Modern ecommerce platforms are built to capture the entirety of the retail environment—they allow you to collect data, provide you with marketing tools and yes, enable you to manage content. But while Salesforce Commerce Cloud, the most widely used ecommerce platform in the world, has made leaps and bounds in terms of content management functionality, external content management systems—such as Sitecore—continue to provide more robust infrastructures and more easily managed systems.
These platforms enable retailers to manage and proliferate a wide range of content—text, images, videos and more—across multiple channels, as well as to localize in international markets to act upon a comprehensive content strategy.
A retailer’s CMS must be fully integrated with their online store in order to put customers at the heart of every engagement.
Five Advantages of an Ecommerce and CMS Integration
- Enhancements and Customizability
External content management systems support large stores and sophisticated content on ecommerce websites, provide customizability and regular opportunities for competitive enhancements.
- Multilingual Versioning
External systems allow you to maintain multiple versions of the same content for any language, and have a native user interface for creating multilanguage articles in a native ecommerce format. If you have only one resource—one language—in terms of creating content, you can easily proliferate that content to your other channels where they can be localized for those specific markets.
- Content Approval Workflows
The approval process is an essential part of content development—sophisticated external systems have internalized those workflows for publishing or editing new articles. Creators of content can submit articles within the system, delivered to decision makers for approval before they are posted to an ecommerce website.
- Advanced Functionalities
External systems usually have rich ecosystems of plug-ins, add-ons and themes that support advanced content management functionalities. Ecommerce platforms have plug-ins as well, but the content side of those platforms are only one dimension of this.
- Easy-to-Use Interface
While CMS once required the dedicated time of developers to operate, new developments have made external platforms accessible to just about anyone, including content creators themselves. This allows both content creators and development teams to focus on their core responsibilities.Retailers who create partnerships with integration experts can achieve these 5 Advantages by working with them to understand their needs, and define the content management features that will improve their retail practice.
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External content management systems provide robust infrastructures and easily managed systems.
For modern retailers, an ecommerce platform alone is no longer enough. But there are opportunities in external systems such as CMS platforms, which are growing in their accessibility to retailers. And so their primary challenge is no longer simply finding and integrating the right technology—their primary challenge is using it to build a successful retail experience.
