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To put it bluntly, marketing relies on stuff working.
That might sound weird and obvious, but it’s something we don’t think about often enough… until things stop working, that is.
It’s easy to take for granted what’s going on behind the scenes to make things happen until things stop happening. That also makes it extra hard to diagnose the problem when something goes wrong (which always seems to happen in the middle of important campaigns).
Marketing depends on reliable, scalable systems. It requires multiple systems and touchpoints talking to each other seamlessly, especially during omnichannel campaigns. Even the slightest hiccup can have a massive impact.
Maybe you unfortunately know all this from experience. Or maybe you want to get more exploratory and creative with your campaigns, but you’re worried about the technical requirements. Regardless, what you need is a distributed system design and workflows.
What is distributed system design?
Distributed system design and workflows empower marketers to run campaigns without a hitch, even during high-stakes moments. They allow you to execute to your full capabilities and make the most of your marketing strategy and spend.
At its core, distributed system design is the process of architecting systems that operate across multiple physical or virtual nodes.
In terms that someone not in data science can understand, distributed system design is a method for breaking down complex applications into smaller, interconnected components. These components, called nodes, work together to ensure smooth functionality and scalability.
Each node performs specific functions, and they work together to create a seamless and unified experience for end users, who should have no idea what’s going on under the hood.
Everything just works.
Advantages of distributed system design
It’s not just buzzwords! Implementing a distributed system design comes with real, tangible benefits. These make them an appealing proposition for e-commerce sites across all industries:
Scalability
Distributed systems allow individual components to scale independently based on demand. The system will adjust to ensure optimal performance regardless of location or level of traffic.
On ShopToyota this is demonstrated by the seamless adjustments made based on the user’s selected location.
The vehicle listings are similar, but they feature different prices, legal wording, and sometimes naming.
For example, comparing the Ontario page to the Atlantic page, as seen below, shows different pricing/legal wording on the 2025 RAV4 LE AWD and a different name entirely for the 2025 Tundra 4X4.
By using Contentful (we’ll dive deep into them later!), you can very quickly distribute a similar product across multiple regions with different pricing and in different languages.
Fault tolerance
The nodes are kind enough to lend each other a helping hand when needed.
If one node fails, others can take over to ensure uninterrupted service. This gives you time to get things fixed up without impacting the user experience or having any errors syncing data.
For example, if there are service or API problems, other mechanisms can be built in on the backend to show a cached version of the site, ensuring uninterrupted usability for visitors.
Flexibility
With a distributed system design, teams can build and deploy smaller, specialized services that work together seamlessly. This makes integration and content management much simpler.
Let’s say the marketing team wants to add a new component on a site’s legal pages that references things like their unique loyalty program - the microservices can be added very quickly, and the same component can be managed from within Contentful.
Cost efficiency
Make sure your finance team hears about this one!
Distributed system design allows you to streamline everything under the hood of your website. Resources can be allocated dynamically, optimizing usage and reducing overhead costs.
Contentful’s optimized APIs, for example, offer high scalability with low usage, reducing overall server costs.
MACH-ing it simple
Distributed design can get very complex - the examples above don’t even scratch the surface. Even SaaS products are built under a distributed system design. But that doesn’t mean you have to have a dense and complex frontend and backend.
You may have heard us talk about MACH technology in the past. As a refresher, MACH refers to Microservices, API-first, Cloud-native, and Headless. This remains incredibly important for distributed system designs.
To simplify: keep it open, make it simple, and allow multiple services to act on their own while providing a seamless user experience.
Core challenges in distributed system design
Nothing is perfect — you can’t have pros without some cons!
While distributed systems offer significant benefits, they do come with unique challenges. Thankfully, these challenges can be easily overcome with a combination of well-established architectural patterns.
If you don’t keep an eye on things, however, it can impact campaign performance, user experience, and customer satisfaction.
Common architectures and patterns
Rest assured, you don’t need to reinvent the wheel with your distributed system (unless you want to).
Successful distributed system design is often built on a combination of well-established architectural patterns. Some of the most common architectures include:
Microservices architecture
This architecture breaks down applications into small, independently deployable services. It promotes scalability and flexibility, enabling teams to update or scale individual services without affecting others.
Event-driven architecture
Event-driven architecture uses events to trigger actions across services. It decouples components for responsiveness and supports real-time updates. This makes it ideal for dynamic environments like e-commerce personalization or regional product information.
Saga pattern
This pattern manages distributed transactions by breaking them into smaller, coordinated steps. It ensures data consistency by rolling back changes if a step fails, providing reliability in complex operations by essentially acting as a safety net.
User-centric workflows
While the above patterns provide a strong foundation, Contentful’s Workflows take distributed systems to the next level by focusing on user-centric operations and reliability. It automates time-consuming and error-prone tasks and provides an extra layer of control and flexibility.
Platforms: the essential foundation for distributed system design
Distributed system design isn’t something you can magically conjure up on your site — it’s essential to build on a platform.
Digital experience platforms (DXPs) and headless composable platforms are built on the MACH framework, which is meant to support distributed systems.
Gone are the days when monolithic architecture would perform all core tasks like collecting data points, event-based triggers, building/optimizing the presentation layer, personalizing the experience, and tracking success.
Headless framework allows companies to plug and play services that fit their business. Basically, you select the best fit for each core task instead of relying on one platform to do a halfhearted job of handling all tasks.
This has historically been the foundation of most SaaS engineering teams. However, now all web experiences are built like products, and competing CMS & DXP products need to share the same ecosystems to ensure the plug-and-play functionality remains intact.
Platforms that enable successful distributed systems and allow easy connectivity of your tech stack are the clear path forward for businesses.
Spend less time fixing and more time executing with distributed system design
As a marketer, your only limitation should be your imagination.
Distributed system design can reduce technical barriers that get in the way of executing strategy as well as the risk of something going wrong during your campaign.
With thoughtful implementation and the usage of workflows, you can stop spending time solving technical mysteries and putting out fires. Use that newfound time to do what you do best: strong marketing strategies and a seamless customer experience.
If this sounds like a dream, let’s make it a reality. Contact our team to get started.
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