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Contentstack demonstrated 295% ROI in Forrester study

The Contentstack TeamJan 17, 2023

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Today’s consumer expects a seamless and personalized digital experience when interacting with brands. As we’ve discussed before, a monolithic (or “legacy”) CMS lacks the flexibility enterprises need to keep up with changing consumer demands. 

“A lot of the technologies that were initially driving digital experiences [were designed with] one single experience in mind,” said Jeff Baher, head of Global Product Marketing and Growth at Contentstack. However, Baher said, with the rise of mobile internet, social media and smart devices, “there’s just an entirely different set of requirements for being able to reach customers and create digital experiences.” 

The digital experience has expanded, and the customer journey can now unfold across multiple channels. Increasingly, enterprises are adopting composable architecture to build digital experiences for their customers, and a headless CMS is the beating heart of it all. But can the benefits of implementing a headless CMS be measured? We recently commissioned Forrester Consulting to conduct a study measuring the Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) of the Contentstack headless CMS platform, and the results speak for themselves.

Methodology

The Total Economic Impact (TEI) methodology was developed by Forrester to help companies quantify the value of IT initiatives, such as moving to a headless CMS. TEI gives leaders more concrete data they can use to make the right decisions for their organization.

In order to effectively measure the benefits of the Contentstack headless CMS, researchers at Forrester identified four organizations currently using the Contentstack headless CMS. To ensure accuracy, the organizations were selected from different industries (food and beverage, travel, fitness and apparel), with revenues ranging from $25 million to $2.1 billion.

Researchers interviewed decision-makers at each organization to obtain data on benefits, costs, flexibility and potential risks, then used this information to build a composite organization. Then, they applied TEI to build a financial model and quantify the business benefits of moving to a headless CMS.

How Contentstack’s CMS platform benefits enterprises

The Contentstack headless CMS platform offers significant financial benefits for enterprises. The study found that the composite organization’s ROI was 295%, thanks to a combination of cost savings and increased revenues.  

Infographic showing 3 results from Forrester study of Contentstack CMS: $3M increase in profit, $507.3K productivity savings and $2.0M savings due to reduced time to publish.

Cost savings

One of the challenges of legacy infrastructure is what Baher calls a “push-and-pull” between an organization’s IT and business sides. Since the legacy CMS is so code-heavy, even minor tweaks to the digital experience can require significant updates to back-end code.

 “You have to put in an IT ticket for really basic things, and then the IT queue [is full of] tasks like ‘fix five typos,’ and that’s maddening,” Baher said. 

The Contentstack headless CMS platform makes it easier for the business side to make tweaks to the digital experience without a lot of IT assistance. This reduces the amount of time IT and developers spend on minor tasks — and that time adds up. One interview subject noted that with Contentstack’s CMS, “we can stand things up as quick as our control processes will allow.” 

The study found that using Contentstack’s headless CMS saved the composite organization $507,000 in productivity costs over three years. In addition, the headless CMS reduced content-related development time for the composite organization by 80%. 

The headless CMS also minimizes the number of manual and repetitive tasks business users normally have to perform to publish content in a legacy CMS. Simplifying the content publishing process helped reduce overhead and improve time to market for the composite organization. Overall, the organization’s time to publish was reduced by 90%, leading to savings of $2 million over three years.  

Increased revenues

The study found that the Contentstack headless CMS was key to an estimated 4% revenue increase for the composite organization, worth $3 million in profit over three years. 

A few factors could explain this estimated increase. Cutting back on development time for minor tasks allows the composite organization to dedicate more IT resources to specialized projects. Reducing time to publish also means the composite organization can publish more content to enhance the digital experience. More frequent content updates means a higher SEO ranking, which drives more traffic to the site. And when potential customers arrive, the improved digital experience can positively impact purchasing decisions: Studies have shown that 42% of customers are willing to pay more for a better experience. 

