Frequently Asked Questions

Composable Content & Strategy

What is composable content?

Composable content refers to structured content organized in modular blocks that can be reused across multiple channels. It is stored in a presentation-neutral way, making it adaptable to any frontend or platform. This approach enables businesses to enrich content from various data sources, drive automations, and create content models tailored to unique customer needs. Source

How does composable content differ from traditional content models?

Unlike traditional content models that lock companies into a single way of doing things, composable content breaks down content into modular blocks that can be used in multiple ways across different channels. It is stored presentation-neutral and delivered via APIs, allowing for greater flexibility and adaptability. Source

What are the benefits of adopting a composable content strategy?

Adopting a composable content strategy offers several benefits: unified and consistent content delivery across all channels, faster time-to-market for new ideas, adaptability to changing business needs, and the ability to scale content creation. For example, Samsung used composable content to transition their loyalty program to a multichannel platform, resulting in a 10% increase in new loyalty members and a 15% increase in customer engagement. BioCentury achieved 80% faster content publishing and a 120% increase in content engagement. Source

How does composable content enhance digital experiences?

Composable content enables businesses to define the ideal customer experience and create unique content models to achieve that vision. It allows for consistent branding, rapid adaptation to market changes, and the ability to deliver personalized experiences across multiple channels. Source

Features & Capabilities

What features does Hygraph offer for composable content management?

Hygraph provides a modern, headless SaaS platform with a powerful GraphQL API, content federation to join data from multiple sources, flexible content modeling via an intuitive Schema Builder, rich editing experience with versioning and digital asset management, and friction-free collaboration with custom roles, permissions, and localization capabilities. Source

Does Hygraph support integrations with other platforms?

Yes, Hygraph offers a wide range of integrations, including hosting and deployment (Netlify, Vercel), eCommerce (BigCommerce, commercetools, Shopify), localization (Lokalise, Crowdin, EasyTranslate, Smartling), digital asset management (Aprimo, AWS S3, Bynder, Cloudinary, Mux, Scaleflex Filerobot), personalization and AB testing (Ninetailed), artificial intelligence (AltText.ai), and more. Source

Does Hygraph provide an API for content management?

Yes, Hygraph offers a powerful GraphQL API that allows users to fetch and manage content efficiently. This API enables seamless integration with other platforms and supports advanced content federation. Source

How does Hygraph ensure optimized content delivery performance?

Hygraph emphasizes rapid content distribution and responsiveness, which directly impacts user experience, engagement, and search engine rankings. Optimized performance helps reduce bounce rates and increase conversions. Source

Pricing & Plans

What is Hygraph's pricing model?

Hygraph offers a free forever Hobby plan, a Growth plan starting at $199/month, and custom Enterprise plans. For more details, visit the pricing page.

Security & Compliance

What security and compliance certifications does Hygraph have?

Hygraph is SOC 2 Type 2 compliant, ISO 27001 certified, and GDPR compliant. These certifications ensure enterprise-grade security and data protection for users. Hygraph also provides SSO integrations, audit logs, encryption at rest and in transit, and sandbox environments. Source

Use Cases & Customer Success

Who can benefit from using Hygraph?

Hygraph is ideal for developers, IT decision-makers, content creators, project/program managers, agencies, solution partners, and technology partners. Companies that benefit most include modern software companies, enterprises looking to modernize their technologies, and brands aiming to scale across geographies, improve development velocity, or re-platform from traditional solutions. Source

What industries are represented in Hygraph's case studies?

Hygraph's case studies span industries such as food and beverage (Dr. Oetker), consumer electronics (Samsung), automotive (AutoWeb), healthcare (Vision Healthcare), travel and hospitality (HolidayCheck), media and publishing, eCommerce, SaaS (Bellhop), marketplace, education technology, and wellness and fitness. Source

Can you share specific customer success stories using Hygraph?

