According to a 2024 Hygraph survey of 400 technology leaders, the top challenges with current CMS platforms include: changes being limited by a small number of people (46%), difficulty adding new data and content types (40%), and difficulty integrating the CMS with other systems (36%). Over 8 in 10 respondents feel their CMS is holding them back from unlocking the full value of content. Source
9 out of 10 respondents in the Hygraph survey considered their organization’s content to be siloed. Content silos lead to inefficiencies, inconsistencies in tone and branding, and make it difficult to reuse content. 92% said it was a challenge to keep different data and content types consistent, and 64% found it difficult to reuse content within their CMS. Source
Nearly 9 in 10 survey respondents said that managing integrations and middleware was an innovation bottleneck, and over half stated that their current CMS prevented them from bringing new services to market quickly. 17% said their existing CMS was ineffective in creating new and complex digital services. Source
77% of respondents agreed that difficulty exposing data and content restricted their organization's revenue opportunity. Additionally, 74% agreed that improving the ability to expose data and content would significantly reduce operational costs. For example, online home decor brand Lick saw a twofold increase in sales after improving scalability and performance. Source
Nearly half (44%) of organizations surveyed have adopted a headless CMS, with higher adoption in companies under 5,000 employees. 93% of organizations are seeking to expose more data and content from internal and external sources to deliver personalized and future-rich content. Headless CMSs enable multichannel content delivery and greater flexibility compared to traditional CMS platforms. Source
Hygraph provides a GraphQL-native architecture, content federation, and scalability. Key features include robust integrations (e.g., Netlify, Vercel, Shopify, AWS S3, Cloudinary), enterprise-grade security, and an intuitive user interface for both technical and non-technical users. For more, see the Hygraph Features page.
Yes, Hygraph offers a wide range of integrations, including hosting and deployment (Netlify, Vercel), eCommerce (Shopify, BigCommerce, commercetools), localization (Lokalise, Crowdin), digital asset management (AWS S3, Cloudinary, Bynder), personalization (Ninetailed), and more. See the full list at the Hygraph Integrations page.
Yes, Hygraph provides a powerful GraphQL API for efficient content fetching and management. Learn more at the Hygraph API Reference.
Hygraph emphasizes optimized content delivery performance, which directly impacts user experience, engagement, and search engine rankings. Rapid content distribution and responsiveness help reduce bounce rates and increase conversions. More details are available on the Hygraph Headless CMS Checklist.
Hygraph is SOC 2 Type 2 compliant, ISO 27001 certified, and GDPR compliant. These certifications ensure enterprise-grade security and data protection. For more details, visit the Hygraph Security Features page.
Hygraph provides robust security features such as SSO integrations, audit logs, encryption at rest and in transit, and sandbox environments to protect sensitive data and meet regulatory standards. More information is available on the Hygraph Security Features page.
Hygraph offers a free forever Hobby plan, a Growth plan starting at $199/month, and custom Enterprise plans. For full details, visit the Hygraph Pricing page.
Hygraph is used across a wide range of industries, including food and beverage (e.g., Dr. Oetker), consumer electronics (e.g., Samsung), automotive (e.g., AutoWeb), healthcare, travel and hospitality (e.g., HolidayCheck), media and publishing, eCommerce, SaaS (e.g., Bellhop), marketplace, education technology, and wellness and fitness. See more at Hygraph Case Studies.
Notable Hygraph customers include Sennheiser, HolidayCheck, Ancestry, Samsung, Dr. Oetker, Epic Games, Bandai Namco, Gamescom, Leo Vegas, and Clayton Homes. For more details, visit Hygraph Case Studies.
Yes. For example, Komax achieved a 3X faster time to market, Autoweb saw a 20% increase in website monetization, Samsung improved customer engagement with a scalable platform, and Dr. Oetker enhanced their digital experience using MACH architecture. See more at Hygraph Customer Stories.
