10+ reasons to create an e-commerce website with Drupal

If you’ve been thinking to create an e-commerce website, the best moment is now. Don’t allow your competitors to grab the low-hanging fruit of online commerce!

Hit the link if you are ready to ask us to create an online store for you. We can also advise you on choosing the right e-commerce platform. Let us explain in this post why we think it’s best to create an e-commerce website with Drupal.

Choosing the right e-commerce platform

Not all e-commerce platforms are created equal. Some are better suited to your business needs than others. They either have the necessary features out-of-box, or offer better, easier, and more native options for their creation.

Yes, it’s usually possible for developers to build any missing functionality from scratch on any platform — but in some cases it might take more time, cost, and effort. So it’s better to not “expect the fish to climb a tree” and instead choose the right e-commerce platform from the start.

Why use Drupal for e-commerce: 10+ convincing reasons

Drupal is a free and open-source CMS that suits every website type. Among the most popular uses of Drupal website development is e-commerce. Drupal’s integrated e-commerce platform, Drupal Commerce, is extremely powerful and follows the latest trends.

So while describing the benefits of Drupal for e-commerce, we will focus primarily on Drupal Commerce 2 development for Drupal 8 online stores. Let’s go!

Content-driven e-commerce

Content marketing is one of the surest ways to get better SEO results — this is how modern Google algorithms works. And, of course, good content is able to convince your customers, keep them navigating your website, and drive sales. This kind of content could include blog posts, user guides, reviews, etc. properly interlinked with product pages.

That’s what makes content-driven commerce so popular. To use this approach, you should have your e-commerce platform deeply integrated into a content management system. If its not out-of-box, you will need a lot of effort to get the two systems to work together effectively.

Even if this functionality is added by a development team, it will be far from the seamless and natural integration that Drupal Commerce has with Drupal. This is one of the big reasons to create an e-commerce website with Drupal rather than with “isolated” e-commerce platforms like Magento or Prestashop.

Unlimited extensibility

If you choose to create an e-commerce website with Drupal, you will see there is literally no limits to what it can be equipped with. You will also appreciate the devoted community of contributors who create hundreds of free extensions:

• useful Drupal e-commerce modules to add any functionality
• beautiful Drupal e-commerce themes to create the right look and feel on your store
• a preconfigured package called the Commerce Kickstart distribution

Integration with payment gateways & other systems

An online store often largely depends on third-party systems such as payment gateways, CRMs, analytics services, marketing automation, and more.

Choose to create an e-commerce website with Drupal Commerce, and you’ll see D8 is a third-party integration paradise. Thanks to the API-first initiative, it gets connected via a REST API to any software.

And, of course, we should mention the numerous free modules for your e-commerce website’s smooth integration with particular services. When it comes to payment gateways alone, Commerce has 80+ of them connecting you to PayPal, Authorize.net, Amazon Pay, Realex Payments, Stripe, SagePay, and more. Let your customers choose their preferred method of payment!

Mobile e-commerce due to mobile-first design

The share of mobile retail commerce sales is forecast to reach 53.9% in 2021. Compared to just 34.5% in 2017, this movement looks like an avalanche, doesn’t it? Add to this the fact that shoppers from mobile phones have a higher buyer intent.

Your Commerce store will have all the benefits of Drupal 8, including the mobile-first architecture. It will be easy to make it display conveniently on all devices and in all browsers. The size and positioning of images, buttons, forms, etc. will make it easy to browse the products, put them in the shopping cart, and proceed to checkout from a mobile phone.

Cross-country reach in different languages

Speak your customer’s language with multilingual online store on D8. It’s a way to multiply your sales with just a few clicks and settings. Undoubtedly, Drupal 8 is the best choice for multilingual sites. It supports almost 100 languages out-of-box, including ones with RTL text direction.

The majority of interface text is already translated by volunteers — you can just use it or adapt to your liking. All content (including products, of course) can be easily made translatable. Your store editors will enjoy handy dashboards. Alternatively, you could also integrate automated translation software, for which Drupal also has free and helpful modules.

Selling physical or digital products

One of the reasons to use Drupal e-commerce is that it is not only suited to physical products. Drupal Commerce includes useful functionality that also lets you sell digital products (tickets, subscriptions, educational courses, and so on) on your e-commerce website.

Products convenient to manage

The same product may come in different colors, sizes, etc. How can you make this easier to manage? The system of SKUs in Commerce is very helpful for this.

Every combination of attributes like color, size, or others, is considered a product variation and assigned its own machine-readable ID called SKU. For example, the same red sweater in size S and size M will have different SKUs.

Among other things, this system helps you keep track of purchased products and the ones remaining in stock. We have described product customization in Drupal 8 online stores in more detail.

Granular roles & permissions

Who can be able to manage orders, edit products, and do other things on your online store website? Often, different levels of access are needed so you can achieve better security and convenience.

Drupal lets you create any roles and assign permissions to them. This will help you foresee the smallest detail of who is authorized to do what on your e-commerce website.

Ultra speed and dynamic UX

Customers love to achieve goals quickly and easily, which is reflected in your conversion rate. It’s possible to provide your e-commerce website with an unprecedented speed and create dynamic user experiences. For example, real-time shopping cart updates, flyout carts, and so on.

Here is where the decoupled Drupal Commerce architecture comes in. At the heart of it lies a hot combination of Drupal and one of JavaScript frameworks. They communicate via a REST API thanks to the above-mentioned API-first Drupal nature.

Multichannel reach

There is an amazing “Create once, publish everywhere” principle. What about creating a mobile app that pulls data in real time from the main e-commerce website? Easy! It’s even possible to have a whole ecosystem of interrelated websites and apps for your brand. Imagine how it can increase your reach while saving your staff time!

And much more!

The list of reasons why you should use Drupal for e-commerce could continue endlessly. We haven’t even mentioned:

• flexible shipping methods
• multiple currency management
• automatic tax calculation
• easy discount handling
• advanced search options
• PCI compliance
• high security
• and so on

Let us create an e-commerce website with Drupal for you

Well, are you inspired, or still hesitant to create an e-commerce website? Either way, contact our web development experts and let’s talk about what your future e-commerce store could look like. The only thing we know for sure is that it will look great!

Our Drupal team has extensive experience with e-commerce, with one of the most famous global stores, JYSK, in the portfolio. Take the first step to creating a store that will reach this level or higher!