subject: Essential Features of Ecommerce CMS for Success in Your Business [print this page] Essential Features of Ecommerce CMS for Success in Your Business
There are many popular ecommerce content management systems available on the Internet and most of popular CMS like Magento, oSCommerce, Zen Cart etc are open-sources. However, there are many web development firms also offering to develop the customized CMS. Well, every CMS has some advantages and limitations and hence you must be careful in choosing the generic CMS or you must be aware of the must have features if you are opting for a customized CMS. Let us talk about some important features of CMS that are necessary for the successful operation and revenue generation for the ecommerce websites.
Search Engine Optimization
Ranking high on the particular keywords can drive significant traffic to your site thus resulting in important leads and conversions. The CMS must have provisions for maintaining and supporting search engine friendly URLs and SEO tools respectively. The CMS should be capable to auto-generate the friendly URLs even in the deep-layered navigation. Moreover, there should also be provision to change the URLs manually in cases when you feel you can come with friendlier URL. You must also be able to change the Meta tags, Meta keywords and page titles that are quite important in SEO process. The CMS should also implement auto generation of site-maps and popular search terms page.
Product Browsing
The corresponding ecommerce CMS must have provisions for efficient and user-friendly browsing features for the products as it is quite important for the conversions. Some features that need to be incorporated are product reviews, zoom-in for products, stock availability, adding to the wish list, email to a friend who might be interested and others.
Exhaustive Site Management
Maintaining an ecommerce site is akin to managing a store and the CMS must have user-friendly store management system. The CMS must provide the flexibility of managing multiple stores from a single common administrative panel. The CMS must support multiple language and transaction in multiple currencies if you aim for a global customer base. It should also have flexible platform for the ease in integration of Web services API and other third party tools. It must also have a sub-CMS for changing the content of any page of the respective website.
Payment Management
The CMS must have diverse payment gateway systems like PayPal, Google, Amazon, Authorize.net, credit cards and it should also be developed in order to accept checks and money orders.
Smooth and Secured Checkout System
At least 20 % of the conversions bounce-back because of slow and ill-managed checkout system. Well, loosing out such customers can be quite pinching. So, you must ensure that the checkout should be of singlepage (lots of popular CMS are ensuring it), the checkout should have an easy and flawless integration with the payment gateway and it should be highly secured.
And seeing the way the Internet is shifting from normal desktops, PCs, laptops and net books to mobile phones and smart phones, the CMS should also have the provision of a mobile-optimized version of the respective site. Well, it is not extremely important but having it in the arsenal will surely help you to stay ahead of your competitors.
