Omnichannel content model

Most of the big headless SaaS CMS platforms promote their ability to support an omnichannel platform. But what is an omnichannel platform? And how does this affect your content model?

Multichannel and Omnichannel

A term you might have heard of is multichannel. In a multichannel setup, your aim is to promote a product or service across several channels. A channel can be a website, app, email, or another platform. These channels might offer the same service in different ways or provide different information on each platform.

difference between omni- and multichannel

An omnichannel platform is similar, with the key difference being that you aim to create a seamless customer experience across all your channels. No matter which platform the customer uses to reach you, they get the same consistent experience on all channels. For example, if they stop browsing on the website and start browsing in the app, the customer should be able to continue in the app from where they left off in the browser.

There are many different things you can add to your platform to ensure this seamless experience. But at its core, it starts with a consistent presentation of your brand in both design and content.

Content models

Content model in multichannel

Below, you see a potential model for a news article in a multichannel setup. In this case, the news article is defined three times: for the web, app, and email channel. Each channel has similar fields, those are highlighted in green. The other fields are unique fields to the channel. As you can see, the content for all channels is technically not connected and therefore has no relation to each other. For a multichannel setup, this might work well, especially if the brand per channel has a different tone of voice and perhaps has separate editorial teams working on it.

Composable architecture example structure

Content model in omnichannel

For an omnichannel approach, however, this setup would not work. As mentioned before, consistency and a seamless experience are key for an omnichannel strategy. This means that an article a user is reading on the app should also be available to read on the web app. The article could be presented differently depending on the platform, but its content (text, images, related articles) should be the same. Doing so makes it easier for the customer to recognize the same article across all channels.

To achieve this consistency, the content model must be designed to separate the core content from its presentation. This involves creating a central content type, such as "News," which contains all the attributes that remain consistent across channels. Each channel-specific content type is then linked to this central type, allowing for tailored presentations while maintaining core content uniformity.

Composable architecture example structure

In the above diagram all the content of an article has been moved to the content type "News." In "News," you will find all the attributes of the article that should be the same across all channels. The "News" content type is then linked to all three channel-specific content types. Within those channel-specific types, we provide the necessary details to present the content on the given platform.