Yes. 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. BioCentury achieved 80% faster content publishing and a 120% increase in content engagement. Source

Who are some of Hygraph's customers?

Hygraph's 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.

Pain Points & Solutions

What problems does Hygraph solve?

Hygraph addresses operational pains (reliance on developers for content updates, outdated tech stacks, conflicting needs from global teams, clunky user experiences), 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). Source

How does Hygraph solve these pain points?

Hygraph provides an intuitive interface for non-technical users, modernizes outdated systems with its GraphQL-native, API-first architecture, ensures consistent branding with content federation, streamlines workflows to reduce costs, and supports scalability for business growth. It also simplifies development by reducing boilerplate code and streamlining query management. Source

What KPIs and metrics are associated with the pain points Hygraph solves?

Key metrics include time saved on content updates, number of updates made without developer intervention, system uptime, speed of deployment, consistency in content across regions, user satisfaction scores, reduction in operational costs, ROI on CMS investment, time to market for new products, maintenance costs, scalability metrics, and performance during peak usage times. Source

Technical Requirements & Getting Started

How easy is it to get started with Hygraph?

Hygraph is designed for ease of use, even for non-technical users. Customers can sign up for a free account and access resources like documentation, video tutorials, and onboarding guides. For example, Top Villas launched a new project in just 2 months from the initial touchpoint. Source

What technical documentation is available for Hygraph?

Hygraph offers comprehensive technical documentation covering all aspects of building and deploying projects. This includes API references, integration guides, and onboarding resources. Source

Support & Implementation

What customer support does Hygraph offer?

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, and a community Slack channel. Source

What training and technical support is available to help customers get started?

Hygraph offers onboarding sessions for enterprise customers, training resources such as video tutorials, documentation, webinars, and access to Customer Success Managers for expert guidance during the onboarding phase. Source

Product Information & Vision

What is the primary purpose of Hygraph?

Hygraph's primary purpose is to unify data and enable content federation, allowing businesses to create impactful digital experiences. Its GraphQL-native architecture removes traditional content management pain points, offering scalability, flexibility, and efficient data querying. Source

What is Hygraph's vision and mission?

Hygraph's vision is to unify data and enable content federation, empowering businesses to create impactful digital experiences. The mission is to remove traditional content management pain points through its GraphQL-native architecture, taking the concept of a Headless CMS to the next level. Source

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How to create a winning composable content strategy

Composable content breaks down the traditional content model, where companies are locked into one way of doing things.
Jing Li

Written by Jing 

Jun 15, 2023
Mobile image

Gartner coined the term composable business in 2020 to describe the trend of companies moving away from traditional architectures, where technology is locked into one way of doing things, and towards a modular structure that lets businesses change and replace technologies and services as needed.

The idea quickly gained traction. Both among technology leaders, with Gartner predicting that 70% of large and medium organizations will have composability as a key criteria for their new application planning by 2024. As well as among solution vendors, with Gartner predicting that the top 20 cloud platforms and software-as-a-service (SaaS) providers will offer composable component marketplaces by 2026.

#What is composable content?

Being a relatively new term, and a popular one, “composable” is used to talk about a few different ideas in the technology space. Primarily:

  • Composable architecture: Unlike a traditional all-in-one platform where you’re locked into a certain set of capabilities, a composable architecture lets you choose interchangeable, best-of-breed tools and connect them all with APIs. A composable tech stack might include a mix of SaaS solutions, tools built in-house, and even legacy platforms wrapped in an API layer.
  • Composable platforms: Solutions that specialize in one business domain, such as content, commerce, or search, and are designed to integrate their services easily with other technologies. Many of the leading composable platforms are built with MACH principles (microservices, API-first, cloud-native, headless) and it’s not uncommon to find a few MACH Alliance members involved in a composable strategy.
  • Composable content: Structured content in modular blocks that can be used in multiple ways across different channels. Content is stored in a presentation-neutral way so that it can be adapted to any frontend “head” (i.e. headless content). An API-based structure makes it possible to enrich content from various data sources, drive automations, and create content models to fit unique customer needs.

