For more than 20 years, eCommerce sales in the US skyrocketed from just $5.64 billion in the fourth quarter of 2019 to over $235 in 2020’s fourth quarter.

The days of brick-and-mortar stores are quickly coming to an end as more and more businesses migrate to eCommerce platforms.

Source

However, building a great eCommerce store is no easy task. There is a ton of competition in the digital marketplace, and standing out amongst your competitors can be exceedingly difficult if you don’t use the right tools.

Among these, one of the most important is a content management system, or CMS. With the right CMS, any business can create and grow highly profitable eCommerce stores.

But, here comes the million-dollar question — how do you pick the best CMS?

One way to answer the question is to go out and do all the market research on your own. However, this requires a lot of time, effort, and money. So we’ve decided to make things simple and created this article to help you find the best CMS for your eCommerce businesses.

Before we get started, let’s answer another question first: what is an eCommerce CMS?

What Is An eCommerce Content Management System?

A content management system (CMS) allows business owners to set up an e-commerce store. 

Thanks to the rise of CMS, you can build anything from a simple e-commerce store to a complex website. This means you don’t need any programming or coding knowledge to set up your store. 

In other words, a CMS allows you to build a website that converts visitors into customers and brand ambassadors. Several major elements of a website that you can create with a CMS include:

• Landing pages that highlight major services, products, and brand information
• Sales pages where you can display your merchandise and sell it directly to customers
• Blog articles that can help you get your website ranked first on Google
• Content optimized for social networks like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and more
• Segmented email campaigns via email marketing software integrations.

When selecting a CMS, you want to focus on one that makes your products easy to browse through. It should also be easy to set up and provide easy navigation for the average user. 

The Best CMS For E-Commerce is Magento

From our research, we are convinced that Magento is the best CMS for eCommerce. Owned by Adobe, Magneto is an easy cloud solution that allows you to build and customize your e-commerce store.

Over the years, Magento has gained wide popularity in the eCommerce space because of several native features that other CMS tools lack.

Some of these include:

Management of Product Catalogs 

Managing product catalogs is a feature every CMS must-have. However, complex product catalogs that are difficult to ease aren’t very useful.

When selecting a CMS, make sure that you use a tool like Magneto. Its native functionality allows you to easily monitor and track inventory.

Furthermore, the platform has a flexible inventory management system that allows you to:

• Edit product reviews
• Display virtual products
• Share products with no hassle on social networks
• And much more. 

Product Browsing

Before making a purchase, your customers are likely to scroll through a number of different products before checking out. If your customers can’t browse your products quickly and easily, they’ll go somewhere else to make their purchase. 

Fortunately, Magneto makes product browsing a simple and enjoyable experience. They can easily zoom in and zoom out on product images or display multiple images at the same time. This adds a level of interactive engagement that will make your website visitors want to convert. 

Search Engine Optimization

Even the best CMS for eCommerce won’t be very useful if users can’t locate your store online. Search engine optimization is what provides that needed visibility. Magento offers multiple SEO features. 

Additionally, it also provides SEO-friendly URLs and multiple search engine compatibility. Magento also offers popular search sortings and magnifying of popular search terms. With these features, your users can easily find your store online. 

Mobile-Friendly Commerce

Most of your customers will browse through your e-commerce store using their mobile devices. The last thing you want to do is delay sales by making navigation difficult. This means you must have a great CMS that is mobile-friendly.

Magento provides a mobile-friendly HTML5 system for setting up a mobile online store. 

However, you don’t have to have any coding knowledge to use this feature. With its easy drag and drop interface and mobile-friendly themes, your mobile users can be assured of a fantastic browsing experience.

Availability of Marketing Tools

Every business needs visibility and having a CMS with marketing tools is critical. Magento’s promotional tools, make advertising easier and more efficient with a wide variety of marketing features and integration including: 

• Displaying coupon codes 
• Implementing promotional pricing
• Highlighting new products 
• And much more. 

With the wide variety of native features for inventory management, product browsing, search engine optimization, and marketing tools, it’s no wonder this tool is the best CMS for eCommerce.

Alternative Content Management Systems for E-Commerce

In addition to Magento, there are many other eCommerce platforms that you can use to effectively grow your online business.

Among these are Shopify, WooCommerce, and BigCommerce.

Shopify

While Shopify may not be our preferred CMS for eCommerce, it is undoubtedly one of the most popular e-commerce platforms for small and medium-size online retailers. 

This is because it has a simple interface with customizable templates. This allows you to set up and customize your online store easily. 

Some additional features are: 

• Easy integration system with sales channels such as Amazon and eBay
• A mobile-friendly shopping interface with zoom in and out feature
• Customizable and SEO friendly domain names
• Promotional features such as display of gift cards, coupon codes, etc
• Support of multiple and secure payment gateways

Shopify Stores also gain access to a blogging platform to create a blog on the Store’s site and publish multiple blog articles.

However, the Shopify blog feature often adds unnecessary code into blog articles that reduce speed and prevent search engine rankings. For this reason, eCommerce stores looking for blog functionality probably should look elsewhere.

WooCommerce

WooCommerce is another leading eCommerce platform, which offers a simple set-up system that appeals to many online store owners.

With WooCommerce, you can convert a WordPress website to an e-commerce store and enjoy incredible flexibility. 

Some of its features are: 

• A secure and diverse payment system
• An easy to navigate interface for order management
• Availability of mobile apps for use on both Android and iOS devices
• Social media integration
• Offers numerous themes for unrestricted customization

With the WordPress integration, you also gain access to a variety of blogging features and widgets that Shopify simply does not offer.

For eCommerce stores that need a blog, a WordPress-WooCommerce integration is a great option, though we still prefer Magneto.

BigCommerce

With its built-in features, BigCommerce is a popular choice among many merchants because it is super easy to use. Even if you have never used a CMS before, you won't have any problem setting BigCommerce up. 

Features include: 

• A customizable platform to meet specific business needs
• Built-in SEO features for increased business visibility
• Supports a variety of secure payment gateways 
• Effective management of inventory and order
• Integration with third-party apps for access to additional store improvement properties

One of the biggest difficulties with BigCommerce is that sometimes it gets easy to overcomplicate things.

While the native functionality is simple to use, integrating third apps adds new layers of difficulty that you’ll have to navigate to effectively grow your eCommerce site. 

And There you Have It 

To build an online business, selecting the best CMS is key. Thankfully, you now know the best CMS for eCommerce that will help you make sales and reach your business goals easily. 

With its simplicity and unique features, Magento is a great choice.

Other CMS such as BigCommerce, WooCommerce, and Shopify are also popular choices. They come with amazing features that can help you appeal to your online users. 

The great thing is you don't need to be a programming expert to create your dream store. With these eCommerce CMS solutions, you can build, manage and customize your online shop as you desire.