About Fully
Fully Studios is a digital studio based in Sweden, known for their diverse range of projects, from creating websites for beloved companies like Toca Boca, to animations and game development for titles like Planet of Lana. With an in-house competence that spans across the spectrum using frameworks like Next.js, Unity, Three.js, and PixiJS, Fully Studios also collaborates closely with sibling companies involved in full-scale video game development.
Focusing on the web development side, the crew is relatively small, with a core team of five web development specialists, They focus on leveraging modern tools like Headless CMS to improve their workflow and deliver better SEO and user experiences for their clients’ websites. Their approach is to build lasting solutions that not only meet current technical standards but are also scalable for future needs.
We caught up with Emil Hernqvist, Fullstack Dev at Fully Studios, to talk about their experience on working with us for multiple projects from the perspective of an agency partner.
TLDR
Fully Sudios prioritize internationalization, UX, modularity, and robust GraphQL API integrations when choosing a headless CMS.
Dato stood out for its localization, media handling, validation, and extensibility, which enhance both user experience (UX) and developer experience (DX) according to Fully.
Fully Studios uses a modern stack including GraphQL and Next.js to streamline development, resulting in faster implementation and more efficient project workflows - a stack that works flawlessly in integration with DatoCMS.
Considerations to choose a Headless CMS
When selecting a headless CMS for their projects, Fully usually go over several key criteria.
Internationalization and localization are often at the top of that list, given they’re based in Europe and work largely with European clients. They also need a CMS that’s seamless, simple, and understandable for non-technical users, given a majority of their clients are in the transitory phase from legacy CMS like Drupal or WordPress. They also appreciate the ability to create custom plugins to better customize the overall extensibility of the platform without being restricted by the limitations of the CMS, which essentially contributes to their next consideration of modularity and flexibility.
Internally, however, there’s one more consideration, and that’s GraphQL. According to Emil, GraphQL just “makes sense” for a Headless CMS, so naturally CMS with a robust GraphQL API helps to facilitate better querying and integration with their existing workflows.
After working with several CMS, these criteria were quite comfortably met by DatoCMS, especially with a fine balance between the UX and DX, making it one of the (its’ cool, we don’t judge 😅) preferred CMS in Fully’s stack when kicking off new projects.
Where DatoCMS stands out
We’d already established that Dato was within their stack due to it’s intuitiveness and GraphQL APIs, but let’s get a bit more specific on some of the real feature usage and tangible benefits that make Dato a breeze to work with for Fully.
Localization: The seamless handling of multiple locales was a major benefit. The ability to create new records from base languages and the visual errors for incomplete fields ensured a smooth localization process. This was a particularly core consideration given the necessity for a strong i18n in Europe.
Media Library: The media library and its strong integration with imgix’s API capabilities like its tagging system and focal point functionality, made managing images straightforward. Editors found the focal point feature particularly useful and intuitive for responsive designs.
Validation: Robust validation mechanisms prevented common errors and ensured data consistency.
The ability to add help texts to guide users further enhanced the editing experience.
Extensibility: The plugin ecosystem and ability to have plugins in multiple locations allowed the team to extend DatoCMS's functionality as needed, addressing specific project requirements without extensive custom development.
The usage of those features along with some best practices from Fully’s side also led to some pretty cool overall improvements:
Performance: Websites built with DatoCMS were faster and more responsive, contributing to better user engagement and SEO performance.
User Satisfaction: Clients appreciated the intuitive interface and the ease of managing content across multiple locales. The clear validation messages and help texts reduced the learning curve for non-technical users. According to Emil, “we never really heard back with any issues or questions on how to use Dato”, which we’re taking as a big W.
Development Efficiency: The integration of GraphQL definitely sped up the development process. Also, Emil’s a fan of Next.js’s app router approach, particularly from a DX standpoint, so having a Content API that played along nicely with Next helped them get set up and running pretty quick.
OK, but what’s the real-world feedback?
Naturally we could talk about the feature-set and benefits all day, but knowing that Fully have worked with us on more than one project with multiple clients, we wanted to dive into the deets. What’s Emil’s real experience after working with us, and just as importantly, what’re the final users saying when their projects are handed over to them with a new CMS setup?
The intuitive nature of DatoCMS's interface and the effective handling of localization were frequently highlighted in a lot of the feedback. Clients found the media library easy to use and appreciated the ability to manage images without extensive technical knowledge.
User Experience (UX)
The user experience for content editors in DatoCMS was significantly improved compared to previous CMSs.
We never really heard back with any issues or questions on how to use Dato
The separation of locales, combined with clear validation and help texts, made the editing process straightforward. The media library's focal point feature and tagging system further enhanced the UX, enabling editors to manage visual content effectively without technical assistance.
Developer Experience (DX)
For developers, the ability to generate TypeScript types from the GraphQL schema were particularly valuable. These features provided strong typing and auto-completion in development environments, reducing errors and improving efficiency. The plugin ecosystem allowed developers to extend DatoCMS's functionality to meet specific project needs without significant overhead.
And once Fully had a good repeatable process going on to know what clients appreciated, they invested more into setting up their project foundations internally using a framework we're excited to share more about soon, to accelerate implementation times moving forward.