Marketers often end up having to depend on developers. Some CMS for marketers offer little flexibility, which drives them to be more dependent on developers, while some marketers need help when they have thought of something new to be done with their campaigns. Now with new JavaScript front ends delivering great digital experiences, the dependence is even more, as headless CMSs see more adoption in enterprises.
But with all this waiting around for developers to help bring their ideas to life, marketers loose precious momentum on campaign launches.
So the question is, should marketers not be able to unleash their creativity without seeking the help of developers?
Yes, it's now time to enable both marketers and developers to do their jobs best without them getting in each other's way. Welcome to EzContent, a Drupal distribution that actually solves these challenges, out of the box!
Let's explore how EzContent addresses the CMS needs of marketers, and helps them launch campaigns faster, independent of developers.
Marketers Need Content in all its Glory
Marketers like to be data driven. But that doesn't mean that a CMS must treat all content as data. Often new CMSs that are front-end oriented and enable use of JavaScript technologies, end up doing that. In most such headless CMSs, content gets pared down to being viewed as data to be added to the code. It makes things much simpler for developers.
But content is life, for marketers! Their campaigns depend on it. Content has context, it is how a buyer or customer journey is built. Content needs to be compliant. It needs to capture data on its consumption, and lend itself to analytics. Content needs to be collaborated on. Its creation, reviews and approval processes need to be defined and managed with automation.
Content is why an end user is showing up at the website in the first place. While JavaScript technologies are meant to deliver an exceptional end user experience, how can any enterprise begin to deliver it without a rich approach to content?
This is why EzContent is the CMS that supports headless in a high-integrity manner: enabling marketers as well as developers to do what they do best!
Marketers Need Freedom to Build Layouts
Headless CMSs available in the market today, in their zeal to make things really snazzy for developers, decided to do away with some of the features marketers and content creators have been used to, for long: the layout builder and in-context editing. Developers might love their JSONs and APIs, but marketers need their font formatting, line wrapping and proper fields where they can play around with how the content looks, across channels.
This is why enterprises decide to go on component based approaches, so they can build out a library of components that their content creators like marketers could make use of, without putting the brand guidelines in any danger.
Marketers need layout builders, a library of components and ability to make tweaks at various levels. They want to be able to tweak layouts without hampering machine readability of their text. For example consider these images:
A marketer's ability to create hero banners with any sort of background, image composition, and text alignments and placements can change the way a web page looks and hence help them create the impact they are looking for in their campaign. The examples shown usually require the marketer to seek the help of a graphic designer to create an image. But then the image loses its machine readability, and hence marketers require the text to be in, well text format, not images.
Headless CMSs, so far, have taken this ability away from marketers, making them depend on developers for every page they need created, and every change in it they need. Is this the best use of brilliant developers, enterprises CMS teams must ask themselves. And is it the best way to ensure markets are able to do their jobs?
It is inefficient, ineffective and unproductive.
EzContent has been built with marketers and content creators in mind, while enabling support for JS technologies. Marketers must have the freedom to do their own layouts, using WYSIWYG interfaces. They must be able to do this with minimal code intervention.
That's when they can launch campaigns as soon as their plan is ready. Not be dependent on the dev team to build out the layouts.
Marketers Need to Preview Layouts (without knowing JS)
A big disservice that is being done to marketers and content creators with a headless CMS is the inability to preview layouts on the fly. Any change done to a layout at the backend, needs to be previewed so the marketer knows that the design is shaping up the right way, without errors and inconsistencies. But to do that, the marketer needs to work with the developer or be a developer herself. While it is great for a marketer to have some coding skills, it is not their job to code a page by themselves from scratch.
So is it possible to build your own layouts and yet get to preview them instantly in whatever JavaScript tech is running on the frontend? Along with the right URL? Without a developer's intervention?
EzContent makes this possible. And marketers had better believe it.
EzContent works with GatsbyJS, NextJS, AngularJS, ReactJS out of the box. More JS tech will be covered in the near future.
To marketers, it's magic. For us it's simply a way for CMS to work for the marketer!
Marketers Need SEO Power; It's a Non-negotiable!
Marketers had all the SEO power they needed when they worked with a monolithic CMS. The backend had enough fields to get them to write the right meta descriptions, titles and image Alt-text, etc. Once the CMS became headless, the power of SEO has all but vanished as the frontend and backend work in a disconnected manner.
Not so with EzContent, which is based on Drupal with powerful SEO modules as part of it. And because EzContent works seamlessly with your front-end JavaScript tech, the search engine optimizations you do for the page, continue to work. EzContent provides a range of approaches to enable search SEO, including flexible fields, built-in metatags, easy URL changes and Schema.org usage.
No need to let go of SEO, just because the CMS setup is headless!
Why EzContent Works in a Headless Setup
Why should anyone believe that EzContent will work in a headless or decoupled environment? Why is it any different from other headless CMSs already available?
Here's the reason for it. EzContent is a Drupal distribution. And if you are tracking Drupal developments, especially the keynotes by Dries Buytaert in recent years, you'd know the aspiration for Drupal is to become the best decoupled CMS in the near future. Over the years, Drupal's stated objectives have been to become easily decoupled and be API-first, so as to enable developers to bring in the JavaScript tech of their choice. But certainly not at the cost of making lives miserable for marketers and content creators. Drupal wants to ensure that the non-developer experience with a decoupled scenario when Drupal is used as the backend should be great as well. And Drupal has been making strides towards that. EzContent simply takes that to the next level by enabling JS integrations out of the box and building in features that make the life of marketers easier.
There's no running away from a JavaScript driven frontend web world. But there's no running away from making it work for marketers as well—that is EzContent's build philosophy. And that's exactly what the future is. Marketers making the most of headless CMSs to build campaigns and content to deliver the best of digital experiences for their customers and prospects.
Well, we've talked about how EzContent can make your life easier. Now how about we show it to you too?
