Episerver Commerce Cloud is a comprehensive ecommerce suite with a long list of content management, marketing, and digital retailing features. The customer-centric platform is designed to provide merchants with the highest ROI (return on investment), and the web development team at Guidance can lead the way.
More specifically, the platform's CMS (content management system) provides online merchandisers with a great deal of value. Here's what you should know about Episerver CMS, including its role in ecommerce, how it stands out from other digital suites, and what types of companies can benefit from using it.
The Importance of a CMS for Ecommerce
First, let's briefly discuss what a web content management system is for and how it can help an ecommerce business. A CMS is essentially a software system where you can upload, publish, change, edit, and add content to your online store.
Aside from managing web copy, you can change the appearance of your website. This might involve adjusting the colors, font, or theme, adding images, uploading videos, or adding plugins, but more serious changes might require B2C ecommerce development services. The best CMS platforms, like Episerver CMS, are user-friendly yet robust, allowing multiple people to access and edit the content without needing to use any HTML code.
A CMS runs on top of a web development platform so you can modify content without affecting the code or infrastructure of your website. Content management systems use various web frameworks, like CSS, JavaScript, and HTML. The Episerver content cloud runs on ASP.NET.
For ecommerce merchants, the majority of digital content within a CMS is product descriptions and images. You can sync it with your inventory system, which allows you to make each product searchable, edit its availability, and enter information about price and features.
With that said, some businesses have loyal followings not only based on their merchandise but also their video or blog content. In these instances, it's important for a CMS to be able to accommodate this type of content as well.
Content is still king in the world of ecommerce. SEO (search engine optimization) is a crucial component of successfully selling products online, and it requires a comprehensive CMS. Having high-quality web page copy with thorough product descriptions and keywords that are searchable on both your website and search engines, plus optimized imagery and a user-friendly interface, are vital pieces of the SEO puzzle.
How Episerver CMS Stands Out
Episerver CMS makes it easy to upload, organize, create, publish, and track content on your site. The digital experience platform has a breadth of capabilities, including those mentioned above, for creating a customer-centric website that generates a high sales volume. Here's a breakdown of Episerver's standout features for ecommerce.
On-Page Content
With Episerver's web content recommendations, experiences will be personalized for each of your visitors. The feature predicts consumers' behaviors and intents and then delivers content accordingly.
Content intelligence gives you real-time insight into your content and how to tweak it to increase your ROI. Episerver also offers optimization as a service, which targets and tests content, then makes recommendations based on the data.
Additionally, the Episerver CMS platform has excellent media management features. You'll have all the tools you need to embed and manage videos, images, and social media links right alongside your other content.
Marketing
Episerver CMS has many marketing features as well, like sending personalized emails with AI-generated product recommendations to improve your CTR (click-through-rate). You can also import customer data to create personalization rules and segments.
The platform's Promotions Engine is an intuitive marketing interface. It allows you to create discounts, run sales, and generate special offers, then helps you target them to the right audience.
UX
Content plays a big role in UX (user experience), and Episerver CMS allows you to manage it all in one place. It personalizes navigation and product search features, continually optimizing suggestions for your visitors.
Not only that, but the platform allows for a fully customized checkout experience. You'll have a customer care page, plus upselling and cross-selling opportunities, order management, and RMA (return merchandise authorization) capabilities.
Episerver CMS also optimizes the layout of your ecommerce website, making it user-friendly and efficient with a streamlined shopping experience. You'll be able to manage multiple sites, brands, currencies, and fulfillment centers in one place, which makes things easier for both you and your customers.
Global Ecommerce
Another benefit of Episerver CMS is that it enables businesses to reach audiences and sell products around the world. The platform allows visitors to access your site in many countries and timezones while presenting them with the appropriate language, currency, taxes, and shipping information.
What Types of Companies Benefit from Episerver?
If your ecommerce business aims to gain more of the market share, court existing customers, and grasp the attention of new audiences, the Episerver Commerce content management system might be the right platform for you.
Episerver CMS is ideal for companies with multiple websites or brands. It streamlines everything onto one easy-to-use cloud-based platform, allowing merchandisers to scale each brand and boost their bottom line.
That said, you don't have to have multiple websites to benefit from Episerver. As a certified developer, Guidance has helped many B2B and B2C mid-market merchants use the platform to optimize their online stores and grow their brands. Some of our notable success stories include Benefit Cosmetics, Stater Bros., Burlington Coat Factory, and Thermon.
How Thermon Uses Episerver CMS
Thermon has been a global leader in the energy, power generation, and chemical engineering markets since 1960. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, the company is a trusted resource for innovative industrial heating solutions.
When Thermon approached Guidance, the goal was to create a content-rich website that reflects the brand's identity and sophisticated offerings. The existing site fell short in some UX areas and was generally not mobile-friendly. Ultimately, these issues and goals called for a complete redesign.
The experienced developers at Guidance built a new website for Thermon on the Episerver CMS framework. With authoring capabilities, drag-and-drop functions, and easy-to-use content blocks with optimized images and videos, the company was able to add content, edit copy, and create new pages as needed. Additionally, with visual best practices in mind, we made sure the Episerver CMS site was customer-centric and mobile-friendly with easy navigation and thorough search functionality.
Thermon stands out in the heating industry for its rich product documentation. With a library of installation guides, energy design tools, owner manuals, spec sheets, safety data, troubleshooting guides, and a long list of video resources, the company needed a solution for managing all this content. Using Episerver CMS allowed us to retain this vital content on the Episerver CMS website and present it in a way that's valuable to visitors while also meeting the brand's future-state ecommerce needs.
Guidance helped Thermon overcome its digital obstacles by developing an award-winning website on Episerver. The site aligns with the company's new branding while upholding its position as a trusted educational resource, streamlining UX, and encouraging lead generation.
What a Certified Episerver Partner Can Do for Your Online Store
Guidance is an ecommerce service provider and certified Episerver developer. We assist growth-oriented businesses in the B2C and B2B spaces with content management, commerce strategy, digital design, website development, marketing automation, and system integration.
While our approach with each client is unique, you can count on a high ROI, accelerated growth, optimized customer experiences, and a path for scaling your business. As an Episerver development firm, we can help your ecommerce business get the most out of the platform.
Your team will be able to manage content easily, and your customers will have a positive, compelling experience when they visit your site. In the end, you'll see a boost in conversions and a benefit to your bottom line.
