Discover How an Ecommerce CMS Can Revolutionise Your Online Business

The pandemic left its mark — on online sales, consumer behaviour, digital adoption, and supply-chain disruptions. It catalysed ecommerce growth, forcing businesses and consumers to embrace digital commerce at an unprecedented rate. It transformed our lives in ways we're still absorbing.

The new normal is one of higher expectations for convenience, not just at the grocery store. For example, Click and Collect confirmed for retailers the desire for a brick-and-mortar experience but on the customer's timetable.

The pandemic may have upended the global economy. Still, it led brands worldwide to retool their playbooks to deliver more effective omnichannel experiences — the pandemic compressed years of digital transformation into months.

The good news is that global ecommerce shows no signs of slowing. Sales have held steady year-over-year, with China and the US remaining at the top of the leaderboard, with sales increasing by 8.4%, translating to $500 billion in new sales.

Ecommerce businesses wanting access to the two largest consumer markets must find efficient ways to expand their online presence. An ecommerce CMS can help. How? Instead of migrating everything to an ecommerce platform, you can integrate with a SaaS solution to add a shopping cart and a CMS with all the flexibility that entails.

We believe that an ecommerce CMS can unlock your ecommerce potential. Let's see what they can and can't do for you.

What is an ecommerce CMS?

A content management system (CMS) is software that enables ecommerce shop owners to create, edit, and publish digital website content without writing any code. It also allows users to modify the look and feel of the online store, such as changing product page layout, adding promotional banners or quickly adding new website sections to promote products better. 

An ecommerce platform is an online shopping cart solution that enables you to handle product management and sell products directly through your ecommerce website. Some ecommerce platforms can also be a CMS. In other words, it's a user-friendly infrastructure that handles an online shop's backend store management functions.

When trying to narrow down the options, ecommerce CMS software falls into two major categories — SaaS and open source.

Do you need a separate CMS?

You may have yet to consider not having a separate CMS. However, it's worthwhile to know that only some ecommerce stores need a content management system. The best way to determine whether your online shop requires a separate CMS is to weigh your content strategy plans.

Ecommerce sites that produce new content regularly — either for the blog or as part of the homepage and product page updates — would benefit most from the flexibility of a CMS. However, if your store doesn't require regular, real-time content updates, you can build your site without one. 

Additionally, if you already have an ecommerce platform that serves as a CMS, you may not need a separate one. 

Are you still trying to figure it out? Consider the advantages a well-chosen CMS can provide.

Create and edit content with ease.

Does the thought of editing content on your site make you uneasy? One of the best things about modern content management systems is that they're incredibly user-friendly and don't require advanced technical skills. You or your team can easily handle all content and product updates, fast-tracking marketing campaigns and promotional activities.

Remove reliance on developers.

Successful ecommerce entrepreneurs know that keeping up with customer expectations drives revenue growth. However, the speed and agility required to keep your website content fresh are only achievable with outside resources.

With an easy-to-use CMS, you can reduce the need for outside developers and update the website in-house. Ultimately, not only are you saving time, but you also get to spend that dev budget on other marketing initiatives to propel your business forward.

Add another channel for reaching potential customers.

Content should be high on your priority list as one of the most effective marketing channels for driving organic traffic.

In the age of TikTok, Facebook and Instagram, only some ecommerce brands can afford to stay silent on social media. Creating engaging, helpful content will boost your store's visibility on Google (and other search engines), driving more people to your site and ramping up your sales.

Binge-worthy content is a surefire way to build a memorable brand and nurture customer loyalty. That's how people buy these days.

A good CMS helps ensure your content is well organised, shareable and easily accessible. And all that without much fiddling in the backend.

Let writers work together.

Great work happens in teams. From proofreading to formatting to finding the right visual assets, much effort goes into producing top-quality content. Facilitating collaboration within your team is critical for streamlined content creation.

A well-chosen CMS can bring everyone on the same page, allowing writers to work directly in the system and leverage intelligent features to improve their content. With that comes better-targeted content, smoother review processes and a more optimised experience for the customer.

