Mastering composable content: An essential strategy for modern businesses

Composable content strategy is necessary for businesses that want to gain an edge over the competition by delivering exceptional experiences to their existing and potential new customers. 

Gartner first used the term “composable business” back in 2020. It also predicts that by 2024, 70% of large and medium organizations will consider composability a key success criterion.

Composability is a broad term, though. And there are many ways that businesses can go composable. These range from implementing composable platforms to developing composable software architecture throughout their applications to becoming composable businesses.

In this blog, we’ll explain how these differ. We’ll also define composable content strategy and cover its benefits for customers and internal teams. Then, we’ll share steps for creating a composable content strategy and tell you why implementing a composable digital experience (DXP) platform like Contentstack is critical to this strategy.

What is composable content?

Composable content is produced in reusable pieces and then displayed cohesively on user devices – from websites and native apps to smartwatches and virtual reality headsets. Composable content strategy involves organizing and structuring content to enable these various pieces to easily be combined and reused to deliver exceptional user experiences on any device or channel.

Structured content is where different content types are segmented. These include images, audio files, text, data, and other types of content.

Developers, marketers, content creators, and other applications and systems in your tech stack can all access and use this structured content. That’s because it’s stored in the cloud and connected via application programming interfaces (APIs).

What’s important to understand about composable content strategy is that it focuses on experiences rather than specific devices or channels. 

Composable content strategy vs. traditional content strategy

In traditional content strategy, a marketing team chooses a channel. Then, it works with the IT department to create, format, and publish content specifically for that channel. 

The problem is this old way of doing things requires separate content creation for each channel or device. When content is coded and optimized for a specific device screen, it usually can’t be reused for other channels. Separate content must be created for each channel. Then, when someone needs to make an update, they must make it for every separate channel and device. 

With customers using so many channels, this becomes a slow, time-consuming, and expensive process. And it doesn’t enable businesses to move fast enough to provide seamless experiences along the customer journey.

Four main problems of traditional platforms that composable content platforms solve

Composable content strategy solves four main challenges that traditional content strategy can’t address.

1. Content silos

Traditional content management systems (CMS) often produce scattered content across different platforms, causing duplication and inconsistency.

2. Inability to scale

As businesses grow, their content must adapt, making it challenging to scale with legacy content systems.

3. Multi-channel publishing 

Today's customers consume content on diverse devices and channels. A one-size-fits-all approach to content creation is no longer sufficient.

4. Complexity

Efficiently managing content across multiple channels and platforms requires skilled teams and considerable resources.

The benefits of embracing the composable content approach

A composable content approach can positively impact business growth and profitability by improving digital experiences for customers and employees, especially marketing and IT. Here is more on these benefits.

Benefits for customers

Embracing a composable content strategy positively impacts engagement and conversions by providing customers with:

Personalization

Composable content allows businesses to deliver targeted and relevant digital experiences tailored to individual customer preferences, improving user engagement.

Consistent Messaging

Because content for all channels and devices is created using modular blocks, customers benefit from a consistent brand voice and look across all digital channels. This ensures a smooth and cohesive customer experience.

Digital experiences (that keep up)

The adaptable nature of composable content enables businesses to respond quickly to changing customer expectations or market trends, keeping their digital experiences fresh and relevant.

Benefits for employees

A composable content strategy can help employees, especially marketers and IT teams, better achieve business objectives and have greater satisfaction in their work because of:

Enhanced content reusability and optimization

Structured content models enable creators to reuse and optimize content for various platforms, reducing the time and resources spent on content production while maximizing its reach.

Greater agility and speed to market

A composable architecture empowers businesses to innovate and respond to market needs faster. By embracing a composable approach, organizations can efficiently introduce new digital channels and capabilities without disrupting the existing content management systems.

Streamlined workflows for content teams

Composable content platforms make it easy for content teams to create, manage, and deliver content across different platforms. This leads to improved workflows, increased productivity, and more efficient collaboration among content creators.

Steps for implementing a composable content strategy 

1. Determine the role content plays in your business and how it’s delivered

 This involves input from stakeholders across the business who leverage content to achieve a goal and those who work to get content to your channels. Be sure to include marketers, designers, content editors, tech staff, and anyone else with valuable insights to share. This step may take more time for larger organizations.

2. List all the content types your business needs

Figure out how to best break down content into small, reusable pieces. Then, list all the different types of content your organization wants to leverage going forward. Include images, text, audio files, data (interest rates, for example, if you’re a financial institution), or objects like banners created from combinations of other content types. Remember that these components are not channel-locked but can be reused for customer touchpoints ranging from apps and social media channels to websites. Remember, when you transition to a composable platform, these components are stored and organized on the back end and then delivered to various channels on the front end via APIs. This ensures messaging is consistent yet personalized across multiple channels.

3. Create content models

This step is one of the most complex steps in the process and requires buy-in from developers on your IT team. They will need to create models that structure how various pieces of content and which pieces will be pulled together to create a good user experience on the presentation layer. This is regardless of the channel. For example, if a landing page needs to display a title, banner, cover image, text, and footer and include the right metadata, developers will create a model showing which content types need to be displayed to create the overall look and messaging that’s intended on the landing page. 

