Approximately 1.8 billion people throughout the world shop online each year. As the years go on, that number is only going to grow, too.
Are you getting ready to launch an eCommerce business of your own? Have you been wondering which CMS (short for Content Management Software) to use?
If you’re unsure of which CMS will give you the most bang for your buck, you definitely ought to consider the Drupal CMS. Read on to learn more about how Drupal can help with your eCommerce business and what makes it a great choice for online entrepreneurs.
What Is Drupal?
If you’re new to the world of content management software and web development, you might be feeling pretty confused right about now. To ensure everyone’s on the same page, let’s start with a quick overview of what the Drupal CMS is.
Drupal is an open-source content management software. It’s used in a variety of websites and applications and is free to download, use, work on, and share. Drupal offers many standard features that you’ll get from other CMS options, such as easy content authoring, top-notch security, and reliable performance.
It’s extremely powerful and flexible, though, more so than other popular content management software programs. Drupal gives you all the tools you need to create versatile content and a dynamic experience for your online customers.
Benefits of Drupal for eCommerce
There are lots of reasons why you ought to use Drupal as your eCommerce CMS of choice. The following are some of the most noteworthy:
Complete Control
Many entrepreneurs find themselves feeling frustrated when creating an eCommerce store because they aren’t able to get things to look or function exactly as they want them. They might have a very specific vision but feel limited based on the parameters of the CMS they’re using. With Drupal, you don’t have to worry about running into this problem.
Drupal is an open-source software. That means it’s open for anyone to use, and its code can be adapted to fit anyone’s preferences and situation. You don’t have to worry about expensive licensing fees or creative limits holding you back. You’re free to do whatever you want and have complete control over the way your website looks and runs.
If you’re sick of feeling boxed in by other CMS options, Drupal is definitely worth taking for a test-drive. There’s a good chance you’ll never want to look back and use something else afterwards, though.
Lots of Support
Thanks to the open-source nature of Drupal, when you use it as your CMS of choice, you also have access to tons of knowledgeable users (remember, the Drupal community is comprised of more than 1.3 million members and has hundreds of thousands of daily active users) who can assist you if you run into trouble.
Drupal also attracts software developers and other tech-savvy individuals. That means that when you reach out for help or have questions, you’re going to get assistance from the best of the best. With some other CMS options, when you reach out for support, you’re only met with vague, pre-written responses or get advice from people who barely know more than you. This won’t happen when you use Drupal for your eCommerce site, though.
The Drupal community is known for being supportive and tight-knit, too. You won’t have to worry about anyone mocking you for asking a “silly” question or not understanding how to do something. Everyone is there to help each other become better developers and create the best websites possible.
Lots of Themes
If you don’t necessarily want to build everything from scratch but still want to reap the benefits of Drupal, you are absolutely free to do so.
Drupal offers a long list of themes that you can download and use to customize your eCommerce site. They’re readily available, and there’s tons of variety, so it’s easy to find one that works with your personal style and aligns with your business’s brand.
Through Drupal, you’ll also have access to tons of consultants who are interested in working with you to help you create a theme that fits perfectly with your site and will appeal to your target customers. These consultants can also help you adjust a theme that you’ve already created and tailor it so that it works for your online store.
Share Content Across Multiple Channels
If you want your eCommerce business to succeed, you’ll need to prioritize publishing content across a variety of channels. It won’t be enough just to have content on your eCommerce site and nowhere else. You’ll need to share blog posts, social media posts, and email newsletters, for example.
The great thing about Drupal is that it allows you to share this content across multiple channels with ease. It helps you to reform and reuse your content without having to recreate it from scratch for each platform on which you hope to share it.
This helps your content creation process to become more efficient and allows you to reach more people with every piece of content that you author for your eCommerce site. Never underestimate the flexibility of Drupal, especially when it comes to helping your business run in the most efficient way possible.
Easy Scalability
As you likely know, your eCommerce business is going to grow and change with time. You might have needs in a few years that you would never dream of needing right now. When you use another type of CMS, it can be hard to scale your business as your offerings and customer base grow. Drupal is designed to scale with your business, though, and handle growth with ease.
Thanks to the innate flexibility of Drupal, as well as the fact that it’s equipped to work with modern programming techniques and applications, you’ll be able to adjust your eCommerce site and ensure it accommodates changes in your business in a low-stress way.