Features needed in an ecommerce CMS

What features should you consider when choosing a CMS? Look at the core features that might help you grow your store, and then weigh the pros and cons of your chosen CMSs to find the right fit.

SEO-friendly.

On-page SEO for ecommerce sites is all about learning where to place your keywords. It's a way to communicate with web crawlers and ensure high rankings in search results. However, if you're inexperienced with SEO, don't worry — a good ecommerce CMS will help you implement the SEO best practises and optimise your product pages. Look for features like:

Page URLs

The shorter, the better. Google is busy crawling millions of new and updated pages every day. So, it's no surprise that URL brevity is encouraged. If you can remove unnecessary subfolders from your URLs, that's guaranteed to boost the overall performance of your website. But keeping it short isn't the only requirement. Including the primary keyword and reading the URL can significantly improve your search rankings.

Page titles and meta descriptions

The page title (the H1 tag) should contain your primary keyword. If you can place it at the beginning of the title, consider that a bonus. As the main line of text appearing in search results, it relies heavily on keyword optimisation.

The meta description is the grey text that appears under the page title in search listings. While it doesn't directly impact page rankings, it can improve the click-through rate. The higher your CTR, the more prominent your page rankings.

It would be best if you optimised page titles and meta descriptions on all pages of your ecommerce store. To avoid SEO mess-ups in the future, ensure your CMS will allow you to change page URLs and have a user-friendly UI for adding and checking meta descriptions. Or better still, offer a feature for auto-generating page titles and meta descriptions to save you time.

Easy-to-optimise for user experience (UX).

Modern shoppers have high expectations for ecommerce sites. If you fail to provide a smooth UX, you'll see your visitors dropping off before completing a purchase. And even worse, they won't be coming back. 

Do you know what UX features to look for in an ecommerce CMS? These are the essential requirements to tick off.

Flexible design options

Every interaction matters as customers progress through their shopping journey on your website. You want to be able to design, edit and manage content layout on every single page of your store to create a tailored, enjoyable experience.

An easy-to-use CMS is particularly crucial for store owners with limited (or no) coding skills. It will enable you to quickly update your store design and page layout to respond to emerging industry trends, special occasions and promo events. Some CMS platforms will also offer various integrations and plugins to help shop admins run store-wide promotions and other marketing initiatives.

Optimised content for mobile

It has become increasingly evident that mobile commerce will soon dominate online shopping. Statistica forecasts sales to grow to $856 billion US by 2027, almost double what it was a few short years ago.

Store and content optimisation for mobile should be at the top of your UX priorities list if you want to take advantage of this mobile commerce explosion.

You'll want to pay close attention to loading time, mobile navigation, the mobile cheque-out process, visual design and other UX elements that impact the user experience on mobile devices. The ecommerce CMS you choose should streamline the optimisation steps to help you achieve higher conversion rates without needing custom code.

Easy to use.

Considering the number of plates a store owner has to keep spinning, a CMS shouldn't add extra stress. Depending on the developer resources at your disposal, you may want to look for a platform that's easy to set up and doesn't require a lengthy, arduous onboarding process. 

From content updates and plugin integrations to changing page layout and optimising for search engines, a CMS should empower ecommerce entrepreneurs to move fast, trial new things and improve the site UX, regardless of their technical level.

Plentiful integrations.

No CMS is perfect. But if you're after a specific functionality that doesn't come with the core CMS platform or just want to keep your options open for the future, cheque how easily the system integrates with other tools and plugins. 

Ideally, you'd require seamless integration with your existing tech stack (think email platform or analytics tools) and the flexibility to install and activate plugins when needed. The available range of integrations will also indicate how popular and API-friendly the CMS is, so it's an excellent criterion to remember.

12 best ecommerce CMS platforms

Now, brace yourself. The abundance of CMS platforms for ecommerce makes choosing just one very difficult. This list is the tip of the iceberg but can be a great place to start your search and discover the most popular options.

BigCommerce.

