Swooned by the idea of starting an eCommerce business, you might’ve not yet realized that setting up an online store, managing inventories, and keeping track of sales is a big challenge. Unless you have a content management system in place, you’re preparing to fail.
An eCommerce CMS can save you a lot of pain by letting you create, edit, and publish content on your website without having to write even a single line of code. Imagine, you had to code your way from scratch for all this. You would’ve gone nuts, wouldn’t you?
So, an eCommerce CMS is not just a rising trend. Instead, it has become a necessity. Different eCommerce content management systems are swarming the market as you can see from this Statista report:
But this also raises an important question: “How would you choose the best eCommerce CMS for your business?”
For this, you need to keep a couple of essential factors in mind that we’re going to discuss in this blog. Let’s begin:
8 Essential Factors Look For in an eCommerce CMS
1. Integrations
Each eCommerce platform comes with a specific set of integrations. But an established fact is that not all of these plugins are going to be useful for your business. In that case, investing in a CMS that doesn’t offer integrations to tools you don’t use will only be a waste of time.
Hence, before you choose an eCommerce CMS, prepare a list of tools your business currently uses or will most likely use in the future. Then, analyze if the CMS provides those integrations. If yes, choose the CMS. Otherwise, look for another alternative.
Besides this, you can also look for the following plugins:
- SEO plugins to help with optimization and rank better on Google and Yahoo!
- Drag and drop plugins to ease content organization and publishing
- Social plugins for sharing and building customer loyalty
- Email marketing tools to nurture long-term customer relations
- Heatmap extensions to study customer browsing patterns on your website
2. SEO
Since appearing in the top search ranking of Google for products they sell is the end goal of every e-commerce store, it’s essential to ensure your eCommerce CMS has SEO capabilities. Look for an eCommerce CMS that offers intuitive SEO optimization tools. Additionally, here are some other SEO features you should look for in your CMS:
- Ability to manage posts and track their performance
- Flexibility to use your domain to create your brand
- Letting you create SEO-friendly URLs, either manually or automatically
- Gathering ratings, reviews, and comments from users to boost engagement
3. Mobile-Friendly
A majority of global search traffic (around 54.61%) comes from mobile devices. Not only this, most people search and purchase products from eCommerce stores on their mobile phones. Hence, it’s essential to ensure your eCommerce CMS is mobile-friendly. Otherwise, you’ll lose a lot of potential customers.
4. Security
Given how quickly breaches are happening on eCommerce platforms these days, it’s essential to ensure your eCommerce CMS is secure. Failing to do so will only result in abandoned carts, frustrated customers, and decreased sales.
Look for an eCommerce that has the following features:
- A firewall to block unauthorized access, site traffic, and spam
- Two-factor authentication
- A strong privacy policy in place
5. Scalability
You are not starting an eCommerce business to sell products for a few weeks or months. You’re in it for a long time. Hence, it’s important to choose a scalable CMS for your business. Look for an eCommerce CMS that lets you scale up or scale down your resources based on your website traffic. Also, you should be able to swiftly add new products as you grow your portfolio.
Performing brilliantly under pressure and support for dynamic features are some other desired attributes you should look for in your eCommerce CMS.
6. Advanced Search & Categorization
As an eCommerce business, you’ll have thousands of products on your platform. The list will even grow more when you scale. Now, how would you ensure your target customers get what they’re looking for?
Advanced search and categorization is the key. You must ensure customers can swiftly find the products they’re looking for. If they have to pour the slightest effort, your customer experience will get severely hampered. Especially in the present scenario when competition is fierce, advanced search and categorization can help you a lot.
7. Roles & Permissions
Although roles & permissions may not appear so important initially, they can help you a lot as you scale your business and add new members to your team. Choose a CMS who offers the flexibility to set various roles and set permissions. It will help you maintain workflow and ensure you have complete control over the content you’re sharing.
8. Cost
No matter how much you deny it, cost matters a lot while choosing an eCommerce content management system. There are times when you might find a CMS that offers the desired features, but it may be expensive or you may find a cost-efficient CMS that may lack good features. So, it’s always hard to strike the balance.
To make the right choice, ensure you’re not compromising on core features because of expenses. Always, see what you need and look for a CMS that best suits your budget. It is also best to sign up for a free trial to get a true taste of the CMS platform.
A Few Mistakes to Avoid While Choosing an eCommerce CMS
- Don’t fall for features you may never use. Instead, choose a feature-rich CMS that can help you better operate your business.
- Never miss the bigger picture while investing in the CMS. Today, you can save a few bucks by choosing an ordinary solution. But it will haunt you in the longer run.
- Don’t go for a CMS with complex features. It will bring down your team’s productivity.
In Conclusion
There’s no perfect solution when it comes to choosing the best eCommerce CMS platform. While the above points might’ve given you an overview, choosing the right ecommerce CMS requires a lot of time and research. You must do research about what your business needs are and evolve with them. So, get your hands dirty and involve your team. Best of luck!
