Top 7 SEO-Friendly E-Commerce CMS [2024]
December 13, 2023
Rudra Kumar
Summary: This updated guide spotlights seven leading e-commerce content management systems that are SEO-friendly and easy to use. Each platform caters to distinct needs, ensuring a fitting choice aligned with diverse business requirements, technical skills, and growth ambitions.
There are over 800 CMS platforms available in the market! It is bound to need clarification in selecting the best CMS for your e-commerce website.
Choosing the right CMS is an extremely important step for your online brand. It can impact how easily you can create and manage your store, how well it performs in search engines, and ultimately, how successful your business becomes.
So, how do you find the perfect platform for you? Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered!
We’ve rounded up 7 of the best SEO-friendly e-commerce CMS platforms, each with its unique strengths and features. Here’s a sneak peak:
1. WooCommerce: The WordPress superstar, loved for its flexibility and plugin library.
2. Shopify: The all-in-one solution makes launching and managing your store easy.
3. Magento: The powerhouse platform, packed with features and favored by big brands.
4. BigCommerce: Another scalable and secure option with seamless integrations for a smooth operation.
5. Wix: The drag-and-drop website builder, is perfect for creating a beautiful online store.
6. Squarespace: Another website builder with stunning designs and a user-friendly interface.
7. Volusion: The robust platform with a wide range of features for growing businesses.
There’s a perfect platform out there waiting for you. Remember, it’s all about finding the one that fits your needs and skills. So, take some time to explore this guide to compare and choose the one that will help you build your e-commerce empire!
Best E-Commerce CMS for Online Store Visibility in 2024
1. WooCommerce by WordPress
WooCommerce is a powerful and popular open-source e-commerce plugin for WordPress, the world’s most popular content management system. 23% of the CMS market share is ruled by woocommerce. It allows you to easily add a fully functional online store to your existing WordPress website, giving the website owner complete control over online presence and sales. WooCommerce provides a user-friendly platform to manage products, orders, customers, and more.
Features of WooCommerce
WooCommerce offers a vast array of features to help you build and manage your online store efficiently. Here are some of the features that woocommerce brings to your website:
- Product Management: Easily add, manage, and organize your products with detailed descriptions, variations, images, and inventory control.
- Cart and Checkout: Create a seamless shopping experience for your customers with a secure and user-friendly checkout process.
- Payment Processing: Integrate with various payment gateways like PayPal, Stripe, and more to accept payments securely.
- Shipping: Offer flexible shipping options and rates to cater to different customer needs and locations.
- Taxes and Coupons: Manage taxes automatically and create targeted promotions and discounts to boost sales.
- Analytics and Reporting: Gain valuable insights into your store’s performance with detailed sales reports and customer data.
- Extensions: Expand your store’s functionality with thousands of free and paid extensions available for various needs.
- Mobile-Friendly: Ensure your store looks and functions flawlessly on all devices, providing a smooth experience for mobile shoppers.
Pricing:
While the core WooCommerce plugin is free to download and install, running a complete online store with it involves additional costs associated with your WordPress website, such as hosting, domain name, and potentially paid themes or plugins for advanced features.
SEO-friendliness:
WooCommerce is built with SEO in mind, offering several features to help your online store rank higher in search engine results. Here are some SEO benefits:
- Clean and optimized URL structure – makes your products and pages easier for search engines to understand.
- Meta descriptions and title tags – customize how your products and pages appear in search results.
- Image optimization tools – help search engines understand the content of your images.
- Rich snippets – provide additional information about your products in search results, making them more appealing.
- Blog integration – allows you to create valuable content that attracts visitors and improves search engine rankings.
2. Shopify
Shopify is a leading e-commerce platform empowering over 3.5 million users worldwide, including renowned brands like Hasbro, BBC, Red Bull, and Heinz. Its intuitive interface, affordable plans, and rich features make it a popular choice for businesses of all sizes, from startups to established brands. Shopify equips your e-commerce venture with the tools needed to build, manage, and grow your online store.
Features of Shopify:
- User-Friendly Interface: Shopify’s intuitive design makes it easy to set up and manage your store, even without technical expertise.
- Visually Appealing Storefront: Create a unique and aesthetically pleasing online store with customizable themes and templates.
- Mobile-Friendly Commerce: Ensure a seamless shopping experience for your customers with a responsive and mobile-optimized platform.
- Inventory Management: Easily track your inventory levels, manage product variations, and set low-stock alerts.