Drupal is designed to grow and evolve alongside your business, and you’ll have easy access to all the tools you need to keep your eCommerce site running efficiently. Remember, too, that if all else fails, you can always reach out to the community for guidance.
Incredible Security
When you’re running an eCommerce business, security needs to be a top priority. Your customers are trusting you with their most sensitive data (their names, contact information, addresses, and credit card numbers). You owe it to them to use the most secure CMS possible (Drupal) for your website.
Drupal is considered to be one of the most secure software options out there. It’s even been used by the White House as its preferred CMS. If it’s good enough for the president and his staff, chances are it’ll be good enough for your online store.
Drupal has strict coding standards that help to keep your website secure and ensure that everything runs smoothly. The community also has a dedicated security team. This team actively monitors the core software to ensure that it meets the standards put in place by the Open Web Application Security Project (or OWASP).
In the event that something does go wrong with the core software, security advisories get pushed out to multiple channels and users are alerted immediately. This allows them to take action sooner and batten down the hatches to prevent any potential data breaches or other security issues from arising.
Search Engine Friendliness
If you’ve spent any time in the online sales or marketing world, there’s a good chance you’ve heard about the importance of search engine optimization (or SEO).
The better optimized your eCommerce site is, the easier it will be for people to find it when they’re searching for products or services like yours in their favourite search engine. This, in turn, increases the likelihood that they’ll make a purchase and help to boost your bottom line.
Drupal offers a variety of tools and features that make your website more search engine friendly and accessible to a larger audience. This includes things like URL optimization and contributed, optimized modules that will help search engines like Google to notice your site sooner and get it in front of the people who are most likely to buy what you’re selling.
Fast Load Times
Slow load times can be a death sentence for any kind of website. eCommerce websites, in particular, though, need to be extra mindful of their load times.
If people have to wait more than a couple of seconds to make a purchase, there’s a good chance they’re going to click away from the site altogether and go elsewhere. This, of course, hurts your sales, but it can also have a negative impact on your eCommerce site’s search engine optimization. If search engines notice that people are clicking away from your site without completing their purchases, they may penalise you and make your site harder to find.
Luckily, with Drupal, you don’t have to worry about this happening. Drupal offers lots of features, such as image compression, CSS and JS aggregation, and theme optimisation, to speed up your load times and make your site as efficient as possible.
Mobile Responsiveness
These days, lots of people do their online shopping almost exclusively from their mobile devices. If you want to reach a wider audience and see more online sales, you need to make sure your eCommerce site is mobile-friendly. It needs to be just as easy to use from a smartphone or tablet as it is from a desktop computer.
When you use other CMS options, optimizing your site for mobile can be an almost impossible task. Drupal helps to simplify the process in a major way, though.
With a few simple adjustments, your site will look just as good and function as well on mobile as it does on any other device. This opens you up to a larger customer base and helps to reduce the likelihood that people will abandon their carts before completing their purchases.
Easy Integration
Drupal’s flexibility doesn’t just make it a great option for those who want to customise the look and functionality of their site. Drupal also works very well with many of the third-party tools you might want to use to improve the online shopping experience for your customers.
For example, it easily integrates with things like payment gateways, social media buttons, live chat, and customer service tools. It can even integrate with Google AdWords to help you access valuable information about your site’s performance and which keywords you should be using in your online content.
You don’t have to worry about choosing between Drupal and other online services. They can all work together to help you create a high-quality, high-performing website that people love to visit again and again.
Language Availability
Most entrepreneurs don’t consider language adaptability to be an important marketing tool. It can make all the difference, though, especially if you’re hoping to expand your reach and build a global brand.
Many online shoppers report never shopping online in a language other than their own. If the information about the products or services being sold on your eCommerce website is only available in one language, you’re severely limiting the number of people who are going to shop with you.
It’s going to be hard for you to grow your business and keep it running if you cut off lots of potential customers by not making information available in their language. Luckily, Drupal has systems in place that help you to solve this problem and translate your site into a variety of tongues.
When people can access your content in their native language and understand with absolute certainty what it is you’re offering, they’ll feel much more confident about using your site and buying from you. They’ll also be more inclined to share your eCommerce site with their friends and family.
Start Using Drupal Today
As you can see, the Drupal CMS has a lot to offer your eCommerce business. From amazing security to easy customization for a one-of-a-kind shopping experience, Drupal does it all for any kind of eCommerce company. If you’re not using Drupal already, it’s time to make the switch.