6 Signs Drupal is the Ecommerce Solution for You

Submitted by Candace Saunde… on 06/09/2020 - 11:00:am

Finding the right ecommerce solution for your online business can be a challenge. When choosing a CMF (content management framework), there’s a lot to consider, such as how simple or complex it will make managing your content or products to if it has the ability to support your desired features.

While there are a variety of ecommerce solutions out there, including the well-known WooCommerce via WordPress, Drupal is often a great fit for building powerful ecommerce systems. Whether your business is already at the enterprise-level or relatively new startup, Drupal has the capacity to meet your needs on either end of the spectrum.

While there are a variety of ecommerce platforms out there, you’ll need to determine if building a Drupal ecommerce website is the best choice for you. To help you decide, here are 6 signs that Drupal is the answer you’ve been looking for.

Sign 1. You want content management to be easy.

A significant part of building and updating your ecommerce store is adding, editing, and removing content. Especially if you don’t have a web developer on your team, you’ll need a CMF that’s relatively intuitive and user-friendly, offering you and your team features like a drag-and-drop editor and other WYSIWYG tools.

Although content management in Drupal once required more of a learning curve, the release of Drupal 9 has made things much easier. Drupal 9 has brought users additions like the Layout Builder module, which allows you to create custom page templates with a drag-and-drop tool. Check out this video to see what the new Layout Builder is like for yourself.

In addition to this new feature, Drupal’s back-end content management tools include its WYSIWYG editor and Quick Edit tool, which makes adding, editing, and publishing content simple. Moreover, with the Comments fields, you and your team can add admin-only comments to communicate site changes and more.

Sign 2. You want to manage content & orders in one place.

In addition to adding your products or services to your site, information about your company, and perhaps a blog, you’ll need a way to manage the purchases that come through your site. It certainly makes things easier if both your content and order management can happen in one place.

With Drupal, this is possible: Along with your content management tools, order management tools are built into the Drupal administrative interface. This makes it possible for you to view, manage, and edit orders from within your site—that way, your site can automatically stay up-to-date with what’s in stock, and order management is less of a balancing act for you.

Sign 3. You need a robust, flexible online store.

Change is inevitable for most every business. But if your industry encourages constant change (e.g., fashion, marketing, etc.), or your business itself has been undergoing significant changes, you’ll need a platform that can change along with you.

As an open-source framework, Drupal makes it possible to instigate most any change to your site that you can imagine. With well over 42,000+ modules and over 2,700+ themes available for your developer to use, the Drupal community continues providing businesses like you with more and more resources to modify your online store in a way that best meets your needs.  

Sign 4. You’re expecting to scale soon.

According to Google, over half (53%) of Internet users will abandon a web page that takes longer than 3 seconds to load. In this way, even if your site doesn’t have a substantial amount of traffic or content today, if you expect that it will in the near future, you certainly won’t want your site’s loading time to slow down when it does.

Instead, you’ll need a system with the capacity to support a growing audience and content load, and Drupal’s got your back in that department. With the help of Drupal’s modules, you can extend the power of your CMF to support even enterprise-level content loads and audiences.

Sign 5. You plan to expand your business internationally.

One of the greatest benefits of having an online business is that your customer base isn’t limited to the physical location of your business. In fact, especially if you are selling digital content (courses, guides, etc.), expanding your reach beyond borders is relatively simple.

With this in mind, when you expanding internationally, you’ll have to consider that English may not be the first language of all of your potential customers. Thankfully, with the help of Drupal’s built-in multilingual modules, it’s possible to build a site that accommodates over 100 languages. That way, you can acquire a multilingual site that speaks to your customers near and far.

Sign 6. You want to harness SEO & reach more customers.

If one of your ultimate goals with your business is to reach people around the globe, you’ll need a way to let those potential customers know that you’re there. The good news is that Drupal is ready to give your SEO (search engine optimization) and marketing strategies a boost.

While your CMF is not the only factor that influences SEO, Drupal has several features that can supplement your SEO strategy for your ecommerce website. For example, you can take advantage of a wide variety of SEO-assistive modules (e.g. SEO Checklist); the ability to add tags, image alts, and metatags; capitalize on Drupal’s speed; and more.

Another factor that plays into your site’s SEO, but also your site’s ability to reach a larger audience, is a responsive design. While 8 in 10 Americans shop online, over half (51%) use their smartphones to make purchases (Pew Research Center). With that said, Drupal 8 will make your site look great on either desktop or mobile, as a responsive theme is now included in all Drupal core modules.

Conclusion

While Drupal isn’t for everyone, it’s a great fit for many ecommerce businesses. Not only does it offer the flexibility and scalability that most businesses need to grow and change over time, but it makes managing and marketing your business just that much easier.

If you’ve decided that Drupal seems like the right CMF for your business, it’s time to start building or making the transition from your current platform.

To get started, contact us today.