One of the most prominent ecommerce platforms on the market, BigCommerce supports tens of thousands of merchants of all types and sizes. With many built-in features and CMS capabilities, the BigCommerce platform facilitates the growth of fast-scaling ecommerce businesses and empowers even ecommerce beginners.

The backend is powered with headless CMS integrations, so you never have to re-platform again. Whether you use an API-first headless stack like Contentful or an agile CMS like Contentstack, BigCommerce caters to the full spectrum of the ecommerce sector. 

Partners like Makeswift allow marketers to create custom layouts and snazzy animations without knowing HTML and CSS. You can also optimise for SEO without increasing complexity. Quickly add metadata, set up redirects and auto-generate XML sitemaps with Makeswift integration.

BigCommerce is fully hosted, Level 1 PCI compliant and available on a monthly subscription basis.

Learn more about the BigCommerce platform by contacting our sales team.

WordPress.

WordPress is the most dominant CMS player in the industry, but it isn't an ecommerce platform. To transform a WordPress site into an online shop, you will need the WooCommerce plugin.

Merchants favor the open-source WooCommerce platform for its immense selection of extensions and themes — most of which are free. The great thing about these plugins is that they can easily enable missing features and functionalities within the WooCommerce core product at a click. The downside is that adding too many plugins leads to unnecessary complexity and impacts site performance. 

BigCommerce also offers a WordPress plugin that is easy to integrate. It adds a layer of convenience by allowing merchants to combine the frontend flexibility of WordPress with the backend benefits, such as abandoned cart recovery, coupons and discounts and single-page checkout that comes out-of-the-box with the BigCommerce SaaS platform.

Drupal.

Although not explicitly designed for ecommerce, merchants can combine Drupal with different plugins and frameworks to enable ecommerce functionality. It is one of the most widely used open-source content management systems, nearly as popular as WordPress or Joomla. Drupal is only particularly user-friendly for those with significant development knowledge (although that is slowly changing).

As a CMS, Drupal Commerce offers incredible flexibility. Combining it with the BigCommerce plugin gives you the best of both worlds — a fully customisable frontend and a fully hosted backend.

Joomla.

Joomla is another open-source content management platform enabling users to build websites and publish content online. While commerce isn't part of its core functionality, several free extensions can help you turn a Joomla site into an ecommerce store.

Sitecore.

Sitecore is a leading digital experience platform that combines content, commerce, marketing automation and personalisation with design and editing tools. The platform enables merchants to design and build digital storefront experiences and deliver personalised commerce journeys. With the BigCommerce plugin for Sitecore, you can combine headless commerce capabilities with Sitecore's powerful, built-in content experiences.

Adobe Commerce (formerly Magento).

Adobe Commerce is a popular open-source CMS for ecommerce solutions. Acquired by Adobe, Magento has an excellent reputation and supports over 260,000 online stores worldwide. It offers rich functionality and a diverse extension marketplace, including integrations with solutions like CRM, ERP, chatbots and other enterprise-level software. While it caters to all types of merchants, fast-scaling and larger businesses often favor it due to its extensive setup, pricing options and development requirements.

Shopify.

Shopify is one of the world's most well-known SaaS ecommerce platforms. Thanks to its simple interface and affordable pricing, it has become a popular ecommerce platform for startup merchants and small businesses. 

However, that's not to say that more prominent brands can't use the CMS. Merchants can tailor their storefronts and back-end systems with extensive application programming interface (API) support and customisation options to meet unique business requirements. Shopify offers free 24/7 support, free store templates and a separate POS system. The downside is that Shopify charges transaction fees for using payment providers outside of Shopify Payments.

Prestashop.

Prestashop is another open-source platform that provides MySQL data management and extensive backend code customisability. It boasts many add-ons and themes, enabling merchants to develop a web store with limited tech abilities from scratch. However, watch out for the total cost; some extensions are pricey.

The good news is that you don't need to be a developer to build a website on Prestashop, making it an excellent option for startups and medium-sized stores. Businesses may need complementary support that Prestashop does not offer.

OpenCart.

