It is the inherent nature of man to seek for the best, even if they live in a world of make-belief. Today people understand the importance of seeing and being seen and that no geographical or physical barriers exist anymore other than what you see on a globe. Therefore one must have a robust digital presence, which is amplified in the paradigm of the E-commerce industry. That is where E-commerce Development Companies in Dubai come into the picture. They work tirelessly to build and assemble a website so that their client, irrespective of their industry, make a remarkable digital presence and are unique in the E-commerce circuit in the status quo. But building a website with the shopping cart and payment gateways inducted is not the end of the job. It is the very beginning. Developing and Designing an E-commerce website involves inducting programs and devising ways to handle the system, the management, the administration, the finance, the human resource, the inventory, and all other operations pertaining to the trade. This needs fine skills and persistence, which is possible only when you rely on a hand experienced in E-commerce Website Development in Dubai. Now, if you are someone, who is looking for the best ways to manage the content on their website, this article is suitable for you as we will dive deep and discuss the Top 15 E-commerce CMS Platforms for Online Business in 2022. But before that, let us reflect on some basic frequently asked questions. 

What is a Content Management System?

For sound understanding, Content Management System or CMS is software that helps individuals create, manage, and modify content on their website, irrespective of the individual possessing any specialized technical knowledge. Hence understand a Content Management System as a tool that helps one assemble a website without having to compose all the codes from scratch and without knowing how to code in the first place. 

Therefore, you don’t have to build your system for building web pages, storing images, and other functions with a CMS. Instead, it will take care of all that basic infrastructure stuff so that you can be busy doing more substantial forward-facing aspects and operations of your website. 

Understanding What a Content Managment System Is and How it Works is easy, as reflected by its learning graph. 

Is an E-commerce CMS different from the CMS of a regular website?

Yes. Not all Content Management Systems are designed keeping in mind the needs of an E-commerce site. There are E-commerce CMS has more sections in comparison to regular website CMs. An E-commerce CMS categorically has analytics and graphs, stock management, invoicing system, sales reports, etc., which are essential instruments for E-commerce. This article will limit ourselves to studying E-commerce CMS platforms only.

Why is an E-commerce CMS important for an E-commerce site?

Not every online store owner is a developer with proficient knowledge of coding. However, they want to run their online shop and make it a successful brand. An E-commerce CMS makes this possible. It allows an online business owner to draw on, produce, and revise the content on their E-commerce website without the need for coding. It makes the E-commerce space more inclusive and accessible so that one’s ideas and vision don’t cease if one cannot find a professional E-commerce Development Company for their project. An E-commerce CMS enables the store owner to customize all dynamics of the online store like navigation, product layout, shopping cart settings, etc. Therefore, it is crucial for anyone and everyone wishing to build an E-commerce store that reflects the essence of their brand and caters a satisfactory experience to the world. 

What are the various categories of an E-commerce CMS?

Now that we have understood that an E-commerce CMS software simplifies handling all the backend functions of a particular online store. It is categorized into two groups – 

• Open-source CMS 
• SaaS CMS.  

Open-Source CMS 

An open-source CMS has no upfront cost and is free to download. It provides complete autonomy in terms of the website’s functionality and users. They are usually self-hosted; that is to say, the website hosting, server maintenance, software updates, etc., have to be addressed by the admin of the store. Some of the open-source CMS provide cloud hosting, but for the same, the store admin is responsible for maintenance. For example- Magneto and WooCommerce.  

Saas CMS

The Saas CMS is hosted in the cloud and does not need separate servers. The software vendor manages the hosting, server maintenance, software updates, and customer support. The users have to pay the software vendors for the services taken. Saas CMS usually follows a subscription model for payment. For example- Big Commerce and Shopify.

Who needs a Content Management System?

To answer this question, let us first address what E-commerce is for the sake of clarity. An E-commerce platform is simply a website on which you sell your product and service online and handle product management. Therefore, not every E-commerce needs a separate CMS since it entirely depends on the content plans of the online shop. 

Thus, one can create an E-commerce website without inducing a CMS if their online shop does not require real-time content updates or generating content regularly. Meanwhile, if one’s E-commerce website needs content creation frequently, having the CMS will prove to be fruitful. Moreover, a few E-commerce platforms also work as CMS, and therefore in those cases, one will not need a separate CMS. 

What are the boons of having a separate CMS?

