Did you know that Global Retail eCommerce Sales Grew by 27.6% in 2020?

Global data shows retail eCommerce sales grew by 27.6% in 2020. Those sales accounted for about 18% of all global retail sales. It's likely those numbers will continue to grow year after year.

(Source- Click here)

In the current emerging economy, online shopping is the way to go. Be it, Gen Z or boomers, it is widely loved and used by people around the globe for various reasons for both the customer as well as the seller.

Let me tell you a funny story. I asked my nephew (mind you, he is 7 years old) what he wanted for his 8th birthday. He was quick enough to tell me “any cool gizmo would do - make sure you check out those lightning deals on Amazon”. I was shocked. How could a 7-year-old kid know about the lighting deals on Amazon? When I was 7, I could not even remember the names of the cartoon characters.

Nevertheless, I did buy him a cool hoverboard (FROM AMAZON). This is the power of e-commerce and how majorly it has impacted the people of today regardless of their age!

From small businesses to million-dollar enterprises, a lot of brands are benefitting from their own online store where they are showcasing their products/services in a way that reflects their branding.

A Content Management System (CMS) is a tool that enables people and business owners to create, edit and publish digital website content without any hassle of coding. It also enables users to modify as well as update the look and feel of their online store, like switching up the product page layout, attaching promotional stuff, or including more sections on their landing pages to better promote products.

We always get this question - We get what a CMS is, but how can e-commerce stores leverage it to their fullest potential?

In this blog, we are going to be talking about 10 ways in which you can leverage CMS for your e-commerce store!

1) Time Management

In today’s world, if you don’t keep your brand up to date with the industrial trends, your brand essence will fizzle out and your customers will be swayed towards your competitor.

If you own a brand, work for one, or know someone who does you would know how resource-drenching it is to keep your content and your website up to date. A developer not only takes heaps of money to maintain your e-commerce store but also takes a lot of time to make the changes as per their schedule. This in turn leads to brands going into heavy losses.

With a Content Management System, your e-commerce store can be regularly updated and maintained with almost zero resources. Just edit and publish your content within a couple of clicks with no HTML tables and complex tech workflows. A good low code/no code solution can help you magnanimously.

2) Responsive Content

In order to make your e-commerce store thrive, you need to offer unparalleled experiences - great products do not solely suffice the need of the hour. Responsiveness ensures that a customer can consume content that looks great across all devices and adjusts for various viewports as well as screen sizes.

As these website mockups ensure that you have an ideal viewer experience across all devices, your user experience enhances tenfold.

Gone are the days when users would only browse through a standard-sized monitor and designers would only create content for a standard-sized viewport. Nowadays, a customer may visit your e-commerce store through an array of devices and it is your duty to make sure they have a great experience if you want to convert them into a loyal customer.

A Content Management System ensures that your content is always responsive and that your users can gain value out of your business enabling you to have a great brand recall.

3) Performance and Scalability

We understand that measuring performance and scalability is not a one-size-fits-all approach but one can look for loopholes like slow page load, frozen pages, 404 errors, and other analytics-driven performance indicators.

I remember visiting an e-commerce store to cop a pair of sneakers when the Air Jordan Mocha launched. Mind you, I had waited 2 months for this drop and to my utter disappointment, as soon as I added it to the cart, the site crashed!

I felt so frustrated and defeated. I promised myself never to buy through this website ever again! The performance turned me into a disappointed customer.

Understanding how many customers your e-commerce store can handle at peak traffics is very important - along with its horizontal and vertical scalability. Through a Content Management system, your performance and stability can easily be managed.

4) Content Optimization

“79% of smartphone users have made a purchase online using their mobile devices in the last 6 months” -

(Source)

If you observe a user’s buying pattern, you will be astonished to know that most purchases are made through a mobile device. It is important to keep your content optimized for various platforms, especially mobile.

My advice would be for you to opt for an open-source Headless CMS to deliver the same content to your website as well as mobile channels. You can also optimize your content by using a singular column design template for easy scrolling or reducing the number of themes and heavy images or animations that could potentially impact your page load on mobile screens.

All in all, you need to optimize your content and CMS can help you achieve that effortlessly without any external developer’s help.

5) SEO-Compatible URLs

SEO-Compatible URLs are crucial for your e-commerce store in this cutthroat competition. SEO-Ready URLs enable your users and search engines to navigate your brand or find you when they search for your product/service type.

One of the greatest things about a Content Management System is that it allows you to modify the URL slug to better optimize them for search so you wouldn’t have to worry about your efforts going down the drain.

Just make sure that your URL entails a high-traffic keyword, is to the point and uses hyphens to separate the words.

6) Third-Party Integrations

The beauty of Content Management Systems is that they seamlessly allow third-party integrations. Integrating CRM software into your CMS will enhance your brand efficiency to the fullest enabling you to learn so much about your customers by crafting personalized shopping experiences for them!

Integrations are very easy - You can integrate third-party applications to your CMS using APIs or plugins. But make sure that the CMS you use is headless. A Headless CMS offers better 3rd party integrations!

7) Easier Workflows

A Content Management System is curated to keep track of multiple pieces of content at different stages and let everyone involved know what's happening instantly. This ensures ease of use and strategic alignment with your internal team as well as your customers.

A Content Management Systems workflow would essentially enable you to carry out multiple tasks and projects at once with different people responsible to keep track of the progress.

This not only establishes accountability but also acts as a good and accountable measure for tracking each project individually for your e-commerce store so everyone stays in the loop at all times.

8) Sensational Designs

Content Management Systems offer a beautiful array of design templates to choose from. These template options not only beautify your content but also make your work 10 times easier because of customizable and dynamic content.

In the case of running a traditional e-commerce store, one would require a designer to design the wireframes and a developer to code it to fruition. This not only limits your personal creative control of the project and final delivery but also can stop your ideas from fully translating into what you want.

Content Management Systems for your e-commerce store can help you build ANY design, from scratch or from a template that resonates with your branding so you have full creative control at all times.

9) Automatic Sitemaps

If you don’t already know, Sitemap is a list of pages of a website within a domain. There are three primary kinds of site maps. They are used during the planning of a Web site by the designer.

Sitemaps are the first thing that a Search Engine(Like Google) uses to understand/skim your website. So, every time you publish a new page on your website, it is important that you update your sitemap so that the page can be located by the search engines.

Sitemaps are not automatically updated when you create a new page automatically. You have to do it manually every time and in case of spelling changes, they need to be updated on the sitemap too.

BUT

In a Content Management System, sitemaps are automatically generated and updated upon new changes. This saves TONS of manual effort and time!

10) Enhanced Security

In this era where people are so prone to security breaches, it is vital for e-commerce stores to have top-tier protection.

Content Management Systems go through periodic testing to ensure that any kind of security issue never surfaces. They also offer third-party integrations and add-ons to strengthen the protection of the website.

So if you are scared about a data leak or a security threat, a Content Management System is going to be your most trusted companion!

Make a customer, not a sale…

A loyal customer can never disappoint you or your brand so it is your duty to provide them with a great holistic experience from your e-commerce store!

Stay tuned for our next blog! Ciao! 🙂