One more open-source content management system for ecommerce, OpenCart is a free and multifunctional solution. It offers a bunch of templates for quick setup and also has a thriving plugin marketplace. OpenCart integrates with over 20 payment gateways and eight shipping methods. With its intuitive interface and no monthly fees, OpenCart is a popular option for newcomers with a small budget.

Wix.

Wix is a leading drag-and-drop website builder for online businesses. Although it's not technically an ecommerce CMS, website owners have the option to add the commerce module if they need to. With a variety of templates, built-in ecommerce features and a no-code approach, Wix is an appealing option for complete beginners and non-coders. It could work if you have a limited range of products and want to get your business off the ground quickly. However, remember that once you choose a template for your store, you won't be able to change it in the future.

HubSpot.

HubSpot is a pioneering CMS and marketing automation platform. It doesn't have ecommerce functionality but can easily integrate with purpose-built ecommerce platforms like BigCommerce and Shopify. Connecting HubSpot to your ecommerce store will help you understand your customer behaviour, automate marketing campaigns and track and report on revenue streams with specialised reports.

Volusion.

Volusion is a cloud-based ecommerce platform specialising in building a no-code web store. Volusion is a good option for mid-sized and larger businesses with helpful built-in inventory management, payment collection, and marketing features. If you're considering Volusion for your business, note that the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in July 2020. While the platform is still open and operates as usual, there might be better options for a long-term plan.

Two ways to use an ecommerce CMS

Going through the list above, you've probably noticed that ecommerce CMSs broadly fall into two main categories. You're choosing between pure content management systems and all-in-one ecommerce platforms that support key CMS functionality.

Choosing the right option for you and the best ecommerce CMS solution for your business comes down to various influencing factors, such as the maturity of your business, the number of products you sell, your sales volume and your content strategy. If you sell predominantly on Amazon and update your site sparingly, your choice will be different than someone actively investing in driving traffic to their ecommerce store.

Ecommerce first.

Going with an ecommerce-first platform means your site will be able to reap the benefits of content marketing. It means that you have decided to make the backend functionality a priority. The complexity of your business model will determine the route you'll take.

Dippin' Dots, for example, experienced the logistical challenges of selling ice cream products online. The store's perishable items must be kept in frigid temperatures below what a standard home freezer can reach and, therefore, must be packaged and shipped with dry ice.

With the help of an agency partner and BigCommerce's powerful ecommerce engine, they developed a customised shipping calendar and date picker integrated into BigCommerce's Optimised One-Page Checkout. Leveraging BigCommerce's checkout and Advanced Shipping Manager's API allowed customers to select specific delivery dates, view blackout dates, and learn corresponding shipping methods and costs before selecting their delivery date.

From running donations and fundraising promotions to incorporating a series of interactive elements, new graphic assets, pages and CSS animations, Dippin' Dots has been able to leverage the native functionality of BigCommerce to build the ideal customer experience for its site. 

Drew Blais, Creative Director at Groove Commerce, Dippin' Dots' agency, describes why they went with the ecommerce-first CMS:

"The blog is on BigCommerce. Their content pages are using Page Builder. They're using native BigCommerce search. We were looking for ways to streamline the tech stack as much as possible."

Content first.

For ecommerce sites with a content-first approach, the CMS is the focal point in driving business growth. Typically, content-first ecommerce brands focus on educating and engaging their customers through content to build interest, trust and loyalty. And the ecommerce functionality is handled by an add-on in the backend.

It's a viable option for brands with strong marketing and design teams capable of producing content-rich digital experiences that place their products in a relevant context and generate demand.

It's a viable option for brands with strong marketing and design teams capable of producing content-rich digital experiences that place their products in a relevant context and generate demand.

Just Sunnies represents an example of a content-first approach to ecommerce. Their product catalogue boasts over 13,000 sunglasses from over 130 major brands, selling products worldwide and in local US stores. When they had outgrown their old platform, they knew they wanted to create a seamless customer experience.

