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Octana

Octana has built the front-end & integration layer for Headless Content Management Systems

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Octana is the easiest way for organisations & enterprises to deliver modern, scalable and high-performance websites. They’ve done this by creating a software product that provides the front-end and integration layer for Headless Content Management Systems (HCMSs).

Born out of a digital design agency, the team suffered from the problem of having no predictable and scalable way of building enterprise websites on top of Headless Content Management System's (HCMS). They decided to solve this problem and have designed a product that provides the frontend and integration layer for HCMSs. Octana is now used by two large enterprises across Australasia, making their websites faster, better performing from an SEO perspective and much easier to edit for content authors.

Websites have two core parts:

  1. The Backend, which is usually hosted as a Content Management System to store all the assets and stuff you see on your everyday website; and

  2. The Frontend, which is all the visual stuff you see and view when you're casually browsing any website as a user.

Headless Content Management Systems (The Backend) have rapidly become the industry standard over traditional CMS's because, as the name says, they separate the "Head" from the content layer. This offers a myriad of benefits to organisations when building their websites, such as:

  1. Excellent Omnichannel Experiences;

  2. Flexibility in the Type of CMS Solution an organisation wants to use;

  3. Developer Support & an overall better experience for Devs; and

  4. A Future Proof Solution at a Lower Cost.

However, there are very few true solutions out there that provide The Frontend to all this.

 

 

What problems do organisations face with websites?

 

Enterprise website quality and performance are few and far between

Currently, there is no predictable and scalable way for organisations or agencies to deliver and manage websites on top of Headless Content Management Systems. This has only gotten worse since they are increasing in favour and adoption by organisations, yet you still need a custom-built front-end to display to website users at the end of the day.

This leads to:

  • Poor website performance and unoptimised pages (slow loading times, etc.) if done wrong. 4+ second loading times adversely affect user experience; and

  • Significant time spent on producing, reproducing and migrating different pages within an organisation’s many websites.

No-code/low-code solutions out there like Squarespace, Wix, or Webflow are great for static pages and small businesses. However, enterprise-level websites are much more complex, require a certain level of security measures, and need domain experience to manage well.

 

A marketing/content team's ability to manage websites is beholden to the development team

 

Currently, when a marketing team member or content author (the ones who edit and change the front-facing stuff you see on websites) wants to make a change, edit or revision on a website, they must rely on a developer or agency dev to make that change for them.

This ends up becoming a back-and-forth exercise between the marketers/content authors and the devs to come to a final agreement on what should stick.

 

The traditional website agency model is broken & hated

 

We’ve all experienced it before if we had tasked an agency to create a new website for us:

  1. You brief the agency on what you want.

  2. Go through a discovery and design phase.

  3. Build up assets for the website and content.

  4. Finally, you’re bewildered by the price tag quoted at the end.

Websites are a huge upfront capital expense (CapEx) for companies, both large and small. It’s not outlandish to see an enterprise website cost between $200k-$600k and take 6-12 months to stand up.

 

The modern-day website is part of the software stack, yet is the most under-loved

 

For a for-profit business, a website serves three purposes:

  1. To drive traffic and leads to your site/product/service;

  2. To explain what you do for people who visit your site; and

  3. To ultimately generate revenue.

The modern company's software stack is retrofitted for the needs of the individual company. You have outsourced CRMs, Customer Success/service tools, Analytics tools, Content Management Systems (CMS), Cybersecurity providers, etc. However, the majority of enterprise organisations still rely on agencies or internal development teams to handle their websites. Whilst a website is a core part of an organisation's marketing, lead generation, image and brand reputation, it is still being constructed in some of the most archaic and time-consuming methods.

Octana is solving these problems.

In short, Octana solves these problems by:

  1. Offering a low-code SaaS solution that marketers & content authors love and empowering them to build websites without the need for any developers.

  2. Allowing enterprises and organisations to scale with any Headless CMS of their choice;

  3. Providing pricing surety to organisations, so they're not spending a sh*t tonne of one-off CapEx on website costs; and

  4. Offering composability all throughout a company's tech stack so you can plug & play different tech without affecting how their website performs.