Suitable CMS Systems For E-Commerce

A CMS system can be used to control a company’s blog, news, E-commerce function and general interactivity. With such a wide range of applications, marketing managers might find it difficult to decide which system would benefit their needs the most.

Providing a Seamless User Experience

A content management system is purely designed to help manage content, products and customers’ orders, if using an E-commerce website. Whilst the CMS is a very important component, it must be looked at as part of a larger consumer experience – Each CMS performs and reacts differently to one another and has the capabilities to collect a variety of information about the users and their behavior. For example Magento helps to build a better customer journey by picking up on trends of how the site is used. Drupal has a module which can be plugged in to also achieve this type of functionality. A CMS’s goal is to help provide a seamless experience in bringing users to the company’s target end goal, whether that goal is the purchase of a product, a membership sign up or reading a particular page.

One of the most recent updates across all CMS systems is ensuring that each system works alongside mobile use from the earlier Google mobile update. The idea is to be able to manage your CMS on the go and make small changes when needed to and to be able to integrate the CMS with a customer relationship management (CRM) software such as Salesforce to keep track of records on an external source. Sharing customer information across both these systems allows sophisticated personalisation and targeting to deliver a tailored experience to customers.

What features To Look For In An CMS

1. User-Friendly Interface

The first step in choosing the right CMS is to find an easy-to-use interface. It doesn’t matter how complex or expensive a system is – if it’s difficult to use, marketers will be missing out on the advanced functionality thus wasting money. Email and an automated system capturing customer information for email marketing are powerful tools which most recent CMS systems provide. A good CMS has automated capabilities.

2. SEO Capabilities

The next key feature to look for is how well the CMS can work alongside SEO. Self-making website builders must be avoided as these tend to not be compatible or work well with SEO – websites such as 1&1 and WIX are great help for new businesses but make SEO integration difficult.

3. International Targeting

Multilingual support is fundamental when running an international E-commerce – providing the language tags are already integrated in the website header. Social media plays a very important part in online marketing and every CMS system should have this feature already integrated.

4. What Do Your Developers Code In?

Netsuite is a great E-commerce CMS which uses .net from Microsoft while Woo Commerce uses PHP – two very different programming languages. Developers must be considered in the choice of the CMS platform as they need to be able to use it too. Moreover, a CMS providing regular security update patches is a favourable choice as this means it takes security seriously.

5. Product Support and Maintenance

When researching for a suitable CMS, it is encouraged to ask the vendor to demonstrate the product and to ask to see its advanced capabilities. A good vendor will be happy to show how a CMS works. Online forums can provide marketers with some precious additional information, and customer reviews can point out flaws only usage can detect- Pay close attention to any bug defects developers may be reporting online.

Available CMS Systems

Polaris Recommends

Out of all options, we recommend using either Drupal, Magento or Shopify. Magento has a fully functional stock management system included in its software and has a fairly easy-to-use interface. Drupal can be integrated with CRMs such as Salesforce and is used by millions of E-commerce developers. It benefits from regular software patch updates, although this isn’t the best CMS for blogs and news posts. Developers would need to integrate a separate CMS system such as WordPress. Shopify has the easiest user interface but it has basic functions, which means it may not be adapted to all business needs.

Polaris is an SEO agency in London specialised in building international and local SEO campaigns for E-Commerce, travel, healthcare and B2B clients.