LemonStand's New CMS Combines Content with Commerce
LemonStand, the eCommerce solution for medium, large, and enterprise-grade brands, has revamped its content management system with a flurry of new features.
Now, it's more than just a sofware that can sell – it's a software that can be leveraged to design, create and publish content to grow website traffic and engage customers.
Content Marketing Meets Commerce
LemonStand has made this move in recognition of the power of content marketing. They cited a Demand Metric study which shows that content marketing – like blogging – is three times as powerful as traditional marketing.
With that in mind, introducing the following features were a no brainer for LemonStand.
Content Publishing
LemonStand's new straightforward publishing tools make it easy for store operators to create and manage different types of content themselves. Here's a breakdown of the new publishing features on offer:
- Publish multiple content types including web pages, blog posts, and announcements (with more content types on the way)
- Built-in beautiful and easy to use WYSIWYG editor
- Define categories to organize and present content in a way that makes sense to your customers
- Clear content publishing workflow and simple bulk editing
- Easily upload images and set your featured image
Design Flexibility
The new eCommerce CMS gives web designers complete flexibility over content presentation and the user experience. Here's how:
- Create and customize design templates with your favorite front-end tech and the powerful Twig theming language
- Design content archive templates and apply advanced filters by content type, category, date, page or combined filters
- Develop any format of content feed, as well as many feed customizations by defining your feeds using Twig
- Download the free LemonSync tool for fast local theme development and workflow
SEO Optimization & Traffic Growth
LemonStand now lets users take full control over URL structure, metadata, and all aspects of search engine optimization to grow organic traffic. There are a few ways to make that happen:
- Customize and tune URL slugs for improved search ranking
- Create hand-crafted excerpts that summarize your content for use in archive pages
- Increase search engine discoverability with custom title tags
- Generate backlinks and social shares by easily publishing quality content
Integrate Products Into Content
Most interestingly, LemonStand has made it simple to embed products into content like blog posts and pages using shortcodes. This naturally makes it far easier for customers to find, learn about, and buy products. Here's how it works:
- Include products as inline links with your text in any web page, blog post or announcement
- Embed rich product blocks that include product details, an image and even a “Buy Now” button
- Easily integrate reusable custom text and html widget blocks into a page or post to promote store sales, email opt-ins and more
Just like this move was a no brainer for LemonStand, I imagine many other eCommerce software vendors are working hard on improving their CMS capabilities.
If that is indeed the case, they would do well to mimic the features introduced by LemonStand – because they're pretty much spot on.
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