Digital innovation and user experience were always a priority. The marketing and web teams continue to improve the customer journey across each touchpoint. With their composable tech stack, they implemented new and innovative features across their website using a unique mix of external tools and custom-built front-end solutions. 

6 Advantages of pairing ecommerce with CMS platforms

A content-first approach might make sense for many brands. Here are a few scenarios for pairing an ecommerce platform with a separate CMS that can boost the profit of a web store.

Turn an existing site into a shop.

Chances are you already have a successful blog and a thriving community. Perhaps your community craves more value, and you're considering monetising your site. If so, yours is the perfect scenario for pairing ecommerce with a CMS platform. Since you already have a CMS in place, why rock the boat? Instead of migrating everything to an ecommerce platform, you can integrate with a SaaS solution like BigCommerce to add a shopping cart and facilitate sales through your existing website.

Easy-to-update sites.

Creativity and speed matter a great deal in ecommerce. You want a modern, slick website that delivers outstanding customer experiences and is easy to manage and update. Whether it's responding to trends, events or competition, you want your stakeholders to execute their ideas to drive business. Combining a CMS with an ecommerce platform gives you the tools and flexibility to manage your store content and product catalogue easily.

Attract more visitors with a content-first approach.

One massive advantage of content-first ecommerce sites is that they generate organic traffic. Traffic volume drives down acquisition costs and helps web stores build a tribe-like community around their brand. With advanced on-page SEO capabilities and other intuitive content features, store owners can attract more potential customers, better understand their preferences and focus on producing and selling more of what customers want.

Become an industry thought leader.

Building brand awareness can be challenging. But if you have niche expertise and knowledge you're willing to share, you can quickly become a thought leader or industry influencer. Shared expertise would generate significant interest in your brand and drive product demand. Consistently showing up with valuable content will translate into profit sooner rather than later.

Manage orders and inventory with ease.

Playing smart with content marketing and demand generation is a sound business decision. But you still want to ensure the ecommerce side runs smoothly and you build it to scale. With advanced capabilities that come with ecommerce platforms, you won't need to worry about centralised inventory management across different channels, shipping or secure payment methods.

Integrate with payment providers.

Ensuring a secure payment environment will be critical to the success of your business. And that's another huge plus for having backend ecommerce functionality added to your CMS — you can integrate with leading payment gateways to inspire trust and add credibility to your brand. Better still, integrations are so easy to achieve that they only take a few clicks.

How a headless platform supports your preferred ecommerce CMS

Automation and increasing customer expectations paved the way for a new type of ecommerce platform — one that could separate the backend administration part of the site (the "body") from the software running the frontend (the "head"). Hence, the term "headless."

The separation of the frontend (CMS) and backend (BigCommerce) allows merchants to manage all their content in the CMS of their choice while still leveraging BigCommerce's commerce capabilities.

Because they operate independently on separate systems/servers, BigCommerce can integrate with a CMS via APIs, webhooks or pre-built integrations. This allows the CMS to access product data, orders, customer information and other ecommerce functionality from BigCommerce.

By offloading resource-intensive tasks, like order processing and dynamic pricing, to Big Commerce's platform, you can improve the performance and scalability of your storefront hosted in your preferred CMS. When you can fulfil orders quickly and optimise pricing, you gain happy customers and increase profit margins.

In addition, you can refocus your staff's energies on higher-value activities like customer service, and your preferred CMS remains in place, unbothered by all that backend activity.

Benefits of choosing your CMS with BigCommerce's headless platform

A headless platform represents a new approach enabling you to extend and blend your ecommerce site into genuinely immersive experiences. An all-in-one SaaS solution or commerce-enabled CMS platform is still excellent if that fits your business. Adopting a headless platform is an essential next step for those retailers who want a competitive advantage.

Improve speed: Many designers like to use WordPress for the frontend of their sites, but in a CMS + plugin approach, increased load in the form of high traffic and order volume can lead to storefront performance issues. The longer a site visitor waits for the page to load, the less likely they will convert into a sale. According to Google, the probability of a bounce increases by 32% as page load time goes from one second to three seconds.