The big picture

Delivering a high-quality customer experience has always been crucial for brands, but it is more important today than ever before. It is easier than ever for consumers to do business with a brand — and it is also easier than ever for consumers to take their business elsewhere when a brand fails to deliver the experience they expect.

In order to meet the demands of today’s consumer, organizations must deliver a digital experience that is fast and seamlessly unfolds across multiple devices and channels. The customer journey needs to be personalized and perpetual: Brands must maintain a post-sale presence in order to encourage repeat business. 

Today’s consumer expects a more mobile, cloud-based digital experience. Most monolithic content management systems provide a preset suite of functions that can, in theory, meet those demands. But sometimes those built-in functions don’t quite work the way business users need them to — and sometimes they don’t exist at all. In those cases, organizations have to find third-party solutions, which can be hard to integrate into legacy systems. And, as Baher notes, maintaining those workarounds can be time-consuming and difficult. 

“Connecting is done through web hooks, which are these manual stitching points between parts of your stack or your suite. They’re manual, they take time, they’re error-prone, they’re security issues because you’re connecting third-party software to parts of your stack,” Baher said. Managing all these factors usually falls on a single member of the IT team — and teams often struggle to keep things running smoothly if that key member leaves the organization.

The Contentstack headless CMS platform allows business users to be more hands-on when it comes to content. Contentstack Marketplace — an extensive ecosystem of features, services, apps, integrations, and accelerators — lets teams take a modular approach to digital experience composition by picking and choosing the right building blocks for their needs. These components can then be integrated quickly and easily  via the Contentstack Automation Hub, which Baher describes as a “no-code, low-code environment that simplifies the complex and automates the routine.”

“You can very quickly create triggers and actions across  the composable stack, which saves time and removes the opportunity for a lot of errors,” Baher said.

Graphic with quote from article

A headless CMS is the first step toward creating a fully composable digital experience platform (DXP), and Contentstack is the perfect foundation for  robust and adaptable digital experience composition. The headless CMS, Marketplace, and Automation Hub combine to deliver fast, seamless integration so business users can publish content or make tweaks to the digital experience without significant involvement from the IT side. 

TEI is an important measure of the overall economic benefit of moving to composable architecture, as well as the unique and specific benefits of using the Contentstack Headless CMS Platform to do it. But going composable is about more than just dollars and cents — it’s also about future-proofing your business so that no matter how customer needs and demands evolve in the future, your organization can evolve along with them.

Learn more

Schedule a free demo to see how Contentstack can help your organization deliver a customer experience that leads to higher revenues, lower overhead and has the agility today’s brands need.

