How To Choose the Right CMS: A Three-Part Series
Part 3: The E-Commerce CMS Breakdown
E-Commerce CMS Options
We’ve talked a lot about content-driven websites in Part 1 and Part 2 of this series, what about the e-commerce sites? Don’t worry, we didn’t forget you. Most of the same questions apply to this type of site, with a few additions.
E-commerce sites need to be updated on a more frequently than pure content sites – there are constant changes in price and inventory, reviews, etc. etc. Because of that, performance and caching abilities on your CMS become even more important. You want your site to be capable of performing, even without caching.
Security also takes on a bigger role. Of course, which CMS you choose is only one piece of the security puzzle you should be considering with an e-commerce site. Even if payment method data never touches your website (thanks to Stripe or similar payment platforms), you will still need to be able to protect any consumer data you do collect. Here are the heavy-hitters e-commerce CMS options to consider.
1. Craft Commerce
Our love of Craft CMS continues one here – Craft Commerce is a great option for small to medium sized e-commerce websites. A full Craft Commerce license isn't cheap, especially when compared to free options like Woo Commerce or Magento. However, Craft Commerce equips you with the power and ease of use of Craft CMS. Craft Commerce is also a first-party plugin, built and managed by the same team behind Craft CMS.
2. Woo Commerce
For small e-commerce sites, Woo Commerce is at the top of the list. Built as a WordPress plugin, its biggest strength is simplicity and usability. But with those strengths, it also carries WordPress's weaknesses – a lack of performance. Stores with significant inventory or traffic will quickly notice a performance hit.
3. Magento
For large stores, a more focused e-commerce solution like Magento is a safe bet. While Craft Commerce is capable of handling hefty e-commerce needs, at a certain point, clients may be better off turning to platforms specifically built for e-commerce. Magento is built specifically with e-commerce in mind. The current version is split between a self-hosted Magento Open Source edition and the fully managed Magento Commerce option. Either provides you with the ability to build a fully tailored e-commerce website that can handle heavy traffic volume and large inventories.
4. Shopify
Shopify stands as one of the most popular e-commerce options in use today. We consider Shopify the Squarespace of e-commerce platforms. It’s fully managed and relatively simple to set up, so Shopify is a great option for starter e-commerce sites or anyone with a solid side hustle. Like Magento, Shopify can handle heavy traffic and large inventories, except it limits your ability to customize. Large e-commerce businesses would be better served by Magento.
5. Going Custom
A custom e-commerce CMS is basically a unicorn sighting – it doesn't happen often. But from time to time businesses do outgrow the capabilities of even the most robust CMS.
When the volume and complexity of the content hosted on your site becomes too much for your CMS to handle, it may be time for a fully custom website.
Instead of using a CMS platform, you would build a custom CMS. This will increase the price tag, but it will equally increase what you are able to do. Imagine the optimized content storage and retrieval you get with Craft, combined with the simplicity of Wordpress? With the right development team on the job who can manage the complexities involved, you may be able to have something close to that combination built in.
But even in a custom build, there is no reason to start at ground zero. There are frameworks and libraries that can speed up the development of both the back-end and front-end. Our favorite, Laravel, provides the foundation for custom websites, with a variety of additional back-end and front-end libraries. The end result will be a platform built from bottom to top to meet your specific business needs. Pus, when executed correctly, custom-built websites can be easier to maintain than a generic CMS. And unlike CMS websites that could need major upgrades or migrations with new software versions, custom built CMSs might be able to power your websites, even through redesigns, for years into the future.
In the end, choosing any CMS will come with tradeoffs. But despite all the similarities, if you’ve made your decision based on all of these important questions and a little extra research, you’ll be in good shape.
Research and brainpower by Chris Roberts.
