It’s been a rough couple of weeks for WordPress—it’s found itself at the centre of quite a big a media storm. We’ve gradually been moving away from WordPress to Payload over the last year or so, and in this Lab Note we take a look at why we’re making the move and how it benefits both us and our clients.

We’re always looking for new and exciting ways to improve our development processes and provide clients with the absolute best quality product we can. Part of this has involved transitioning our choice of content management system (CMS) from WordPress to Payload.

Payload is a headless CMS built using TypeScript, Node.js and React—all of which we’re familiar with. It’s also highly customisable, which means we can create custom APIs and very flexible content models that adapt to whatever our clients need.

When we first began looking into moving beyond WordPress, we researched a few different options, including Contentful and Sanity. We knew what we were looking for, and had a few criteria to meet. Firstly, we wanted a platform that’s reliable, secure and well maintained. These are all core values that benefit both us and our clients.

Secondly, whatever platform we chose needed to be scalable across sites large and small. We didn’t want to choose a platform that might limit us in the future.

This is where Payload really came into it’s own. So let’s take a look at some of the benefits of Payload in a bit more detail.

When it comes to our clients, as an agency we like to make sure we’re offering the absolute best solution to their problems. And Payload definitely helps with this. There’s a few key areas that Payload really excels in…

Performance

Every website should perform well, especially when it comes to site speed. On average, around 40% of desktop users will leave a website if it takes more than three seconds to load. That jumps up to 53% for users on mobile devices.

This is where Payload’s headless CMS comes into play. Because it’s so streamlined, it’s typically faster at loading content and images, especially when paired with Next.js static site generation. This is a huge benefit to our clients. Getting users to the content they want quickly and seamlessly is a key UX principal, and ultimately results in higher conversions.

Same Flexibility

Payload offers the same flexibility as WordPress. Being able to easily adapt and add to our sites is an important part of what we offer to our clients. Payload’s flexible content modelling allows us to quickly and easily add features and fields to any site, meaning it can scale and grow quickly and smoothly.

Modern

Payload is built with the very latest versions of TypeScript and Node. This means it’s updated regularly with security and bug fixes to keep your site and data safe. It also means it integrates well with other Javascript frameworks, like Next.js.

Self-hosted

Payload is self-hosted, meaning we have control over and oversight of all the data the site contains and accesses. This is crucial for companies and sites that contain sensitive user data.

APIs

When it comes to Application Programming Interface (API) integration, Payload’s headless CMS features an API endpoint. This means we can quickly and easily fetch, update and create data from any website or app. It also means our clients can use the data from the CMS anywhere they like.

Familiarity

Moving to a new CMS can be a bit daunting, but Payload brings with it a familiar way of working when compared to the likes of WordPress. It’s a field-based CMS, so building pages and adding content is an experience a lot of our clients are already familiar with.

Version control

Version control allows us to track and manage changes to our code over time. Every time we make a change to the codebase, we push this up to GitHub where it’s reviewed before being pushed to live. It’s an extra level of safety that means everything is sense-checked before it goes out into the world.

Customisable

It might seem trivial, but the Payload CMS can be fully customised and branded up to match your company’s brand identity.

Quality

Quality is what drives us as an agency. Thanks to TypeScript, we know we’re writing quality code every time. TypeScript is a superset of JavaScript, designed and developed by Microsoft. But, when compared to JavaScript, TypeScript provides us with more consistency and reliability thanks to it’s stricter rules. This means less room for error and a high-quality output.

Since we’ve started working with Payload, we’ve seen countless benefits. From its customisation and flexibility through to its integrations and security, we’re loving developing and building with it. If you want to take a look at an example of a site we’ve built using Payload, head over to the Harwin site we built. In contrast, our own website is also built with Payload. It’s much smaller than the Harwin website, but still offers the same Payload perks that we love. This is a great example of how scalable and flexible Payload is, and how adaptable it is depending on the size of the site.

We’re really looking forward to seeing what more we can do with Payload in the future and how we can pass on the benefits to our clients. If you’re looking for a website rebuild, give us a shout to arrange a consultation.