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Sep 28, 2023 | 3 min. read

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Sep 25, 2023 | 3 min. read

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Regarding content ops, combining content management and artificial intelligence is an excellent tool for giving workers back the time they need to perform more complex tasks that still require a human brain. 4 Ways Content Management & Artificial Intelligence Are Already Impacting Content Ops Using AI in content management systems can be beneficial because the AI excels at processing and understanding vast data pools and automating routine tasks, resulting in the following benefits: improved digital experience, improved user experiences, enhanced consumer experiences, increased return on investment, expose new opportunities, and inform intelligent business decisions. In this section, we'll explore how AI is helping businesses take advantage of these benefits by up-leveling content generation and management across various stages of the content operations workflow. Need a competitive advantage, digital strategy transformation, efficient delivery of personalized content across multiple channels, or need to adapt swiftly to market changes? Download the Ultimate Guide to Headless CMS to learn how a headless CMS can drive business growth, customer satisfaction, and revenue-generating digital experiences. 1. Smart Content Analysis and Categorization One fantastic thing that artificial intelligence can do is analyze a piece of content to identify its sentiment and overall tone. This is important for helping content managers quickly determine whether a part of the content is suitable for their audience or needs some tweaking before it can engage the intended consumer. IBM Watson, for example, uses AI to automate content categorization, text labeling, sentiment analysis, keyword extraction, and more. 2. Automatic Image Tagging Images enhance your content and can increase consumer engagement. Unfortunately, there's almost nothing less engaging for content creators than manually tagging image after image for search and SEO purposes. But it's still a critical task. And that is what makes it an excellent job for AI. Recently, AI-powered automated image recognition has gotten smart enough to tag images in seconds—letting your content creators return to more profound work. 3. Scalable Personalization and Predictions AI also brings scalability to another important but nearly impossible task for human workers: tracking and using individual user behavior. AI can automate watching what each user on your website or app is doing simultaneously. Then, it can compile this data to look for patterns that will help it predict, based on past behavior, what each user might want next. This information can uplevel any marketing department's personalization efforts, from serving dynamic content to making product recommendations. And improving personalization has never been more critical. In the words of the management consulting firm McKinsey, “Personalization will be the prime driver of marketing success within five years." They found that leaders in personalization were already able to increase revenue by 5 to 15% and improve efficiency on marketing spend by 10 to 30%. 4. Time-Saving Content Creation Assistance And now for the big one: AI can be a big help when it comes to actually creating content. While the advance of AI integration into content creation may feel scary for some marketing professionals, an article created by Articoolo's artificial intelligence system, “A robot explains how to achieve the perfect work-life balance,” shows that there is a long way to go before "robots" will be able to match the tone or accuracy of human writers. Artificial intelligence is rapidly improving at creating original and personalized content ideas or nuanced content pieces. However, a well-trained AI tool should be able to contribute to straightforward writing projects such as news articles, factual reports, translations, transcriptions, and editing for accuracy. For now, in the content creation space, AI is a tool for improving the ROI of content marketing, which can often be resource-intensive. AI can do the legwork regarding research and data, while human writers can take this info and do the deep work required to create high-value, relevant content for each target customer. Imagining the Future of AI in Content Management Now that we've explored the main areas in which content management and artificial intelligence are already coming together to improve content operations, let's talk about a few ways AI may improve marketing even more. Interactions Between AI Tools Suppose you've used your voice-activated smart speaker (like a Google Home) to control something in your house (like turning on an smart-light from Philips Hue). In that case, you've experienced an interaction between two different AI-powered devices. And similar interactions are in store for the future of AI-powered tools in the content operations space. It's only a matter of time before AI-enabled content management systems (CMS) and other content platforms and tools can interact in innovative, automatic ways to provide faster functionality and better experiences for consumers and marketers alike. On-the-Spot SEO Improvements Taking the idea of sentiment analysis one step further, we predict that AI-enabled content management systems will soon be able to identify opportunities for SEO improvements in real time. This capability would empower marketing professionals to create more compelling content in less time, which will outperform competitors and rank well in search engines. Prepare your organization to respond to evolving market demands, new business threats, and emerging opportunities. The Gartner report guides you on modernizing and future-proofing your Digital Experience Platform (DXP). Download the Gartner report, "Future-proof your tech stack," to begin your journey towards a more agile, adaptable, and future-ready tech stack today. Content Gap Identification When you're in the thick of it all, it can be hard to see where your content may be lacking (or where your competitors' content may be lacking). But both situations allow you to fill those "gaps" and capture more traffic. One day, we hope AI will become smart enough to flag gaps and make recommendations so you can create fresh content that adds value and generates new leads. Customer Service Automation Customer service is another one of those expensive yet necessary parts of business. Fortunately, it can become less time- and money-intensive with the help of AI. Just like AI enables content folks to focus on deep work, AI-powered chatbots can facilitate customer service folks to do the same. While many of today's chatbots can address straightforward questions with answers pulled from a knowledge base, we look forward to when many queries don't have to be routed back to human agents. After all, it's the instantaneous and around-the-clock support consumers seek when interacting with brand chatbots. Get Started with Content Management and Artificial Intelligence with Contentstack The future of content ops is bright, thanks to content management and artificial intelligence. Your business can become a part of that bright future by adopting a composable CMS built to integrate with AI-enabled content management tools. And we only know one CMS of the sort: Contentstack. Contentstack is an agile CMS that’s part of the MACH revolution. That means it’s microservices-based, API-connected, cloud-native, and is built on headless architecture from the ground up. Because of Contentstack's decoupled nature, almost any modern, AI-powered content management tool can help your team with everything from automated content analysis to intelligent content creation and generation. Our turnkey apps and integrations with best-in-class tools like IBM Watson, Salesforce Einstein, and MonkeyLearn empower Contentstack users to leverage AI and reap various benefits. To get started, sign up for a free trial or a personalized demo today and see why the future of your content operation lies in your ability to integrate content management and artificial intelligence with the help of Contentstack.