- Built-in Payment Processing: Accept payments securely with Shopify Payments, or choose from various third-party payment gateways.
- Marketing and Analytics: Track your store’s performance, analyze customer behavior, and create targeted marketing campaigns.
- App Ecosystem: Extend your store’s functionality with thousands of apps available in the Shopify App Store.
- 24/7 Support: Shopify offers a dedicated customer support team available 24/7.
Pricing:
Shopify offers different pricing plans to accommodate various business needs and budgets:
| Plan |
Price/Month |
Ideal For |
Features |
| Basic Shopify |
$29 |
Starting online stores |
Limited products, basic features |
| Shopify |
$79 |
Growing businesses |
More products features like gift cards and discount codes |
| Advanced Shopify |
$299 |
High-volume businesses |
Advanced features like abandoned cart recovery, custom reports |
| Shopify Plus |
$2000+ |
Large businesses, enterprise-level needs |
Customized plan, unlimited features, dedicated support |
SEO- friendliness:
Shopify provides several features to help your online store rank higher in search engine results:
- Clean and organized URL structure – this makes it easier for search engines to crawl and index your website.
- Automatic generation of sitemap.xml – submit your sitemap to search engines for faster indexing.
- Product descriptions and meta tags – optimize product descriptions and meta tags with relevant keywords.
- Image optimization – use descriptive filenames and alt text for your product images.
- Blog integration – create valuable content that attracts visitors and improves search engine rankings.
- App integrations – utilize various SEO apps available in the Shopify App Store.
3. Magento
Magento is an open-source e-commerce CMS platform, best suitable for your SEO endeavors. Magento has a separate fanbase because of its smooth user interface. However, it requires some coding knowledge to integrate your business online effectively. Its customization features make it the optimum option for SEO of the website.
Key Features of Magento:
- Powerful Platform: Magento provides a robust platform with advanced features for managing your online store, including product management, inventory control, customer accounts, and order processing.
- Mobile-Friendly: Ensure a seamless shopping experience for your customers with a mobile-optimized platform that adapts to all devices.
- Global Selling: Expand your reach and sell to customers worldwide with features like multilingual support and multi-currency pricing.
- Integrated Checkout, Payment & Shipping: Streamline the checkout process for your customers with integrated payment gateways and shipping options.
- Catalog Management: Easily manage your product catalog, including descriptions, variations, images, and pricing.
- Extended Functionality: Magento offers a vast extension marketplace with thousands of third-party extensions to add additional features and functionalities to your store.
- Instant Purchase: Enable faster checkout with features like one-click buying and guest checkout.
- B2B Functionality (Commerce edition): Manage your B2B customers effectively with features like custom pricing, quote requests, and negotiated orders (available in the Commerce edition).
- Advanced Marketing Tools (Commerce edition): Leverage powerful marketing tools to create targeted campaigns, personalize customer experiences, and drive sales (available in Commerce edition).
- Page Builder (Commerce edition): Design and customize your online store without coding knowledge with a user-friendly drag-and-drop page builder (available in the Commerce edition).
Pricing:
- Open Source: Free to download and use
- Commerce: Starts at $22,000 per year and includes various features and services not available in the Open Source edition.
SEO-friendliness:
Magento is built with SEO in mind and offers various features to help your online store rank higher in search engine results:
- Clean URL structure – makes your products and pages easily discoverable by search engines.
- Meta descriptions and title tags – allow you to customize how your products and pages appear in search results.
- Rich snippets – provide additional information about your products in search results, making them more appealing.
- Sitemap generation – ensures your website is properly indexed by search engines.
- Blog integration – create valuable content to attract organic traffic and improve search engine rankings.
- Extension marketplace – numerous SEO extensions are available to further optimize your store for search engines.
4. BigCommerce
BigCommerce is a leading Cloud-based Content Management System (CMS) platform specifically designed for e-commerce businesses. It empowers businesses of all sizes to create, manage, and grow their online stores with its comprehensive set of features and user-friendly interface. Trusted by renowned brands like Toyota, SkullCandy, Ben & Jerry’s, and Hush Puppies, BigCommerce offers a robust and scalable solution for building a successful online presence.
Key Features of BigCommerce:
- Drag-and-Drop Storefront Builder: Design a visually appealing and unique online store without any coding knowledge using the intuitive drag-and-drop builder.
- Mobile-Responsive Design: Ensure a seamless shopping experience for customers on all devices with a responsive design that adapts to any screen size.
- Product Management: Easily add, manage, and organize your products with detailed descriptions, variations, images, and inventory control tools.
