How to choose a CMS and create an online store with your own hands

Creating an online store and starting a commercial activity on the Internet is an idea that is increasingly visited by entrepreneurs engaged in offline business. Despite the fact that they are often already established in their niches, the creation of an online store will allow them to expand the number of potential customers tenfold, which means that the business can become much more profitable.

The development of an online store is a complex process consisting of a large number of stages. One of them is the choice of the engine. In many ways, it can determine whether the created online store will be successful or not-still in its infancy. Each engine is able to provide entrepreneurs with a certain set of functions and capabilities, based on which they will have to not only create an online store site, but also promote it in the future. Depending on which CMS you choose, the list of manipulations and actions to be done for a successful start of the business and what functions will be available to you will depend.

But how to choose a CMS for creating an online store? How can the choice of a particular CMS affect the promotion of the site and what features should the engine have-ideal for creating an online store? We will answer these and many other questions in this article, let's get started!

CMS and their varieties, how to choose the perfect option for creating an online store

Online commerce is becoming increasingly popular, and against the background of the global pandemic, such an increase in the number of resources where users can buy the necessary goods — consumers are only happy. Due to the fact that most offline outlets are closed due to quarantine restrictions, online trading is booming, and entrepreneurs are puzzling over how to cope with the high level of competition.

It has come to the point that all entrepreneurs planning to create an online store follow the latest news from search engines in order to subsequently optimize their resources for the new realities of the market, and they will certainly change soon. The fact is that according to Google's assurances, the main criterion for a good ranking will soon be not optimization for key queries, but the expertise and usefulness of the resource from the point of view of consumers. Based on this, we can conclude that in the near future, services that are not able to offer the client something new or useful will simply sink into the oblivion of search results, while the first place will be occupied by resources with the most expert and useful content for buyers. But how to achieve such results?

First of all, you need to make sure that the online store you create has all the necessary functions. To do this, you need its engine to be able to provide you with all the tools to fine-tune the site. Without a number of tools and the ability to install them, creating a successful online store is likely to be impossible, which is why we decided to create this article. Next, we will look at all the functions that are necessary to create an online store that can occupy the first places in the search results.

CMS for an online store: What an ideal CMS should be capable of

Despite the fact that creating an online store is not much different from developing a turnkey website, in order for your online business to be successful, and the resource to attract new potential customers, a number of tools are needed. Not every CMS has the necessary features and they can not always be installed using third-party software, but what should such a system be capable of in general? What should I pay attention to when choosing a CMS and what criteria should it meet? The answer to this question is as follows:

1. "Paid or free CMS": What to choose when making an online store

In this matter, the opinions of site owners often differ, because there are a lot of supporters of paid content, as well as free content. We, instead of proving the correctness of one or the other in the creation of online stores-just turn to the dry facts. Despite the fact that there are free versions of the engines, which are often not inferior to the official versions — yet paid content is in great demand. CMS is not something that serious entrepreneurs are ready to save on, and from their point of view it is better to buy a product than to use open source software. The functionality and stability of paid and free CMS is really different, and most often the paid engines for sites win in this competition.

2. Data security and safety

Creating an online store, a resource where customers will make their money in exchange for your products, the first thing to think about is data security. It is important to note that despite all the security systems and banking software, if a file appears on your site that copies the data — you can expect lengthy proceedings and it is possible that everything will not go without a trial. That is why before making the final choice in the direction of a free or paid CMS, be sure to learn more about system security.

As practice shows, due to the presence of constant updates in this round, the victory also remains for paid CMS. Self-written CMS is rarely supported and often using even the most complex engine and bringing your site to the top with it-you do not have to wait for development and new updates. Paid CMS is constantly being improved and updated to improve performance and data protection.

Thus, choosing a CMS for creating an online store — the best solutions from the point of view of data security will be the choice in the direction of paid CMS, since often they can ensure the protection of users ' personal data at a sufficient level and have constant updates aimed at improving the site security system.

3. Easy to install and work with the administrative panel

When choosing a CMS for creating an online store, remember that it is for you to work with it. Even if you have a whole staff of administrators, it is definitely worth paying attention to the logic of the system and its comfort. These parameters may affect the promotion. The fact is that if you use a self-written CMS, and at the same time it is difficult to call it intuitive, it is possible that you and your employees will make mistakes in certain actions due to the not convenient location of the pages and tabs of the tools. In this matter, again, most often the paid CMS wins.

Such CMS is constantly tested by a huge number of people, and therefore, if there are problems in a particular area of the administrative panel, it is promptly reported to the developers. Of course, you can not always hope for a quick solution to the problem, however, you can be sure that the problem will be solved, unlike self-written CMS, where updates are created and delivered extremely rarely.

4. The complexity of SEO optimization

Despite the popularity of this type of promotion, to this day, not every CMS can provide entrepreneurs with a sufficient fleet of tools for conducting competent optimization. When choosing a CMS for creating an online store, the possibility of comfortable optimization should be one of the main parameters. How difficult it will be to optimize the resource in the conditions of a particular CMS will depend on how much time this process will require from you and how much it can affect the effectiveness of promotion.

Often, CMS does not support a full set of optimization tools. In such situations, CMS plugins can come to the aid of creators. But they can't always help. When choosing a CMS for creating an online store, be scrupulous about studying the possibilities of optimizing the engine that you like. If you create a website on a CMS that is poorly optimized — the effectiveness of further promotion will be in question, as well as the urgency of the resource itself.