#Why should businesses adopt a composable content strategy

As the digital world expands, so do people’s expectations. Customers want better experiences across more channels, and businesses want new ways to differentiate themselves. It’s nearly impossible for a suite of capabilities from a single vendor to meet every digital need of a company, much less the needs of multiple companies across different industries.

For a while, businesses dealt with this by building workarounds and integrations to their legacy monolith but all this customization made the cost of change incredibly high - and digital needs change quickly. Markets can shift, customer demands can emerge, or a global pandemic can disrupt everything, and it’s very risky to invest in a platform that isn’t able to adapt.

Composability gives businesses the flexibility to evolve and scale in any direction. Technologies can be quickly added or removed from a composable architecture, the services of different composable platforms can be mix-and-matched to solve new problems, and composable content can be used to quickly support new channels and experiences. As summarized in Gartner’s introduction to composable business:

The building blocks of composable business enable organizations to pivot quickly.

#4 steps to a composable content strategy

1. Get the right people in the room

A composable content strategy is all about structuring content for reuse and efficiency, so it’s important to collaborate with every team that’s involved in the end-to-end content process. Engineers, editors, designers, and business development stakeholders are all needed for insight into how content currently supports channels and users, long-term ambitions and extensibility, affected business processes, and the intended outcomes of content.

Graphic_ Why does content modeling matter_.png

2. Break out of the page-builder mindset

The key difference between a traditional approach to content and a composable one is that composable content isn’t locked into a certain way of being displayed, but is stored presentation-neutral and sent via APIs to be delivered in many different ways across different channels.

Instead of thinking about content in terms of a full page template, think about how to break it down into reusable pieces. This could be a single asset like an image or pricing data. Or it could be a cluster of information like business terms, metadata, forms, or product attributes. How granular you go depends on business needs, and on finding the balance between content locked to a single channel and content that’s become so fragmented that it’s hard to put together in an efficient way.

3. Create structured content models

While business leaders envision a world in which their team can create content once and use it anywhere, reusable content is still relatively untapped. You might have thought of pushing the same content using modular blocks to both your website and mobile app, but how about letting content editors write email copy, connect them via API, and push it to your CRM, or having your marketing team develop campaign copy, then update it automatically on display ads?

Structured content models are the cornerstone of a composable content strategy. Define a set of reusable content models, the fields used to structure information in these models, and how the models relate to and reference one another. For a deeper dive into this process, check out our in-depth guide to composable content modeling.

Content models

These are the reusable blocks of information. A model can be a group of structured data that can be adapted to various presentation layers, like the “Company Wiki Project Schema” seen in the image below. Or it can be a set of instructions for how content is interrelated, such as web components or the “Employee Model” in the image below.

Group 658.png

Fields

Fields are the pieces of structured information within the model. A field can be anything from plain text, Markdown, an image asset, calendar date, geo location, third party data, boolean data, to a piece of logic that pulls in data from other content models.

Fields can be used in many different ways depending on content purpose, industry standards, and business processes. The photo above is one example of content structure, with “Blog Post Model” having the fields “Title”, “Descriptions”, “Cover Image”, etc. For another example, have a look at how a car dealership uses fields to structure content.

References

For it to be easy to reuse models, teams need to outline how different models relate to one another. In the image above an author’s bio will only need to be created once using the “Author Model” and any blog she writes will simply reference her existing profile. In reverse, the “Author Model” can reference any related blog posts so that it would be easy to see all blogs she’s written. For another example, here’s how a learning platform sets up relationships between different levels of content.

4. Connect the data

Pull in data and services so that developers and content creators can easily work with it in one place. This includes data that your content models require such as information from an e-commerce platform, product inventory management (PIM), customer relationship management (CRM), weather data, maps, industry databases, etc. As well as connecting the tools in services in your tech stack that are needed for the content creation process such as marketing automation, testing, and translations.

