90% of enterprise organizations not currently using headless plan to evaluate these solutions over the next 12 months.
Today, businesses of all sizes face a two-pronged challenge that stands between them and continued growth: the need to meet high customer expectations online while navigating an expanding ecosystem of emerging technologies.
For large enterprise businesses, this challenge is often compounded by cumbersome legacy web infrastructures and the inevitable difficulties that arise when forced to move quickly.
Traditionally, a content management system (CMS) that provides both robust functionality and a simplified user experience has proven valuable in meeting digital experience needs.
Increasingly, however, enterprises, and particularly those who need to deliver a multi or omnichannel experience, are taking that content delivery model to an entirely new level. They are doing this by implementing headless web architecture across their digital properties. In doing so, many of these businesses are saving time and money while increasing agility, performance and realizing higher ROI.
Delivering a Superior Digital Experience With Headless Technology
Businesses have grappled with the need to provide online audiences with engaging user experiences that are seamlessly fast, deeply intuitive, and visually appealing. While various trends and technologies have fulfilled this need over the years, few have had the impact or hold the potential to shape the future the way headless does.
A new report by WP Engine explores the state of headless adoption among enterprise organizations while highlighting the way businesses are using headless to create powerful digital experiences.
The report found that headless is now well-entrenched within the majority of enterprise organizations.
64% of enterprise organizations currently use a headless approach, representing a nearly 25% increase from 2019. Among enterprise organizations not currently using headless, more than 90% plan to evaluate headless solutions over the next 12 months — up 15% from 2019.
Enterprises increasingly see a direct link between digital experiences and the overall success of their business. 92% of respondents see the importance of digital experiences in terms of their organization’s success.
Headless technologies are viewed as the most effective solution for delivering powerful digital experiences. 92% of respondents say implementing headless technologies makes it easier for organizations to deliver a consistent content experience.
Although headless is currently taking the enterprises by storm, this type of web architecture is by no means a new phenomenon among large-scale organizations.
Based on WP Engine’s research examining the use of multiCMS, WordPress, and headless in the enterprise, more than half (53%) of enterprise organizations were already using headless architecture to power their digital experiences in 2019, when the study was conducted.
Less than two years later, that number has jumped to 64%, reflecting an enthusiastic embrace of headless within the enterprise and an ongoing, upward trajectory that alludes to the all-out dominance of this type of web architecture in the coming years.
What is behind this meteoric rise in headless adoption? The pivot to a digital-first world due to the COVID-19 pandemic has undoubtedly played a role — a heavier reliance on technology may have even accelerated headless adoption for some.
But when it comes to digital experiences, the pandemic has mainly accelerated trends that were already there: the demand for fast-loading, responsive websites, the need for highly accurate personalization, and the ability to offer consumers a seamless omnichannel user journey.
As those (and other) trends have come to the fore, organizations are clearly making positive associations between the quality of their digital experiences and how well their organization performs, with 92% of survey respondents agreeing that the digital experiences they build are directly tied to their organization’s success.
Because headless approaches offer the most effective way for organizations to meet the growing demands of online audiences and build tomorrow’s digital experiences, it is unsurprising that this technology is experiencing such widespread adoption across the enterprise and beyond.
The Headless Tech Experience
As enterprise adoption of headless has increased, so too have the benefits associated with headless architecture. The following section details the benefits survey respondents have seen after implementing a headless approach, the benefits they view as most important, and the challenges they still face during and after adoption.
Headless is overwhelmingly viewed as the best way to optimize digital experiences. The headless architecture allows organizations to attain a level of speed, security, and flexibility across their digital properties that is light years beyond traditional CMS use.
Headless Adoption Trends
Additionally, the heightened ability of headless solutions to deliver dynamic content across digital touchpoints makes headless a powerful, attractive option for large-scale businesses with complex digital needs. As these organizations increasingly focus on the importance of digital experiences and the impact they have on their business, it is not particularly surprising that the vast majority (92%) of survey respondents agree that headless technologies and the ability to deliver a consistent content experience go hand in hand.
Interestingly, respondents also gave nearly even weight to the benefits they looked to headless solutions for, including:
- Better overall performance/faster page load times (29%)
- Faster time to market with digital experiences (28%)
- The delivery of omnichannel experiences (27%)
- Faster time to innovation (26%)
- Faster time to value (26%), and
- The delivery of a consistent, seamlessly connected experience across all digital touchpoints (26%).
All of these benefits represent the promise of headless architecture. Organizations have and are clearly willing to make a significant investment in headless. On average, respondents’ organizations spent $2.6 million on the implementation of headless architecture, a number that is likely to grow as more adopters — and vendors — enter the headless space.
This eagerness to invest in headless, while encouraging, also speaks to the need for headless solutions to deliver on the promise of faster, more powerful digital experiences and streamlined agile workflows. With higher investment comes the challenge of higher ROI, and only through well-designed, optimized headless solutions will higher ROI be truly attainable.
The Future of Headless CMS
Headless is undoubtedly here. With the rapid rise in enterprise adoption from 2019 (53%) to 2021 (64%), it is likely to become the industry standard for large-scale organizations focused on building and maintaining a powerful, connected digital footprint.
That is because enterprise organizations see a clear, direct link between digital experiences and the overall success of their business — 92% of respondents tie the importance of digital experiences to their organization’s success.
And when it comes to delivering those digital experiences at scale, headless implementations are viewed as the most effective solution — another 92% of respondents say implementing headless architecture makes it easier for organizations to deliver a consistent content experience.
With more than 90% of non-headless users planning to evaluate these solutions over the next 12 months, a growing number of organizational leaders and IT decision-makers will be faced with crucial choices surrounding their own headless adoption strategies and the frameworks, features, and tools their headless solutions rely on.