- Payment Processing: Integrate with various popular payment gateways, including PayPal, Stripe, and Amazon Pay, to offer your customers secure and convenient payment options.
- Shipping Management: Manage your shipping rates and options efficiently with integrated shipping solutions.
- Analytics and Reporting: Gain valuable insights into your store’s performance with detailed analytics and reporting tools.
- Headless Commerce: For developers, BigCommerce offers a powerful headless commerce API to build custom storefronts using React.js or Vue.js, providing greater flexibility and control.
- Multi-store Management: Manage multiple online stores from a single platform with ease, ideal for businesses with diverse product offerings or targeting different audiences.
- B2B Functionality: cater to B2B customers with features like custom pricing, quote requests, and negotiated orders.
- Global Selling: Sell in multiple languages and currencies to reach customers worldwide and expand your business reach.
Pricing:
| Plan |
Price/Month |
Ideal For |
Features |
| Standard |
$29 |
Starting an online store or selling limited products |
Basic features, ideal for beginners or limited product offerings |
| Plus |
$79.95 |
Growing businesses with increasing sales and product offerings |
More features like gift cards, suitable for expanding businesses |
| Pro |
$299.95 |
Established businesses with high-volume sales and advanced needs |
Advanced features, suitable for established businesses |
| Enterprise |
Custom pricing |
Large enterprises with complex needs |
Customized plans, unlimited features, tailored support for large enterprises |
SEO-friendliness:
BigCommerce understands the importance of search engine optimization and offers several features to help your online store rank higher in search results:
- Built-in SEO tools – meta descriptions, title tags, clean URL structures, and image optimization tools.
- Blog integration – create valuable content to attract organic traffic and improve search engine rankings.
- Headless commerce – build a custom storefront that is optimized for search engines.
- App integrations – access various SEO-focused third-party apps to further enhance your store’s search visibility.
5. Wix
Wix is a popular website-building platform that also boasts powerful e-commerce functionality. It allows businesses of all sizes to create and manage online stores with ease, thanks to its intuitive interface, drag-and-drop editor, and wide range of features. While Wix may not offer the same level of customization and advanced features as some dedicated e-commerce platforms, its user-friendliness and affordability make it a compelling choice for beginners and those new to e-commerce.
Key Features of Wix:
- Easy Store Creation: Use Wix’s drag-and-drop editor to design a visually appealing and unique online store without any coding knowledge.
- Mobile-Friendly Design: Ensure a seamless shopping experience for your customers with a mobile-optimized store that adapts to all devices.
- Multi-channel Selling: Sell your products across various channels, including your Wix store, social media platforms, and online marketplaces.
- Product Management: Add, manage, and organize your products with detailed descriptions, variations, images, and inventory control tools.
- Payment Processing: Integrate with various popular payment gateways like PayPal, Stripe, and Amazon Pay, offering secure and convenient payment options.
- Shipping Management: Manage your shipping rates and options efficiently with integrated shipping solutions.
- Marketing and Promotions: Leverage Wix’s built-in marketing tools to create targeted campaigns, promote your products, and drive sales.
- App Integrations: Expand your store’s functionality with a vast library of third-party apps that cover various needs, including marketing, customer service, and analytics.
- Wix Owner App: Manage your store on the go with the Wix Owner app, allowing you to monitor performance, respond to customers, and update content.
Pricing:
Wix offers several pricing plans for e-commerce stores:
- Business Basic: $17/month – Ideal for basic online stores with limited product offerings.
- Business Unlimited: $25/month – Suitable for growing businesses with increasing sales and product listings.
- Business VIP: $35/month – Designed for established businesses with high-volume sales and advanced features.
SEO-friendliness:
Wix recognizes the importance of SEO for e-commerce success and provides several built-in tools and features:
- SEO Wiz – an AI-powered tool that analyzes your store and provides personalized suggestions for improvement, including optimizing meta descriptions, title tags, and image alt text.
- Clean URL structures – Wix automatically generates clean and search engine-friendly URLs for your products and pages.
- Mobile-optimized design – a mobile-friendly store improves your search engine ranking and user experience.
- Social media integration – share your products and promotions across social media platforms to drive traffic to your store.
- App integrations – integrate with SEO-focused apps to further optimize your store’s search visibility.
6. Squarespace
Squarespace is a popular website builder and e-commerce content management system (CMS) that also boasts a powerful and user-friendly platform.Launched in 2003, Squarespace has evolved from a simple website builder to a comprehensive platform for building and managing online presences of all kinds, including online stores. Its drag-and-drop interface, beautiful templates, and focus on user experience have made it a favorite among beginners and pros alike.
