Is a legacy CMS stifling your user experience? Why Cirrus Aircraft migrated from WordPress to Contentstack

Cirrus Aircraft, a leading provider of personal aviation, understands the importance of exceptional experiences. Its exclusive online community, VPO (Vision Pilots and Owners), is a key touchpoint for Cirrus Vision Jet owners. However, Cirrus Aircraft’s previous VPO website faced limitations that hindered the ability to engage with its community. 

Cirrus Aircraft's story reflects a larger trend: the rise of headless CMS. As the demand for sophisticated, omnichannel digital experiences grows, more and more organizations are turning to headless solutions like Contentstack. 

The global headless CMS market is projected to reach $1.6 billion by 2027, fueled by the need for greater flexibility, improved website performance, and the ability to deliver personalized content across all touchpoints. In this post, we’ll explore how migrating to Contentstack provided Cirrus Aircraft with an agile solution for a more modern and engaging digital experience. And the new site will scale as the business evolves and its community of jet owners and pilots grows. 

The problem: When ‘good enough’ isn't enough

Cirrus Aircraft's previous website, a legacy WordPress-based CMS, presented several challenges that impacted the owner experience and ultimately hindered the ability to deliver the premium experience the company’s brand represents:

• Performance bottlenecks: The site's monolithic architecture was causing slow loading times and a sluggish user experience, particularly during peak periods of community activity. Imagine an owner trying to access critical flight information or connect with fellow pilots, only to be met with frustrating delays.

• Limited content management flexibility: Cirrus Aircraft’s site lacked the flexibility to easily create and deliver diverse content formats, such as interactive event calendars, rich media galleries, and personalized learning resources. This hindered the company’s ability to provide engaging and valuable content to its community. 

• Scalability concerns: As the Vision Jet owner community continued to grow, Cirrus Aircraft needed a platform that could scale to accommodate increasing traffic and data volumes without compromising performance. The company sought a future-proof solution that could grow with its community.

• High maintenance overhead: The legacy site required frequent updates, security patches, and plugin maintenance, which consumed valuable IT resources and diverted attention from other strategic initiatives. This continuous maintenance took away time that could have been spent improving the owner experience.

• Lack of personalization capabilities: Cirrus Aircraft wanted to deliver personalized content experiences to individual SF50 jet owners based on their interests, preferences, and usage patterns. The team envisioned a tailored experience for each owner, but the CMS lacked the necessary tools.

These challenges collectively prevented Cirrus Aircraft from delivering the exceptional digital experience its discerning clientele expected. The team needed a solution that offered agility, scalability, and control.

The solution: Contentstack headless CMS 

Working with ArcTouch, Cirrus Aircraft chose Contentstack, a headless CMS and a key part of a modern MACH architecture, to overcome these limitations. Here's why:

• Content modeling: Contentstack's structured content modeling allows for the organization and management of diverse content types, ensuring data consistency and improved searchability.

• API-first architecture: Integration with existing marketing and CRM systems enables personalized content delivery.

• Headless architecture: Decoupling the content repository from the presentation layer allows for consistent experiences across all devices and platforms.

• Scalability and performance: Contentstack's cloud infrastructure ensures responsiveness and performance, even during peak periods.

The headless migration: A deep dive into the process

Migrating from its previous website to Contentstack presented key challenges that ArcTouch addressed with a strategic and meticulous approach:

• Data transformation and migration: Cirrus’s old site stored data in a relational database, while Contentstack uses a more flexible content modeling approach. ArcTouch developed a custom script to extract relevant content from the old site, filtering out irrelevant data like forum discussions. We mapped the extracted data to Contentstack's content modeling structure, including converting HTML-based content into structured data suitable for the new platform.

• Media asset management: Ensuring all 683MB of media assets (980 images and documents) were properly transferred, linked, and optimized for performance was crucial for maintaining a seamless user experience. ArcTouch automated this process, migrating assets to Contentstack's asset management system and updating content entries to point to the new asset locations. 

• Data quality and enrichment: Legacy data often contains inconsistencies and errors. ArcTouch implemented a rigorous validation process to identify and correct data inconsistencies, such as broken image links and duplicate titles. We also enriched the content by generating summaries for articles and events.

Project results: A modernized content infrastructure

The migration to Contentstack successfully modernized Cirrus Aircraft's content infrastructure, delivering key benefits:

• Improved website performance: Decoupling content from the website resulted in significantly faster loading times and a smoother user experience for Vision Jet owners.

• Flexible content management: Contentstack's headless architecture allows Cirrus Aircraft to create and manage content independently of specific channels, enabling easy repurposing across web, mobile, and other platforms. This provides greater agility and efficiency in content creation and distribution.

• Scalability for growth: The cloud-native platform provides the scalability needed to support Cirrus Aircraft's expanding community and future content needs, ensuring a consistent experience even during peak usage.

• Personalized digital experience: Contentstack enables the delivery of tailored content to individual owners, fostering stronger customer relationships and increasing engagement.

• Future-proof architecture: The headless CMS approach provides a flexible architecture that allows Cirrus Aircraft to adapt to new technologies and platforms without a complete re-platform, protecting its investment and ensuring long-term viability.

Headless CMS FTW

Cirrus Aircraft's journey highlights the growing importance of modern, agile content management solutions. As businesses increasingly rely on data-driven decision-making and prioritize exceptional digital experiences, migrating to a headless CMS like Contentstack becomes a strategic imperative. By carefully planning the migration process, understanding the key considerations, and partnering with experts like ArcTouch, you can unlock the full potential of your content and deliver exceptional digital experiences that resonate with your target audience. The future of content management is headless, and Cirrus Aircraft is already soaring ahead.

Ready to go headless?

Ready to transform your digital experience? ArcTouch is a certified implementation partner for Contentful and Contentstack. Contact us today to learn how we can help you migrate your website to a headless CMS.