Custom CMS Development: 4 Content Management Trends To Consider 

As an enterprise grows, the volume of produced content also grows, requiring new technology tools to help handle the increasing business complexity. However,

Only 25% of enterprises have the right technology for managing content across their organizations.

Content Marketing Institute, Content Management & Strategy Survey

At Itransition, we believe that developing a custom CMS tailored to an enterprise’s needs and workflows is one of the best ways to address this challenge and optimize content management. This article covers the latest technology trends in content management, which may help an organization develop a more competitive and powerful CMS.

Headless Architecture

50% of organizations across all industries still use monolithic CMSs. However, 35% of enterprises choose a headless approach, and that figure increases each year.

Storyblok, State of Content Management 2022

Headless architecture implies a separation between the front-end and back-end during CMS development. A typical headless CMS represents a centralized repository for storing and managing corporate content and digital assets. Such systems usually do not have a user interface by default.

Instead, developers build and customize separate content delivery channels (such as websites or mobile apps) and connect a CMS to them via API interfaces. In practice, such an approach provides organizations with various business advantages. They include:

• Streamlined Content Management – With a headless CMS, employees no longer have to switch between multiple content management systems, each of which relates to a specific digital channel. Instead, employees may adapt and distribute content (such as service or product descriptions) to all channels via one software instance.
• More Effective Marketing – With a headless CMS, non-techies can make changes to the front end without the need to engage developers. For instance, marketers can use pre-built templates to create new landing pages and even websites within a few clicks. This way, they can quickly launch new services and product lines while being able to experiment and test new hypotheses continuously.
• Better SEO Rankings – Adopting a headless CMS enhances an organization’s SEO. Employees can customize the display format of URLs, adapting them to different search engines, which may result in higher search rankings. In addition, best-suited frameworks for the solution’s UI can help increase website loading speed, which may also improve SEO results.
• Improved User Experience (UX) – The headless CMS allows employees to manage the presentation layer without affecting the server side. In practice, the CMS enables teams to create and customize any element on their organizations’ web pages, be it buttons, images, or CTAs, and thus provide a more targeted and personalized customer experience.

Automation

Adopting the proper functionality in the custom CMS allows enterprises to automate routine and manual content management tasks. 

First, CMS developers should map all the enterprise’s workflows that involve creating, storing, publishing, and delivering content. Then decision-makers should define work processes that can be optimized with automation (such as publishing new landing pages) and determine those with the most significant business value.

Then, as one of the options, developers can implement technologies such as robotic process automation (RPA) and set up automated workflows operating by a set of predefined rules. As a result of such automation, an organization may dramatically increase work productivity and enable employees to focus on more strategic tasks.

Cloud

Despite all the benefits of a traditional on-premise hosting approach, such as greater control over the digital infrastructure, it may be too costly and inefficient for enterprise-wide content production. Besides, if an enterprise stores and processes large content volumes, it has to purchase more hardware and maintain a growing number of physical servers.

Developing a cloud-hosted CMS solution may quickly solve this challenge, as the cloud helps organizations scale up computing power on demand. In addition, developers can quickly deploy new content management functionality (in case the CMS is empowered with microservices architecture). This way, the cloud enables the CMS to scale vertically and horizontally, helping organizations ensure their software evolves with the business.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Today, it is hard not to notice the ever-growing role of AI and related technology like machine learning (ML) or natural language processing (NLP).

35% of organizations have already adopted AI, while 42% are considering implementing it.

IBM Global AI Adoption Index 2022

The custom CMS can benefit from AI implementation. First, the CMS is connected to various digital channels and thus accumulates customer data that may be useful for marketing purposes.

Second, with the help of AI, CMS software may analyze user behavior and demographics and then provide employees with recommendations for creating more engaging content. 

Alternatively, such insights may help create targeted advertising campaigns or build dynamic websites that tailor content to each user.

Among other things, in-built AI capabilities allow the CMS to provide such features as intelligent content analysis. So now, if a marketer needs to figure out that the tone of a new ad campaign matches a particular audience, it may analyze the campaign via the CMS. 

If the CMS is equipped with NLP, it may review the content and determine its language or style. Then the solution may suggest additional keywords (in case the content relates to a landing page) or provide recommendations for the campaign improvements, thereby ensuring its success.

Final Thoughts 

Enterprises aiming to grow, enhance their digital presence, and establish new customer interaction channels are bound to produce more content and struggle with content management complexity. Those who want to stay competitive and efficient in this business reality may think about developing custom CMS, a tailored solution for creating, editing, and publishing content.

To maximize the effectiveness of custom CMS development, we recommend that decision-makers acknowledge the latest content management trends before initiating a project. Headless architecture, automation, cloud hosting, and in-build artificial intelligence are just some of these trends.