Key Features of Squarespace:
- E-commerce Essentials: Squarespace handles all the essential e-commerce functionalities, including product management, inventory tracking, order processing, and secure payment gateways. You can also offer discounts, and coupons, and manage shipping options.
- Mobile-first Design: In today’s mobile-driven world, Squarespace prioritizes mobile responsiveness, ensuring your online store looks and functions flawlessly on all devices, from desktops to smartphones.
- Marketing and SEO Tools: Squarespace provides built-in marketing tools like email marketing campaigns, social media integrations, and SEO optimization features to help you reach your target audience and drive traffic to your store.
- Blogging Platform: Squarespace seamlessly integrates a robust blogging platform within your store, allowing you to share valuable content, engage with your audience, and boost your SEO efforts.
- App Integrations: Squarespace offers a vast library of third-party app integrations to extend your store’s functionality and cater to specific needs, from accounting and shipping to marketing and customer service.
Pricing:
Squarespace offers three e-commerce pricing plans:
| Plan |
Price/Month |
Details |
| Basic Commerce |
$26 |
Limited to online sales, no transaction fees |
| Advanced Commerce |
$40 |
Includes abandoned cart recovery, product reviews, gift cards; unlimited online and in-person sales |
| Commerce Plus |
$70 |
Adds features like subscriptions, real-time shipping quotes, advanced analytics; unlimited online and in-person sales |
SEO Friendliness:
- Squarespace prioritizes SEO best practices, offering built-in tools and features to optimize your store’s content and structure for search engines.
- This includes mobile-responsive design, clean code, meta descriptions, and image alt tags.
- Squarespace integrates with popular SEO tools like Google Search Console, allowing you to track your website’s performance and optimize your SEO strategy further.
Additional read: Top SEO online Tools
7. Volusion
While Squarespace excels for beginners, Volusion targets a different segment: established businesses seeking a robust and scalable e-commerce platform. Volusion boasts a wider range of features, advanced customization options, and a focus on growth and automation.Founded in 1999, Volusion is a veteran in the e-commerce space, serving over 50,000 businesses worldwide. Its platform is known for its stability, security, and comprehensive suite of tools for managing a high-volume online store.
Key Features of Volusion:
- Powerful Product Management: Volusion offers extensive product management features, including unlimited products, variants, attributes, and bulk editing tools. You can also create product bundles, subscriptions, and pre-orders.
- Marketing and Sales Automation: Volusion automates various marketing and sales processes, like email marketing campaigns, abandoned cart recovery, and dynamic product pricing. It also integrates with popular CRM and marketing automation platforms.
- Scalability and Performance: Volusion’s platform is built for high-traffic websites and integrates with leading payment gateways and fulfillment services to handle large order volumes smoothly.
- SEO and Analytics: Volusion provides built-in SEO tools, including page optimization suggestions, meta descriptions, and sitemap generation. It also offers advanced analytics dashboards to track your store’s performance and make data-driven decisions.
- Security and Compliance: Volusion prioritizes data security with PCI compliance, fraud protection, and secure hosting.
Pricing:
- Personal: $299 monthly
- Professional: $499 monthly
- Business: $999 per month
- Price: $1999 per month, unlimited annual sales, and additional features.
SEO Friendliness:
- While Volusion offers built-in SEO tools, it requires more technical expertise to optimize compared to Squarespace.
- You’ll need to manually edit page titles and meta descriptions, optimize images, and build backlinks to improve your store’s search engine ranking.
- However, Volusion provides more control over your website’s structure and code, allowing for advanced SEO customization.
How to Choose the Best E-commerce CMS?
We know going through several platforms available on the internet can be confusing. That’s why we have only mentioned the best ones to use for your online business.
Therefore, choose the best SEO-friendly e-commerce CMS depending on your specific needs and skillset. If you’re a new business seeking ease of use and beautiful templates, Squarespace is a great choice. Its drag-and-drop interface and mobile-centric design make it perfect for launching your store quickly. However, its customization options are limited.
For established businesses needing a powerful and scalable platform with advanced features and automation, Volusion is a good option. It offers extensive product management, marketing automation, and SEO tools, but requires more technical expertise and comes with higher pricing.
Ultimately, the best platform is the one that aligns with your budget, technical skills, and growth goals. Consider factors like ease of use, features, pricing, SEO tools, and scalability before making your final decision.