Sep 19, 2023 | 3 min. read

Leveraging headless CMS for optimal page speed optimization and performance

A website's performance is critical in ensuring user satisfaction and improving bottom-line results. Thus, website speed, particularly the time it takes for a web page to load, has become an essential factor that marketing managers and developers must prioritize.A slow website can lead to lost traffic, decreased user engagement, and lower search engine rankings. Studies indicate that even a one-second delay in page loading time can lead to a 7% decrease in conversions.On the other hand, a fast website can result in increased user engagement, a lower bounce rate, and higher page views per session, which translates into higher search engine rankings.This blog will explore how a headless content management system (CMS) can improve page speed on desktop and mobile devices. We'll look more closely at the benefits of page speed optimization and how to achieve it using headless CMS.What is a headless CMS?First, let's understand what a headless CMS is and how it differs from a traditional CMS. A headless CMS is a content management system without a built-in front end. Instead of a traditional CMS's complete website management approach, a headless CMS separates the data and content on the back end from the presentation layer on the front end.The headless CMS provides APIs so the back-end and front-end can seamlessly communicate. This capability enables content to be called up and delivered to the front end, which developers build and maintain using static site generators like React, Angular, or Vue.How a headless CMS improves page speed optimizationHere's where page speed optimization's benefits come into play. With headless architecture, since the front end doesn't store or manage content, it can be optimized for speed and performance. This capability includes images, scripts, and server responses. Many front-end systems can also plug into a headless CMS to deliver consistent content to multiple devices and platforms, not just websites.One of the practical features of a headless CMS is that it allows for Content Delivery NetworkCDN) integration. A CDN acts as an intermediary server between the website and users in different parts of the world. By locally caching website components, a CDN can deliver content faster and reduce server response time, significantly improving website performance and speed.Case studies of companies implementing headless CMS include a well-known UK-based fashion retailer. The company reportedly improved its website's speed with headless CMS, enabling a 4x increase in page views per session and decreasing the bounce rate by 35%.By fixing common issues causing low page speed, a headless CMS enhances individual page performance and overall website speed. Slow-loading images and bloated scripts contribute to poor performance. With a headless CMS, developers can build a front-end that optimizes the size and quality of images and limits unnecessary scripts. A headless CMS can help boost website speed and overall performance by correctly leveraging server responses.Using techniques such as caching, CDNs, and image optimization to improve page speed helps to cache and compress content, reduce file size, and deliver content faster to users' browsers.Another way headless CMS can affect website speed optimization is by reducing server requests and server-side rendering. Creating server-side templates to generate HTML content is crucial for website speed optimization. With a headless CMS, the site is built in HTML and fully optimized for web crawlers and search engines. Additionally, server requests can be minimized as the website assets are spread between the client and server. This feature further assists in speeding up the website and reducing latency for the user.Another significant benefit of headless CMS is the flexibility it provides. A headless CMS enables businesses to build the front end using their preferred development tools and languages. The ability to choose the best tools for creating the front end helps ensure websites are faster, more responsive, and easier to maintain.Overall, headless CMS solutions offer extensive customization options. Developers can build websites specifically tailored to meet their needs and those of their customers. This approach provides a unique and highly engaging user experience, increasing customer satisfaction and loyalty.Headless can improve both page load time and TTFB.It's worth noting that headless the time to first byte (TTFB) and page load time. Page load time is the total time it takes to load a web page into a web browser. TTFB, on the other hand, measures the time between a user request and the reception of the first byte of data from the server. A high TTFB may lead to slower website performance. A Headless CMS allows developers to improve TTFB and overall site speed, resulting in faster loading times.Seamless mobile