Open Season on Open Source: Free Content Management Tools for Ecommerce

The “e” in “ecommerce” sets your business apart from storefront or warehouse operations, and the difference could not be more prolific.

Electronic and digital processing, advertising, communications, inventory control, and the like, functions well only with a reliable content management system, or CMS. It enables creating, editing, organizing, and publishing content you rely on to run your business on a day to day basis.

We’ve come a long way since headache-inducing HTML coding was necessary to develop anything worth viewing over a digital screen. Modern functions are more seamless than ever.
From small-time web sites and blogs to sophisticated multi-page systems, the CMS you use is arguably one of the most essential functions of your ecommerce business. When it’s user-friendly, it delivers even more benefits you can’t put a price on. Indeed, you don’t need to break the bank in order to maintain excellent control over content.
 
Take control with open source CMS
Open source means freedom and flexibility; it offers a host of possibilities for visual and functional fulfillment with enough customization to truly brand your own enterprise. With more control, you call the shots. Your limits lie in your creativity and visualization.

Plenty of open source CMS options offer free usage, making it an even more attractive option. All it takes is a bit of study and time.
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Here are some to consider:

• WordPress. The granddaddy of them all. WordPress has more than 15 years of reliable content management delivery that began as a simple tool for bloggers and has expanded to meet the needs of electronic and digital commerce. A good percentage of all websites from meager to massive run on WordPress in 2019. Flexibility is a main benefit, with over 54,000 plug-ins to customize your site.
  
  
• Joomla. Despite its easy interface, Joomla represents about 10 percent of all business websites in the entire world. That’s impressive. Being friendly to mobile optimization and search-engine access helps, but the app has many more pluses you’ll want to consider.
  
  
• Magento Open Source. Tailored to ecommerce, Magento dishes out delicious options for marketing, SEO, and product management, and makes customization a snap through themes and extensions that relate to customer support, payments, shipping, and more. As an affiliate of Adobe Systems, its menu is rich with appealing graphics.
  
  
• Webflow. Seamless store functions operate nicely through Webflow, an app catering to custom blogs, ecommerce vendors, and others dependent on interaction. Clean semantic code leads to publication-ready content and structure in keeping with your theme. Customize your cart layout and positioning, and throw in animation to capture attention. Two projects are free; anything beyond that is affordable.

Check out these other open source CMS apps to see if any may work for your purposes. The price is right (free), and the continual updating of options and add-ons make each irresistible.

• SilverStripe
• Drupal
• Craft
• Contao

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