4. Connect your tech stack

Remember, content models can include data and content from other systems integrated with your composable platform. These include customer relationship management (CRM) systems, analytics software, product inventory management (PIM), or proprietary systems. This step involves integrating any systems that need to be added and ensuring the right systems can communicate with each other via APIs to provide the content identified in your content models.

Why a composable DXP is important in this strategy

As you can see, based on the steps we just covered, the composable DXP plays a crucial role when implementing a composable content strategy. 

Composable DXPs are a necessity for the strategy, according to Gartner: “Application leaders cannot meet market needs or business objectives with monolithic digital experience platforms and must update tech stacks, decompose monoliths, and deliver task-oriented capabilities. To future-proof the stack, a composable DXP must deliver composable user experiences.”

These cloud-based platforms organize and manage content in a way that makes it easy to access and reuse. They also connect software and systems in your tech stack, allowing them to communicate with each other. And because of the modular structure of DXPs, you can add to your tech stack or swap out software as often as needed.

What to look for in a DXP

Composable content platforms, or DXPs, have many features and capabilities that help businesses deliver great digital experiences. Look for the below when choosing a platform.

Structured Content

 A significant aspect of composable content is its focus on structured data models, allowing for better organization, discovery, and content reusability across channels.

Headless Architecture

Most composable CMS platforms are designed as headless systems, meaning they can seamlessly deliver content to any digital channel or experience through APIs (Application Programming Interfaces).

Collaboration Tools

These platforms often provide tools for better collaboration between content creators and developers, making it easier to create and deliver digital experiences that resonate with your target audience.

Personalization

Composable CMS platforms can easily integrate with data sources and analytics to provide in-depth insights that enable businesses to create personalized and relevant digital experiences.

How the Contentstack DXP is making impacts around the world

Contentstack offers the most complete, fully-automated composable DXP from headless CMS on the back end to framework-agnostic front end. And better still, the whole platform is simplified end-to-end to be easy to use with clicks, not code.

Case studies

Here are some case studies of how our platform is helping businesses around the globe.

Burberry

Burberry, a world-renowned British luxury fashion house headquartered in London, implemented Contentstack in an extensive digital transformation across various platforms. As a result, it saw an 80% increase in publishing speed and enhanced landing page design and style flexibility. Read the case study, "Burberry chooses headless CMS to enable speed and agility," for more details.

MTR Corporation

MTR Corporation, the operator of the most popular public transit network in Hong Kong, implemented Contentstack’s DXP to deliver a unified experience to the millions of customers who ride their transit network and shop in their malls daily. Read about the entire case study, "MTR delivers rail riders an enhanced omnichannel experience," for more details.

Dawn Foods

Dawn Foods, a global bakery manufacturer and ingredients supplier based in Jackson, Michigan, chose Contentstack when it wanted to add an online option, giving its retail bakery customers access to its extensive product catalog. After implementation, its online ordering site was 80% faster than other sites. Its marketing team was also empowered to create, review, and publish personalized omnichannel experiences without developer assistance or coding experience. Read the entire case study, "Dawn Foods finds recipe for online success," for more details.

K2 Sports

K2 Sports, an American company known for its skis and snowboards, created websites 75% faster and published content 90% faster after implementing Contentstack. Read the case study, "K2 Sports creates websites 75% faster with a headless CMS," for more details.

How composable platforms fit into the larger world of composable 

The word “composable” seems to be everywhere these days. So, how do composable content platforms like the Contentstack DXP fit into the broader composable world? 

Composable content platforms provide a straightforward way for businesses to begin their journey into composability. These platforms have a composable architecture that allows each organization to customize the tools in its tech stack to integrate with the platform. They can also choose how and when to do it – gradually over time. Composability future-proofs the business by making it simple to swap out and add new solutions as technology evolves.

Some organizations may implement these platforms strictly to focus on composable content strategy, but others may aim to become composable businesses. 

A composable business has built a composable architecture for its business systems and not necessarily just its composable content platform. But that’s not to say that the composable content platform doesn’t still play a critical role in making the business composable. 

Unlike legacy applications that must be replaced over time, a composable business builds its systems and software with flexible, reusable components. Composable software development makes it easy to reuse existing components and use them to build brand-new ones. This strategy promotes flexibility and helps businesses scale faster since new applications don’t have to be built from scratch, which is both time-consuming and expensive.

Leverage composable content for enhanced digital experiences

By adopting a composable content approach, businesses can enhance digital experiences, improve customer engagement, and drive more conversions. Don't miss out on the opportunity to leverage the power of composable content today. Take your digital experience to the next level with composable content. 

Contact us now to learn how our composable DXP can help you deliver personalized, scalable, and efficient digital experiences.

About Contentstack & AWS

Contentstack deployed on Amazon Web Services (AWS) allows customers to harness the full power of cloud through industry leading AWS security and scalability paired with pre-built AWS integrations and extensions - making it easier than ever to implement and manage composable digital experiences at scale. Our recent addition of Amazon Bedrock enables Contentstack users to supercharge their digital experiences by leveraging advanced AI models from Amazon, Anthropic, and AI21 Labs, along with unlocking a host of new generative AI capabilities within Contentstack.