• One does not need to be proficient or even aware of the various programming languages to use a CMS platform and update content. 
• When you do not need developers to revise content, you save time and money significantly.
• Today an effective content strategy is indispensable for marketing since it fetches more audience to your website. A good CMS makes this content management effortless. 
• CMS brings flexibility and scalability to an E-commerce website. 
• Since CMS is entirely browser-based, admins can access it from anywhere across the world and facilitate content management better. 

What are the unique features needed by an E-commerce CMS?

Following are the vital features you must look out for in your E-commerce CMS-

Easy to use 

A CMS must be easy for setting up, installing, and using. In addition, its learning curve must be low, mainly if you are not relying on a web development company for building your website; it is presumed in good faith that you may not be that technically advanced. Therefore, the platform must be user-friendly and allow the users to take action instinctively since the primary objective of CMS is to minimize the complexities in managing content rather than making it more stressful. 

Built-in SEO support 

An E-commerce platform must implement the best SEO practices to obtain high search rankings and drive more traffic. Thus, the CMS platform must-have features like URL optimization, page title, meta description generation, etc. Furthermore, the platform must generate such content and give users the autonomy to edit it if and when required. For example, optimizing URLs makes it easy for Google to crawl your website, while page titles and meta descriptions help rank the page and click-through rates. 

Optimizing UX

Excellent user experience is the topmost priority of every digital system. The CMS helps business owners to achieve their goals by changing page layout optimizing product content with ease. The design has to be simple, flexible, and usable. The interface must be such that it supports responsive design and optimizes content for mobile devices. Statistics prove that most of the population uses mobile to browse websites now. 

Easy integration 

Depending on the functionalities one requires for their E-commerce platform, one might integrate third-party extensions or plugins into their existing CMS. Therefore you must check features like ease of integration with other tools, available extensions, installation flexibility, etc. The number of available integrations also shows the extent of API support the CMS platform extends. 

Active community support  

Choose a CMS which hosts an active community of members who can provide great assistance whenever you face a problem or have a doubt. These members make the community lively, engaging, and innovative and guide you through the latest developments, trends, new approaches, etc., which helps you learn and improve. 

How to use an E-commerce CMS? 

While choosing an E-commerce CMS, one can prioritize the E-commerce functionalities or concentrate on the content. However, choosing their E-commerce, CMS entirely depends on their business. Factors like sales volume, content strategy, business size, vision, maturity, and more influence decisions. 

Ways in which one can use an E-commerce CMS platform are:

• Focus on E-commerce
• Focus on Content

Focus on E-commerce 

An E-commerce first platform is an online shopping cart solution and a content hub next. The listing of products, selling, and management are prioritized, but that does not mean that it is content-averse. Moreover, since content marketing is growing more popular, E-commerce platforms offer more content creation capabilities for generating traffic. 

Focus on Content 

In a content-driven approach, an E-commerce store prioritizes the content to drive the growth of its business. The E-commerce functionality is then integrated as an add-on. This approach engages customers by providing educational and informational content to build a loyal customer base. It also needs impeccable design and marketing support.  

Advantages of integrating CMS with E-commerce website

The integration of E-commerce and CMS is dynamic. It delivers significant value for the business owners and an impeccable experience for the customers. An E-commerce platform paired with a separate CMS offers the following advantages-

More visitors

By introducing content marketing to the E-commerce platform through blogs, case studies, snippets, reports, etc., you provide more value to your customers, making their shopping experience more informative and delightful. In addition to that, quality content refines the SEO of the E-commerce store and drives enormous organic traffic to the store. 

Scalable

Pairing a CMS with an E-commerce platform scales up your website into an online store. For example, you have a blog with a vast reader base, and you wish to monetize it, then integrating the site with CMS like BigCommerce can add a shopping cart and checkout features to the existing site. This will transform your website into an online store where you are now enabled to carry out sales. 

Flexible 

Today every E-commerce system is highly flexible; hence the competition is massive, and there is a need to implement new trends to drive sales quickly. Hence, the platform must be assembled to be flexible enough to respond to immediate needs and manage content accordingly. Combining a CMS platform with an E-commerce platform achieves this objective quickly. 

Ceaseless UX 

A CMS allows you to experiment with the content more. It supports different types of content, designs, structures, etc., more than a sole E-commerce platform. You have to improve the user experience by optimizing each aspect of a customer’s journey. For example, customers are not easily impressed by upfront sales pitches; instead, they want to feel connected with the product or brand. An E-commerce CMS enables you to achieve this engagement without hiring a web development agency. 

