What Is a Modern Ecommerce CMS? (And Why Do Marketers Need One?)

A modern ecommerce CMS enables marketers to create, edit, publish and manage content as part of a seamless shopping experience. That means handling blog updates, product descriptions, and other standard requirements of a content management system. However, in the modern digital landscape, where the buyer’s journey spans multiple devices and requires a personalized interaction for every customer at every touchpoint, just handling content publication isn’t enough.

Marketers also need an ecommerce CMS to help them overcome many of the challenges they face on a daily basis as B2B customer expectations change. Some of these challenges include:

• Digital channels dominate other sales channels, and there is an ever-increasing number of channels where they need to publish content,

• Customers want their buying experience to be at the same level as their B2C experiences,

• There is a growing complexity of modern software stacks.

To overcome these challenges and more, there are certain things that marketers will need from their ecommerce CMS.

7 Things Marketers Need From an Ecommerce CMS

1. Omnichannel Publishing

Today’s customers aren’t only shopping on one channel, and consequently, marketers can’t afford not to publish where their customers are going. An ecommerce CMS needs to support content publishing on more than just a brand website or ecommerce shop. It also needs to allow marketing campaigns to be spread across multiple channels, including social media platforms and digital marketplaces. These campaigns also need to be connected, allowing customers to switch channels effortlessly without feeling like they’re interacting with a different brand.

2. An Integrated Content Hub

Managing content on multiple channels takes a lot of effort. Marketers need a CMS that acts as an integrated content hub, allowing them to see how content looks on each channel and how it’s all linked together, all from one central location.

3. Freedom From Developers

Modern ecommerce campaigns are fast-moving. Landing pages and promotions need to be launched quickly and still adjusted for different audiences. In order to achieve the level of speed required, marketers need to be able to do things without bothering developers to help them. Creating landing pages, implementing SEO, and making updates to content need to be done independently.

4. Easy Tool Integrations

It takes more than just a CMS to run an ecommerce store. Analytics tools, A/B testing, personalization engines, and more are also components of an ecommerce software stack and are often used by B2B marketers to create the best campaign and increase conversions. A CMS needs to be able to integrate with these other tools so that marketers can gather relevant data from them and use it to improve their content marketing efforts.

5. User-friendly Authoring Experience

An intuitive authoring experience is a necessity for B2B marketers. They need WYSIWYG editing and drag and drop functionality that enables them to move components where they need to go.

6. Ability to Manage Multiple Sites and Locales

B2B marketers often cater to multiple markets and audiences located in different regions and countries across the globe. With audiences that speak different languages and have unique cultural preferences, marketers need to be able to adjust things accordingly. This might also include managing microsites that share similar content without duplicating that content unnecessarily.

7. Streamlined Workflows and Collaboration

With multiple teams working together and multiple campaigns going on simultaneously, marketers need access to a CMS that can allow them to define the best workflows for their needs so that content gets approved correctly and errors can be spotted quickly before any damage is caused.

Magnolia: Catering to Marketer’s B2B Ecommerce Needs

The modern B2B marketer needs a CMS that enables them to publish content onto multiple channels, integrate with additional tools, view everything in one place, and manage campaigns without overreliance on IT.

The solution to these challenges and the provider of everything these marketers need is a digital experience platform (DXP). Magnolia’s DXP includes a headless CMS that sits at the heart of the platform and supports B2B marketers with their commerce needs, allowing them to blend content and commerce.

Magnolia allows marketers to create content once and publish it wherever they want, allowing them to quickly spin up campaigns and generate revenue. By effortlessly integrating with other ecommerce tools, Magnolia also provides unified customer data that gives a 360-degree view of customers, allowing marketers to personalize campaigns, quickly send campaigns to market and manage multiple sites and brands.

After acquiring Home Retail Group, Sainsbury’s needed one tool to help them efficiently manage multiple brands and technologies. Magnolia provided the author-first approach their marketers needed to create an engaging customer experience across multiple channels. Since implementing Magnolia, they have reached their critical KPIs without additional costs.