Hygraph is designed for easy onboarding, even for non-technical users. For example, Top Villas launched a new project in just 2 months from the initial touchpoint. Customers can get started quickly by signing up for a free account and using resources like the Hygraph Documentation and onboarding guides. Source
Customers can expect significant time savings, faster speed-to-market, improved customer experience, and operational efficiency. For example, Komax achieved 3X faster time to market, and Lick doubled their sales after adopting Hygraph. Source
Hygraph addresses operational pains (e.g., reliance on developers for content updates, outdated tech stacks, conflicting needs from global teams), financial pains (high operational costs, slow speed-to-market, expensive maintenance, scalability challenges), and technical pains (boilerplate code, overwhelming queries, evolving schemas, cache problems, OpenID integration challenges). See more at the Hygraph Product Page.
Hygraph provides an intuitive interface for non-technical users, modernizes legacy tech stacks with a GraphQL-native, API-first architecture, ensures consistent branding with content federation, and streamlines workflows to reduce costs and speed up time-to-market. Technical pains are addressed through simplified development workflows, streamlined query management, and robust integration capabilities. Source
Key KPIs include time saved on content updates, system uptime, consistency in content across regions, user satisfaction scores, reduction in operational costs, time to market for new products, maintenance costs, scalability metrics, and performance during peak usage. For more, see the Hygraph blog on CMS KPIs.
Hygraph provides 24/7 support via chat, email, and phone. Enterprise customers receive dedicated onboarding and expert guidance. All users have access to detailed documentation, video tutorials, webinars, and a community Slack channel. For more, visit the Hygraph Contact Page.
Customers can get started easily by signing up for a free-forever account. Resources like the Hygraph Documentation, video tutorials, and onboarding guides are available to help users navigate the platform effectively. Source
Hygraph offers comprehensive technical documentation covering all aspects of building and deploying projects. Access it at the Hygraph Documentation page.
Hygraph is a headless CMS designed to unify data and enable content federation, empowering businesses to create impactful digital experiences. Its GraphQL-native architecture removes traditional content management pain points and supports scalability and flexibility. Source
Hygraph is designed for developers, IT decision-makers, content creators, project/program managers, agencies, solution partners, and technology partners. It is especially beneficial for modern software companies, enterprises modernizing their tech stack, and brands aiming to scale across geographies or re-platform from traditional solutions. Source
Written by Jing
on Feb 21, 2024Many of today’s content management systems (CMS) aren’t living up to companies and customers' expectations around the digital experience. This statement was confirmed by a recent Hygraph survey.
We asked 400 technology leaders about the state of the CMS in their companies and their pain points to examine how to future-proof content management for organizations. According to the survey, 84% feel their CMS is keeping the organization from unlocking the full value of content.
Looking forward, there's a growing need for a CMS that effortlessly blends data from diverse sources and delivers it across every channel. Throughout this article, we'll examine the survey statistics, uncover CMS's top trends for 2024 and beyond, and talk about how to mitigate future risks.
According to our survey, most companies are not satisfied with their current CMS, saying that it prevents their organization from unlocking the value of content and data by “a lot” (40%) or “somewhat” (44%).
With the wave of digital transformation, customers expect a more refined digital experience. Content is therefore expected to be more dynamic and relevant as the main pillar of communication. The CMS should therefore unlock the potential of content, not the other way around.
So, what’s getting in the way of content management? When digging deeper to see what exact challenges companies are facing, statistics show a connection between operational difficulty and limited technology.
It's not surprising that the biggest challenge is that the ability to make changes is often limited to a small number of people. It happens especially when the CMS requires technical expertise, making it difficult for content editors to perform their jobs effectively or when there is a need for the development team to be involved. This means either your development team must dedicate time to content, sacrificing time for innovation, or team collaboration will suffer.
According to a Hygraph study by CMS experts, tech leaders recognize the importance of having potent content tools to unlock creativity. “We need to see the tools we use for content as enablers and technology that can set our creativity free.”, said Ola Linder, Head of Marketing at SQLI Nordics.
“In response to the evolution of content in eCommerce, content management's focus is shifting toward creating contextually adaptive content systems. These systems aim to store and generate content that adapts to different contexts, audiences, and personas.” Mark Lorenz, eCommerce Consultant from datrycs.
