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Zalando Landing Pages Stack¶

What it is¶

Zalando's Landing Pages Stack is the editorial-content platform that serves static and semi-static pages on zalando.com — awareness campaigns, category inspiration pages (e.g. outdoor, pre-owned), and informational pages like About Sustainability. It replaced the previous generation of editorial tooling, which was built on Project Mosaic and had four named limitations: engineering-required page setup, destructive layout changes (re-upload of all content on layout edit), separate web-vs-app upload flows, and cumbersome localisation across 25 markets (Source: sources/2022-09-28-zalando-more-editorial-content-please).

The stack is built on Contentful (headless CMS) integrated into the Interface Framework runtime via a custom proxy data service (systems/zalando-content-proxy) and shares its GraphQL aggregation tier with the rest of zalando.com (FSA on the UBFF).

Architectural shape¶

  Web + App clients
         │
         ▼
   [Skipper](<./skipper-proxy.md>)  — per-platform headers
         │
         ▼
   [Rendering Engine](<./zalando-rendering-engine.md>)
   (Interface Framework runtime)
         │   GraphQL
         ▼
   [FSA](<./zalando-fashion-store-api.md>) — GraphQL aggregator
         │   only Zalando-operated downstreams
         ▼
   [Contentful proxy](<./zalando-content-proxy.md>)
     — mapping + caching + resilience
         │
         ▼
   [Contentful](<./contentful.md>) — headless CMS
   (external SaaS)

   Also:
   [Contentful proxy](<./zalando-content-proxy.md>)
         └─→ internal content aggregator service
              (enriches CMS-referenced IDs with
               system-of-record data, e.g. certificate
               details from the PDP backend)

Defining properties¶

Headless CMS as the authoring substrate, Rendering Engine as the delivery runtime. Authoring workflow, data model, validation, localisation, and collaboration belong to Contentful. Page rendering, UI component versioning, performance quality gates, and cross-cutting concerns (monitoring, A/B testing, consent) belong to Interface Framework. Canonical instance of patterns/headless-cms-for-editorial-content.
Pages as modular drag-and-drop compositions. A landing page is one Contentful entry whose body is a reference list to module entries — banners, text blocks, product carousels, certificate lists, etc. Content Managers rearrange modules via drag-and-drop in the Contentful UI; content survives layout edits (concepts/cms-entry-type-modular-composition, patterns/drag-and-drop-cms-layout).
Cross-surface unification of domain data. Where a module references domain data that also appears elsewhere (e.g. sustainability-certificate detail on the Product Detail Page), the module stores IDs only in Contentful. The Contentful proxy enriches the response by calling the same system of record that serves the PDP. Landing pages and PDPs see identical certificate data by construction (concepts/cross-surface-content-unification, patterns/cross-surface-enrichment-via-internal-service).
concepts/inner-sourcing as the extensibility discipline. New modules are contributed by teams outside the original Landing Pages team: a Contentful entry-type + a Contentful-proxy mapping + UI components. The Sustainability team's Sustainability Certificate module is the canonical worked example (patterns/inner-sourced-module-extension).
Non-technical stakeholders own the authoring workflow end-to-end. Page creation, content upload, and publish do not require engineering involvement. Engineering is involved only when introducing a new module type (one-time cost per format).
Single content source across web and app. The Rendering Engine renders the same Contentful-sourced module list for both surfaces; previously web and app had fully-separate upload flows.

Operational numbers¶

Time-to-go-live: 2 days (legacy) → 4 hours (new stack).
Lead time removed: a previously-required 2-week briefing-to-go-live window is gone.
Publication volume: +82% YoY landing pages published since rollout.
Markets: 25.

Contributing teams¶

Zalando Marketing Services (ZMS) Landing Pages team — original builder of the stack; owns the core platform.
Sustainability team — first external-team contributor of a module (Sustainability Certificate); canonical inner-sourcing proof point.

Seen in¶

sources/2022-09-28-zalando-more-editorial-content-please — launch / retrospective of the stack, with the Sustainability Certificate module used as the extensibility worked example and the operational numbers above.