Each of the above points can affect both the quality of the online store you created, and its prospects in terms of promotion. When choosing a CMS, analyze the capabilities of all the administrative panels you like and choose the one that suits your needs the most. But what if you don't understand CMS? Next, we will briefly tell you about the leaders of the Internet development market at the moment, and at the end of the article we will share our personal experience in creating a website with our own hands.

Which CMS to choose for creating an online store in 2021
No matter which CMS you prefer, each of them has its pros and cons. The choice often depends on the requirements of the niche and your personal preferences, so it is impossible to say that there is the most suitable CMS for creating an online store. However, as in any niche, there are its leaders, among the CMS there are the most frequently used, it is about them that we will talk further.

It is worth noting that search engines deny that their algorithms give preference to any particular CMS. Due to the popularity, there is an opinion that a number of CMS still has a privileged status in terms of search algorithms. Anyway, the top most popular CMS looks like this:

1. WordPress

At the moment, this CMS is the leader among others in the number of sites on which it is used. Such popularity has appeared for a reason, because this CMS is free, and thanks to hundreds of different plugins, it can be configured to use for any needs.

Despite its popularity, without the use of plugins, WordPress can boast of little and will distinguish itself among others. Thanks to the open source code, you can find hundreds of different add-ons for it, which can even help you create an online store. WordPress itself is poorly adapted for use on commercial resources. But thanks to the amateurs who created plugins for it , it is often used as a constructor, and now and then implementing certain additions.

Despite its popularity, without the use of plugins, WordPress can boast of little and will distinguish itself among others. Thanks to the open source code, you can find hundreds of different add-ons for it, which can even help you create an online store. WordPress itself is poorly adapted for use on commercial resources. But thanks to the amateurs who created plugins for it , it is often used as a constructor, and now and then implementing certain additions.

Despite its popularity, WordPress has both a number of advantages and a number of disadvantages. Due to the storage features of this engine — creating a large online store based on it, the number of products of which exceeds 10,000 - will not be the best solution. Due to the flaws that were added to it at the development stage, WordPress does not work well with large amounts of data, which is why small online store sites remain the conditional limit of its use.

Advantages of WordPress:

• Open source

Thanks to the open source, WordPress boasts a huge number of improvements that just make it the most popular at the moment.

• Huge user base

At the moment, this CMS owns more than 50 percent of all commercial resources. Thanks to this, the search for shortcomings in the protection of the CMS and their subsequent correction does not take much time. Also, such a large fan base allows even inexperienced entrepreneurs to start their own business on the World Wide Web.

• A huge number of forums

Thanks to the popularity of this CMS, you can find a solution to almost any problem related to the engine on the forums that are dedicated to it. In addition, on such forums you can learn a lot of useful information that can further help you in the development of the site and its further improvement.

As in any system, in addition to the advantages of this CMS, there are also disadvantages, their list is as follows:

• Lack of official technical support

Without plugins, this CMS will not be able to provide you with the tools to create a successful online store.

• Vulnerability

Open source code allows hackers to easily bring down sites running this CMS. Despite this, with the help of additional settings, you can protect all data on the site and the site itself from third-party interference.

Anyway, this CMS owns the lion's share of the market for creating online stores and corporate websites. Despite such a high indicator, WordPress has very real competitors that are constantly improving. We will talk about one such competitor later.

2. Drupal

This CMS is in great demand among entrepreneurs, as it is initially excellent for creating commercial resources and online stores. Thanks to pre-installed tools and the ability to further develop the functionality of your site. This CMS is famous for its reliable protection and stability, which the engine we talked about earlier can not boast of.

Despite the fact that this CMS is positioned as ideal for creating an online store, it also has a number of advantages and disadvantages, their list is as follows:

• Stability

This CMS works perfectly for a long time and does not require constant intervention from programmers and administrators

• Easy integration

Having created an online store based on this CMS, you can easily integrate payment systems and links to your social networks into it, without resorting to the help of third-party specialists.

• Update frequency

This CMS is constantly updated, due to which it is a leader in data protection and innovation. Despite the fact that the palm belongs to another engine, If you want to create a really comfortable website, with the promotion of which there will be no big problems-we recommend that you make your choice in the direction of Drupal. As for the disadvantages, they are also present. These include the following items:

This engine is aimed at professionals, which is why beginners may have difficulties in mastering it
For comfortable operation of the engine, resource-intensive hosting is required
A small number of free themes for the design
In general, it is an ideal platform for creating an online store, but what about other administrative panels? Their market share is so small that we did not add them to this article. If you want to learn more about other types, visit our blog, which contains all the necessary information for creating an online store, a corporate website, or any other resource.

How to create an online store yourself

If you have already had experience in developing web resources, then you will not have any problems with creating an online store. If you doubt your own abilities or are not sure that your skills will be enough to create a successful online store — you can always turn to the professionals of the web studio Gloss. Our studio has been creating online stores and developing corporate websites for companies from all over Ukraine for more than 12 years. In our portfolio, you can see examples of our specialists ' work, and in the reviews column, you can see our professionalism.

If you want to create an online store or your resource needs a website and its further promotion-visit the “services " tab on our website and choose the service that you need. After you fill out the application and process it, the manager of our studio will contact you to clarify all the details related to the creation of the site. If you have any questions about the resource development process, or you want to get expert advice on the promotion of an online store-call us at the number indicated in the contacts column, or use the online chat located on all pages of the Gloss design studio website.