone widespread innovations in recent years, making them more accessible in terms of APIs, and therefore sufficiently suited to incorporation within a headless stack. Wordpress, for example, can be effectively used as a headless cms, making it possible to retain a website’s existing backend while decoupling the frontend from the cms. Other traditional content management systems, such as Drupal, have undergone larger evolutions to become API-first with a full scope of support for implementing the cms as part of a headless build, which opens further possibilities for connecting existing CMSs to a decoupled frontend without upheaving the backend and current content.

It’s worth noting, however, that modern headless CMS are often built using more progressive web technologies and are therefore generally more amenable to integration with a decoupled frontend, as this is what they were designed to do.

In summary, it’s possible to enable support for headless implementation in your existing, traditional CMS (such as Wordpress or Drupal), but alternative options should be considered as there are newer, more progressive content management systems available, which are built specifically for omnichannel, headless experiences. The optimal choice in CMS will vary significantly depending on the website/application and it’s specific objectives.

Migration to Headless CMS

Migration to a Headless CMS is often part of any widespread digital transformation engagement. For websites and apps running on legacy platforms, migration to headless CMS often forms a vital part of enabling the backend to interoperate effectively with a new progressive frontend.

We offer comprehensive migration services to orchestrate and execute the migration of large amounts of content from legacy CMS to headless CMS without infringing on the operations of content management and authoring teams. This is accomplished through the development of custom migration workflows which are responsible for migrating content either incrementally or at once, depending on the needs of your digital transformation project.

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Discover what we can do for you

We are Cocoon, a multitalented digital media agency and web development collective based in London. We develop cutting-edge solutions that expertly cater to the demanding needs of tomorrow.

Making Headless Work for Marketing Teams

At Cocoon, we speak with many businesses who are looking to re-strategize their web implementations in order to gain a competitive edge in the evolving digital landscape. With many businesses at a crossroads between traditional implementations and the appeal of modern, headless-enabled approaches such as MACH—a key concern often arises around internal marketing teams.

Using Headless Architecture as a Strategy to Accelerate Digital Growth

Through decoupling of an application's backend from its frontend, headless implementations aim to re-designate delivery of the frontend experience to the most appropriate technologies and separate them from purpose-built backends.

Using Digital Transformation to Thrive in Today's Economy

Digital Transformation has the potential to introduce significant benefits to businesses of any kind—with the largest gains being made to areas that lack effective digitalization of any kind.

What is Composable Architecture?

Composable architecture is a modern approach to web and application engineering that puts emphasis on the use of multiple highly-specialized, modular components to satisfy business requirements.