By off-loading catalogue management and order processing jobs to a dedicated service, we can ensure the site responds and loads with as little latency as possible.

Integrate seamlessly: BigCommerce builds the public APIs for new features, allowing developers to construct headless storefronts for unique use cases. Almost all the functionality of a stand-alone BigCommerce store (like catalogue management, cart creation, order management and checkout) can be accessed headlessly using our APIs.

In addition, BigCommerce can power the backend commerce for many frontend experiences. We've partnered with WordPress specialists to develop our own full-featured WordPress plugin. The API-driven nature of a headless platform simplifies the integration process for developers and allows them to use their preferred tools and frameworks.

Enhance customisation and branding: Separating the storefront from the commerce engine allows your designer to work with whatever presentation platform or coding language is best suited to create the experience your brand is trying to achieve. A headless strategy can combine the design liberty granted by your favourite CMS or custom Javascript app with the speed, stability and ease of use you get with a SaaS service. 

BigCommerce platform + ecommerce CMS success storeys

Capturing global ecommerce sales is no small task.

As content and ecommerce success become inseparable, BigCommerce aims to boost its content-first offering with capabilities that empower store owners to create, design and publish traffic-generating original and user-generated content.

The three websites featured below embraced new technology and a user-friendly interface to make them the leaders in online retail they are today.

White Stuff.

Case Study: White Stuff

White Stuff founders funded their obsession with skiing in the Alps in 1985 by selling t-shirts. Over time, they opened more than 100 physical stores in the UK and Germany. They were not the leader in fashion ecommerce that they are today.

When they realised they needed to adapt to a new reality  — customers wanted to shop using their smartphones — they switched from a slow, clunky platform to BigCommerce's composable architecture.

Content agility became the star of the new online experience. 

The new site was 85% quicker overall and 100% faster on mobile phones, which makes their customers happy since most choose to interact with the brand on a mobile phone.

Kokakat.

Case Study: Kokakat

Since 1971, Kokatat has been on a mission to develop the world's finest and driest paddling apparel. As its online presence expanded, the brand sought to create the best customer experiences possible. The next iteration of their website demanded integrating its product content and storeys throughout its website. 

They needed a robust CMS and ecommerce platform to support its vast content infrastructure.

To support Kokatat's content strategy, their agency partner recommended a "reverse headless" approach, with Contentful as its content management system and BigCommerce as its ecommerce engine. Leveraging BigCommerce's open templating, they built a customised version of the Cornerstone theme to achieve the desired design and customer experience.

With BigCommerce providing the native cart and checkout and Contentful managing the content, they blended the brand and shopping journey across the blog, team and expedition sections, achieving an authentic content-first ecommerce experience.

Black Diamond.

Case Study: Black Diamond

Black Diamond has grown into a global ecommerce powerhouse serving climbing and skiing communities across three continents. They sell climbing, skiing and mountain equipment to avid enthusiasts. Their commitment to the community extends to their ecommerce strategy.

Their old platform kept their world-class user-generated content and customer storeys siloed and disconnected. In addition, the heavy reliance on developers meant they couldn't tell their storeys quickly enough to inspire their customers.

With BigCommerce's headless solution, they found the flexibility they sought. This API-forward ecommerce framework allowed them to decouple the front-end presentation layer from the back-end server-side layer.

BigCommerce gave them an ecosystem to work globally — they could now house their US and EU sites under one ecommerce roof.

The final word

These days, when we "go shopping," we ask Siri to recommend a brand for us or spend time on Pinterest and Instagram looking at what fashion influencers are wearing. The world of ecommerce is shapeshifting regularly. That's why choosing a great ecommerce CMS is so hard — we must consider everything from marketing to design to technical capabilities and potential future needs, too.

Whether you choose an ecommerce-first or a content-first platform, remember that shoppers expect top digital experiences, creative product showcases and brand purpose from brands of all types and sizes.

Combining selling and storytelling is the dual engine powering ecommerce success.

FAQs about ecommerce CMS