If you want your own online store, sooner or later you will hear the word CMS. Here I explain what it is, how it works and why it is the most common way to build a website without writing code from scratch.
What CMS means
CMS stands for Content Management System. It is software that lets you create, edit and publish the content of a website (texts, products, images, prices) from an admin panel, without touching code.
How it works
A CMS separates two things:
- The content: what you upload (products, pages, articles).
- The design: the template or theme that defines how it looks.
When someone visits your website, the CMS takes the content, combines it with the design and builds the page. This relies on the logic of the World Wide Web we saw in the first web page in history: URL, HTTP and HTML.
What an eCommerce CMS can do
- Upload and organize products, variants and stock.
- Receive payments and calculate shipping.
- Manage orders and customers.
- Extend features with plugins or apps.
The most used CMS platforms for selling online
- WooCommerce (WordPress): very flexible, requires your own hosting.
- Tienda Nube and Empretienda: very popular in Argentina, hosting included.
- Shopify: international platform, monthly subscription.
- Wix: simple, aimed at small sites.
- PrestaShop and Magento: powerful, more technical.
Advantages and limits
Advantages: control of your brand and your customer data, no dependence on another platform's rules, and a website that is yours.
Limits: you have to generate your own traffic. Nobody visits your store just because it exists, and that is where SEO, advertising and social media come in.
Next step
In the next article we look at the other path: what a marketplace is.