Streamlining process

Integrating CMS with an E-commerce platform can attain the perfect balance. On the one hand, the CMS handles content marketing to drive traffic to the online store. On the other hand, the E-commerce platform streamlines processes like management of inventory, safe payment, timely shipping, etc. Therefore, you can deliver a whole package to your customer base. 

The Best E-commerce CMS Platforms in 2022

1. WooCommerce 
2. Shopify
3. BigCommerce
4. Magento
5. Drupal
6. Joomla
7. Prestashop
8. Opencart
9. Hubspot 

(1) WooCommerce 

It is an E-commerce plugin for WordPress; i.e., it turns your WordPress website into an E-commerce store. It is the brainchild of two web developers, Mike Jolley and James Koster, who was then in 2011 working on a replica of the E-commerce plugin Jigoshop. WooCommerce was acquired by Automattic, the parent company of WordPress, in 2015.

It simplifies the creation and management of an online store and offers flexibility and other provisions such as inventory and tax management, secure payments, and shipping integration. One can track orders, engage with customers, check delivery status, updates, inventory management, and many other things. The ease, flexibility, and beginners-friendly approach it offers are why WooCommerce backs 99% of all WordPress stores today and dominates 28.24% share of the E-commerce platform market. 

Some of its famous users are –

• Root Science
• Roberto Coin 
• Porter and York. 

Best features –

• It supports more than 140 region-specific payment gateways. 
• It has many free SEO extensions.
• It consists of over 1300 WooCommerce themes. 
• It comes with a wide range of in-store marketing extensions.

Pricing –

Free download and installation

(2) Shopify 

In terms of popularity, WordPress is followed by Shopify, possessing the second largest market share in the E-commerce domain; therefore, it is quite impossible that you have not come across Shopify when browsing through E-commerce software to host your business. 

It is effortlessly simple to operate on as it provides from promoting the online store, selling, shipping the products to the consumers, opting for a particular pricing plan, and have created your online store. It is a cloud-based software that functions on a monthly subscription model. It gives small business owners access to an admin panel to feed stored data, the addition of products, and processing orders, making it easy to use and putting up an easy learning curve so that store is up and running quickly.

Some of its famous users are –

• BBC
• Heinz 
• Raymond

Best features –

• It has a whopping number of templates and themes.
• It supports selling on multi-channels.
• It has an exhaustive library of free and paid extensions.
• It has social media integration, and it supports sales. 
• It is a SaaS platform, so one does not have to download or install anything. All that a store owner has to do is sign up, ready to get started.

Pricing – 

• The Basic plan – is USD 29/month.
• Shopify – USD 79/month.
• The advanced plan – is USD 299/month.
• Shopify Plus – USD 2000/month.

(3) BigCommerce 

More than 60,000 E-commerce store owners rely on BigCommerce for developing their stores. It is a feature-rich platform, and therefore it is suitable for all business types, be it a startup or established business. Even online stores with complex and hefty amounts of data or very few items can use BigCommerce to manage their products. 

The cloud-based platform carries an exceptionally user-friendly interface, and people with absolutely no knowledge of design can also build their store with the BigCommerce CMS platform. In addition, it has the best E-commerce functionalities and content management like centralized management of inventory, integration of major payment gateways, built-in SEO tools, multi-channel integration, support for social media marketing. 

Some of its famous users are – 

• Skullcandy
• Hush Puppies 
• Toyota

Best features – 

• It supports B2B and B2C businesses.
• It has more than 320 add ons, which are either free or available at a low cost.
• It is inclusive of a powerful, flexible, and dynamic website editor. 
• It supports multiple languages and currencies.
• It is inclusive of templates and theme designs that can be customized.

Pricing –

Standard price – USD 29.95/month

Plus – USD 79.95/month

Pro – USD 299.95/month

For the Enterprise plan, you have to request a quotation.

(4) Magento  

Magento is an open-source E-commerce medium. Designed back in 2007 by Roy Rubin and Yoav Kutner from Varien Inc, it is presently owned by Adobe, and the software is the world’s leading digital platform. Magento accounts for 30% of the total market share and has released a new version, Magento 2, in 2015.

Magento 2 agrees with the latest technology like PHP 7, which loads faster than its predecessors; furthermore, it allows a particular website to update automatically. So much deserving of its praise and market capture, Magento 2 has many new and unique features compared to Magento. 

Some of its famous users are –

• Nike
• Canon
• HP Inc. 

