Omnichannel is the future of reaching a digital audience. When you’re planning for omnichannel, how you set it up can make a world of difference.
What is omnichannel?
Most customers have multiple touch points with your brand before making a purchase. On average, it takes about eight interactions with your brand before making a decision.
These touch points take place across a variety of channels. They might start by viewing your social media accounts, then see an ad for your product, then they visit your website and read a blog. Omnichannel makes sure the potential customer has a seamless experience across all of these channels.
Omnichannel can grow with your organization and evolve with the quickly-changing digital landscape. Not only is omnichannel helpful for reaching new customers, but they also expect it.
What is structured content?
Structured content is content that’s built up in a structured format, typically with semantic markup. Structured content can be managed down to the granular level, giving you lots of flexibility.
Structuring content enables you to reuse it in multiple ways. Instead of copying and pasting, you can reuse whatever piece of microcontent you need. Structured content is rich with metadata, which enables computers to “read” it and understand how to use the content.
How a headless CMS supports omnichannel
When implementing omnichannel, you’re putting your content on multiple channels. This can take a lot of time and effort. Using structured content cuts down on the time it takes to set up different channels.
This is where headless capabilities are so valuable.
Structured content is stored on a content management system or CMS. In a traditional CMS, the content and the experience are on the same system. You’re building your channel at the same time you’re building your content.
Take an app for example. Using a traditional model you will design, format, and build your app with the content as a part of it. Every app is effectively its own little CMS for the content it needs. When you want to update a button on your app, you will edit the app itself. And when you want to update your content, you’ll also have to edit this on the app itself.
With a headless CMS, the channel and the content are separated.
Your content is created and stored from inside the headless CMS and then deployed to your channel via APIs.
So when using a headless CMS for an app, your content is not built-in as a part of the app. It’s separate, so when you want to update it, it’s in the CMS.
What’s the benefit of this?
For one, you can easily change platforms without losing all your content. Let’s say you want to completely scrap your app and start from scratch with the design and functionality. With a headless CMS, your content is saved and ready to go when your new app is.
Next, it makes it easy to add new channels. Let’s say you want to add a chatbot to your website. With a headless CMS, all the content that you’ve already created for your app is ready to be published to your chatbot. And when you want to open up a new channel, all your content is ready for that one.
Finally, using a headless CMS makes updating content a snap. Rather than having to go into each application and program, you can simply update your content in the headless CMS and it will automatically update across all channels where you’ve published it. This means your content is always up to date and accurate.
This kind of functionality makes omnichannel a lot easier to manage.
How to get started
Interested in learning more about omnichannel or what a headless CMS can do for you? Take a look at these resources.
Read:
Omnichannel or Multi-Channel: What’s the Difference & Can We Use Them Both?
Omnichannel Helps You Treat Customers Like Real People
Watch:
Omnichannel Experiences Need Connected Content with Carrie Hane
Why We Bother to Map the Customer Journey with Noz Urbina
Learn how to cut documentation production time in half with structured content.
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