Depending on the content platform being used, this may require custom integrations or middleware to manage data syncing. Hygraph uses content federation to simplify data management by joining data from all backend sources using a single GraphQL API. Data continues to live in the original source, with Hygraph acting as an API gateway that grabs the most up-to-date information directly from the source whenever it’s requested by internal users, customers, or automated systems.

Composable content_ connect the data.png

#Benefits of adopting a composable content strategy

Consistent content, everywhere

Instead of copy and pasting content and data between multiple, siloed systems a composable approach allows you to unify data on the backend to deliver a consistent digital experience across all your frontend channels. With content federation, developers and content teams have access to all information in one place, and the API-based delivery means that when data is updated at the source it’s automatically updated everywhere it’s used. Giving teams the ability to scale content creation and use more complex data strategies with the peace of mind that content will always stay fresh.

Faster time-to-market

Breaking content into reusable building blocks makes it easier to spin up new ideas. Engineers can quickly create structured content models that meet the needs of multiple use cases, pulling in services from other technology solutions as needed. Content creators can then combine these models in a variety of ways to create unique experiences without custom development.

The most notable outcome was by breaking down the design into a component led content model structure. We now have essentially a box of lego blocks where we can create rich content pages quickly and easily and enable our content team to lean into their creativity.
Steve GoodwinLead Engineer at Top Villas

Adapt and evolve with ease

Composable content is not tied to any particular channel, business process, or integration. It supports a composable approach to architecture where businesses can choose a technology stack of best-of-breed tools that can be interchanged as a business evolves. Composable content doesn’t require re-architecting every time the tech stack changes. Instead, individual content models can be quickly adapted to support new services and data sources as needed.

#It’s all about delivering impactful experience to your users

A composable approach allows you to structure content in the way that makes sense for your customers. Instead of adapting strategy to fit rigid templates or limited capabilities of a platform, businesses can start by defining the ideal customer experience and can then create unique content models to achieve that vision.

For instance, Samsung is using composable content to transition their loyalty program from a mobile-only app to a multichannel user platform. They’ve used unique content models to replicate model app features for web users, as well as a flexible architecture to deliver localized solutions that align with different regional requirements. This has led to an estimated 10% increase in new loyalty members, and a 15% increase in customer engagement.

The biotechnology publisher, BioCentury, leverages a composable approach to pull in data and content from multiple services and share that information in many different ways with clients. Flexible content models allow them to deliver academic articles, white paper, news, analysis, collections of research, visualizations of real-time data, and more with ease. Leading to 80% faster content publishing for their team and a 120% increase in content engagement among their audience.

#Composing your content with the next-generation content management solution

Hygraph is the next-generation content management platform designed for the era of composable architecture. Hygraph makes it easy for businesses to orchestrate content across unlimited use cases, backend data sources, and frontend channels by providing:

  • Modern architecture: Leverage the flexibility of a natively headless, SaaS platform that exposes all content and functionality via a powerful GraphQL API.
  • Content Federation: Join data from multiple sources using a single GraphQL API. Data lives in the original source, with Hygraph acting as an API gateway to provide access to always up-to-date information in one central place.
  • Flexible content modeling: Structure content to fit exact business needs. An intuitive Schema Builder makes it easy to create models, set fields, and define relationships between models.
  • Rich editing experience: Turn composable content into engaging experiences with an intuitive user interface that provides versioning, preview, digital asset management, and more.
  • Friction-free collaboration: Unlock the operational efficiency of your team with flexible workflows, roles & permissions, and localization capabilities for global business.

Curious to learn how Hygraph could support your business strategy? Our content experts would be happy to help.

Blog Author

Jing Li

Jing Li

Jing is the Senior Content Marketing Manager at Hygraph. Besides telling compelling stories, Jing enjoys dining out and catching occasional waves on the ocean.


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