Best features –

• It entails drag and drops technology to build websites. 
• One can create, preview, and schedule their content easily. 
• It is easy to set up and design product pages. 
• It carries a variety of extensions for CRM, ERP, and chatbot support. 

Pricing – 

Magento Open Source is Free

Magento Commerce is – USD 22,000-125,000/ annual.

(5) Drupal 

Drupal is also a popular open-source content management system driven by more than 1,000,000 passionate developers. Though it is not primarily an E-commerce first platform, it can be combined with many plugins to establish E-commerce support. Some basic E-commerce functionalities like management of order, shopping cart, and processing payment can be achieved using plugins. However, the platform is quite difficult for non-programmers to use since it requires technical knowledge. 

Some of its famous users – 

• Whole Foods
• Timex

Best features – 

• It has a built-in workflow system.
• It is highly flexible and customizable.
• It also supports several languages.

Pricing – 

Free download and installation.

(6) Joomla 

Another in the lineup of best E-commerce CMS platforms is Joomla. Joomla is another content management system that offers E-commerce functionalities with plugin integrations. The free extensions available on the platform will transform the Joomla website into an E-commerce store. The appearance, layout, and functionalities of the E-commerce store can be personalized at our discretion. Therefore, it creates versatile E-commerce stores that support all functions, including product listing installation. 

Some of its famous users –  

• IKEA
• Linux
• Harvard University
• The Hill
• UNRIC (United Nations Regional Information Centre for Western Europe)

Best features –

• It is inclusive of a wide variety of templates.
• It has an extensive range of add-ons.
• It provides the basic functionalities for SEO optimization. 

Pricing 

Free download and installation.

(7) PrestaShop

Next in the lineup is PrestaShop. It is also an open-source E-commerce platform ideal for small and medium-sized businesses and startups. A PrestaShop user can choose between fully-hosted or self-hosted versions depending on the level of technical autonomy they desire for their E-commerce store. It has extensive built-in functionalities to support the essential features that an online store needs. These features can be extended using plugins and themes, and its ease and simplicity make it a favorite for amateur E-commerce website developers. 

Some of its famous users –

• Banimode
• Sklum
• Tunisia Net

Best features – 

• It constitutes more than 300 in-built features.
• The design is user-friendly and easy for non-technical users.
• It supports a vast range of payment pathways.
• It also extends support for social media.

Pricing – 

Free 

(8) Opencart

OpenCart is the easiest and most powerful, Open Source, PHP-based online store management system that can manage multiple online stores from a sole backend. Fill the forms in the administrative area and save them, and your OpenCart store is ready. Furthermore, there are abundant resources and comprehensively written extensions available because of the popularity. 

Some of its famous users – 

• Call Of Duty
• Webroot 
• Rover 

Best features – 

• The marketplace is booming, with more than 14000 extensions available.
• Supports multiple payment pathways and shipping methods. 
• The dashboard of the administrator track performance of the store for total sales, customers, orders, etc.

Pricing – 

The basic features – free.

For the enterprises – it charges USD 99/reset.

Dedicated support – USD 120/month.

A one-time store backup – USD 160/ backup.

One-time bug fiving – USD 150/month.

(9) HubSpot

Now coming specifically for large E-commerce stores, where the marketing and SEO side is more emphasized, HubSpot is an ideal choice. The platform is primarily for CMS and marketing automation. However, the functionalities specific for E-commerce can be added to HubSpot by integrating with other solely E-commerce platforms. The SEO features and marketing tools are class-apart, and it is successful in driving more traffic to the E-commerce store and offering advanced analytics. 

Some of its famous users –  

• Airstream
• Crunch
• Rockcontent
• Handled

Best features –

• It quickly sets up customer services like live chat.
• It offers an analytics dashboard that gives search engine ranking, user actions, and more information.
• It entirely automates the marketing campaigns.  

Pricing –

Starter plan – starting from USD 25/month

Professional plan – starting from USD 400/month

Enterprise – USD 1200/month

Conclusion 

Adopting a suitable CMS is a daunting task and critical for your E-commerce store. In addition to that, the ever-growing scape of the E-commerce industry adds ire to the process of making the best decision for your E-commerce business. A sound decision would involve marketing ways devised, flexibility, and foresight for future needs that may arise. It is where you will need the assistance of a Web Development Company like Pro Web, who can understand the requirements of your store, visualize your ideas well and materialize them in a form that is successful in the long run. With years of experience and a dedicated team, they give your E-commerce business just the proper ignition.