experiencesMobile-first is the new norm in website design and development, with users increasingly accessing websites from their smartphones and tablets. A headless CMS allows for responsive design and the ability to optimize the mobile experience separately from the desktop experience.Optimizing mobile apart from the desktop experience can include:Reducing the size of images and other media.Organizing scripts to load more efficiently.Ensuring the website is mobile-friendly and easy for those on the go.A headless CMS can improve website loading times and overall user experience for seamless mobile experiences.Why does page speed matter?Over a decade ago, Google announced that it would consider desktop page speed when analyzing search rankings. Then, in 2018, Google said it would also begin thinking about page speed for mobile searches. Mobile searches are the main reason it's so important to measure page speed against industry benchmarks for mobile and desktop searches and then continuously work toward improving performance.It's believed that when two sites rank similarly on Google, speed can be the deciding factor in one outranking the other.Speed tests like Google PageSpeed Insights help developers identify and rectify page speed issues. It tests speed and provides recommendations on how to improve it. Besides PageSpeed Insights, there are a variety of tools available for testing speed, including, but not limited to:SematextPingdom Speed TestWebPage TestDareBoostDotcom-monitorUptrendsGTmetrixSince search engines like Google consider page speed in their rankings, optimizing speed can boost your rankings in search results. Here's more information on how page speed impacts conversion rates and search engine ranking.And since most users are on mobile devices, faster mobile site performance is particularly crucial, as search engines prioritize mobile-first indexing.As you might imagine, page speed improvements also enhance conversion rates, ensuring online shoppers have a seamless and enjoyable user experience while navigating your site. It makes perfect sense since pages that load faster tend to have lower bounce rates, an indicator of better user engagement.Remember, a bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who come to the site and then leave rather than continuing to view other pages on the site. Most websites aim for a bounce rate of 40% or lower. A lower bounce rate typically translates to a higher conversion rate. It makes sense that the longer a user stays on a site (e.g., an e-commerce site) viewing different pages, the more likely they'll convert to a customer by making a purchase.Recap: how to improve page speed optimization and performanceOne of the primary ways to increase the loading speed of a website is by optimizing the image and script files. By compressing image files, you can reduce the loading time, and by eliminating unnecessary scripts, you can boost website performance. Mobile page speed optimizations can be quickly implemented with a headless CMS.Another essential way to improve website performance is by reducing server response times. Customers prefer fast and efficient websites, and a slow server response time reduces click-through rates and conversions. With a headless CMS, you can ensure faster response times by setting up caching mechanisms that help customers access frequently accessed data faster.A CDN can also help optimize page speed. A CDN can be beneficial if your website has users worldwide as it caches content on its servers distributed globally. When a customer accesses your website, the CDN delivers the content from the server closest to their location, resulting in faster load speed.These improvements can provide seamless customer experiences on websites and mobile devices in the long run. The result is happier customers who will keep coming back.Ready to go headlessA headless CMS like Contentstack is a powerful tool for optimizing page speed and website performance. Its flexible architecture lets developers focus on front-end development while ensuring faster server response times and efficient back-end processes. By improving website speed and user experience, businesses can enhance their conversion rates, improve their SEO rankings, and generate higher revenue.Whether you're a marketer, CMO, or developer, optimizing your website's page speed can provide numerous benefits, and there's no better time to get started than now.Learn moreDiscover how to drive seamless digital customer experiences with a composable UX, as advised by Gartner. Learn to develop an organization-wide digital experience strategy and apply total experience principles to bridge the gap in digital experiences. Understand the importance of customer data management and journey intelligence in achieving a composable UX. Overcome the challenges of siloed UX approaches and monolithic technologies to deliver consistent experiences across channels. Download the report today.