ECommerce Content Management The first thing to consider when selecting a content management system (CMS) to manage your eCommerce website is your business itself. Not just what you're selling, but who you are, where you want to go, and how you plan on getting there. Once you contemplate and thoroughly ascertain concrete answers to these questions, finding the best eCommerce CMS solution for your business will be much easier. Is Your eCommerce Small Business or Enterprise Level? As I was building a website for a pizza restaurant in Arizona, the question was posed to me: "Which CMS should we go with for our eCommerce enterprise solution?" For their business, I suggested WordPress. WordPress is notoriously weak when it comes to eCommerce, however, for a simplistic online ordering system, available plug-ins and integrations available on the WP platform are perfectly fine. Small Business CMS? WordPress Squarespace Drupal Wix Read about more small business online shopping cart CMS options here. Which CMS is best for your small business? The CMS can give you plug-ins and integrations for the functions your website needs to perform. Another thing to consider is your technical comfort level with simple HTML and web development in general. Drupal isn't as user-friendly as the others but is capable of scaling with growth much easier. Wix is easy to use but you have to buy an extension in order for your online store and website in general to be responsive. If you're small now but absolutely certain of growth, it makes sense to invest in an enterprise platform to avoid the time and cost of switching, which saps time, energy, and resources from your focus on maintaining growth. The main benefit of an enterprise eCommerce platform is a highly functional content management system, custom functionality, and CMS integration with CRM and ERP software to increase efficiency, increase revenue, attract more sales, and gather invaluable business intelligence. Enterprise Level eCommerce Platforms: What to Consider The first and most important rule is to choose a content management system that works around your business and not to try and build your business around your enterprise eCommerce software. Consider the ease of implementation and adaptation by all the departments across your company. Secondly, decide whether you want a hosted solution or a platform that you own. A hosted eCommerce CMS platform has benefits that include server space and easy installation. However, you sacrifice some level of control as the CMS platform isn't yours, it's something you're renting. You run into trouble with adding custom functionality, branding, and usability. Thirdly, do you want custom functionality? Multi-tiered, advanced analytic integration, reactive, mobile payments, individualized customer experiences, automated SEO tools? For enterprise-level businesses, I would suggest a completely customized, owned platform. It's simply easier to design the eCommerce solution around improving the specific and unique goals and needs of your business. Enterprise eCommerce Business? Magento BigCommerce CS-Cart Clarity's Custom eCommerce Platform Magento is one of the most widely used 'out-of-the-box' platforms on the market. Its strengths are that it has flexibility (editing templates, open source) and is relatively easy to use. However, true customization requires costly professional development. Additionally, Magento isn't known for its speed and requires hosting on a dedicated server. BigCommerce is another strong choice for those who just want an out-of-the-box eCommerce solution. It has good social integration and a great app store for add-ons. Unfortunately, limited templates offer next to no customization or brand building. Lastly, BigCommerce doesn't offer 24/7 customer support, which for an enterprise-level eCommerce business making hundreds of transactions every few hours is a big deal. CS-Cart is fast a and customizable enterprise-level CMS eCommerce solution. The platform is scalable and also does well with payment gateways. The drawbacks are that it's not responsive out-of-the-box and only has around 80 add-ons (Magento has around 500 and Clarity has over 200 for shipping integrations alone). Clarity's Customized CMS eCommerce Solution Clarity built our platform after experience servicing the eCommerce web development needs of hundreds of enterprise-level companies. Not only is it fully customizable, it also touts impressive, industry-leading built-in features such as SEO-friendly tools and multi-tier functionality, as well as pairing with our integration platform, Clarity Connect, which allows us to integrate your ecommerce solution with any and all of your back-office applications, automating and improving data and business workflow. Another benefit of the Clarity solution is that while it is built specifically for the individual business at hand, we understand that needs and priorities can change in an instant. This is why we've left full documentation of our CMS for eCommerce system (which runs on a Microsoft .NET and DNN framework) complete with copy/paste code and examples that allow for quick and easy pivoting. If you already use another platform and are looking for customization, Clarity can give you a solution for that too. Just ask over 350+ of our satisfied customers like Disney and The University of Texas. If you're looking for an enterprise eCommerce CMS platform, end your search today by calling Clarity for a free, informative consultation!