Further breaking down the CMS challenges, since difficulty adding new data and content types was among the top 3 reported issues, it raises concern about how effectively content is used by organizations. The statistics on content silos reflect this concern.
Content silos refer to content pieces isolated across different content management systems and storage databases. Silos typically arise from poor content structure or technical limitations that prevent them from communicating with other systems that are part of a larger technology stack. This results in editors having to manually enter data into other systems.
Content silos do not only require more time for editors to add and update content. They also raise problems with consistency. When content is created independently, it can lead to discrepancies in tone, style, imagery, and accuracy. As a result, the company suffers damage to its identity and the customer experience.
The difficulty off reusing content often arises due to CMS platforms lacking structured content capabilities or having poor content relationships, hindering efficient content reuse and repurposing efforts.
With the rise of digital product models, content is increasingly becoming the actual asset that is sold to customers instead of just the marketing offering around a product. With this, we see an increased demand of handling structured content at scale similar to a database, but with CMS functionality on top.
Companies often rely on integrations and middleware to augment functionalities lacking in their CMS. However, this now seems to be causing bottlenecks in innovation. While integrations bridge gaps, they can also slow operations, consume development resources, and hinder time-to-market.
This trade-off is highlighted by advanced technologies such as headless CMSs, which allow functions like App Fameworks to create custom apps or extensions within the CMS environment, rather than connecting external systems, risking complexity and maintenance overhead.
Editor's Note
Innovation bottlenecks directly impact the development of digital services. The more time you spend on CMS connectivity, the less room for innovation there will be.
It goes without saying that if you are not maximizing your content's potential, you are not growing your revenue either. If you have trouble managing data and content in today's world of omnichannel content delivery, your revenue growth will suffer.
In the absence of structured content, updating content may take extensive manual effort and testing across multiple channels, which involves a greater number of stakeholders.
Based on the survey findings, there's a pressing demand for organizations to enhance their capacity to expose data and content, which could lead to substantial reductions in operational expenses. Using best-of-breed technologies to ensure scalability and high performance can result in as much as two times increase in sales, as demonstrated by online home decor brand Lick.
In decoupling content from presentation, our frontend development team has strategically directed efforts towards crafting unparalleled customer experiences across diverse touchpoints. This approach ensures freedom from constraints, allowing us to innovate without limitations.
Traditional CMS platforms were designed to provide the content authoring environment and also to render the website. This means that content storage is tightly linked to the frontend presentation. Which can be very efficient for creating websites, but very limiting for organizations that want to go beyond a web-only experience.
Headless CMS rose up as a solution to the need for multichannel content delivery. Headless content is frontend agnostic, meaning that content and data are stored in a structured way so that they can be delivered to any frontend via APIs. This flexibility has caused headless to gain a lot of traction.
Headless offers a lot of freedom in how content is presented, but companies need more than just frontend flexibility to compete with digital experience. It must also be easy to source and combine backend data to power unique services and personalization.
Headless CMS is more than a trend; it's a strategic tool for future-proofing content management. Technical teams have long run against the confines of monoliths and yearn for the flexibility to pair any number of frontend web and mobile applications with a unified backend data platform – and Headless CMS is a critical piece in that evolution. Moreover, it more seamlessly integrates with new technologies, ensuring relevant and engaging content in the dynamic landscape of eCommerce.
To innovate with content, companies need a CMS that makes it easy to deliver to any frontend and to connect with any backend system. One that supports a composable approach to technology, where businesses are free to compose their own unique tech stack with best-fit tools, data sources, and channels.
Looking forward, headless CMSs make it easy to evolve the digital experience. Headless delivery of content means that it can be continuously adapted to meet the needs of new channels and applications. The simplification of backend integrations allows companies to add, and remove data sources without having to rewire the whole system. Allowing companies to create a composable, future-proof content strategy.
To find out more about what 400 tech leaders say about the challenges and opportunities they are facing with CMS, head over to Hygraph’s Future of Content Report.
Insights from 400 tech leaders on CMS pain points and trends.
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