How To Use HubSpot CMS To Build An eCommerce Website

Are you someone who is currently using (or wants to use) HubSpot CMS yet aren’t sure if you can also have it work with eCommerce?

In this blog post, we’ll explain how a great HubSpot CMS Developer can use Commerce Layer and HubSpot CMS work together and provide some tips on how to get the most out of them. In turn, you’ll be able to use HubSpot’s CMS for an eCommerece website.

Let’s get started!

What Is HubSpot CMS? 🗃️🤔

HubSpot’s content management system, commonly known as HubSpot CMS, is a platform that helps you create, edit, store, and publish web content in an easy-to-manage way. That means you can create and edit content in a single place — and publish it to the web from the same application!

When you build a website on HubSpot CMS, everyone wins. Developers use flexible themes, and marketers easily edit pages of their own to suit customers’ needs — thanks in part because it’s backed by CRM tools that can help them keep track of what someone wants or needs better than ever before!

You’ll get pre-built website themes, SEO recommendations, fully-integrated CRM, a drag-and-drop editor, adaptive testing, contact attribution reporting, and much more with HubSpot CMS. You’ll also be able to manage your update schedule with ease, and you don’t have to worry about a HubSpot CMS developer being unavailable because working with HubSpot CMS is relatively straightforward.

In addition, HubSpot CMS helps you create strategies that increase customer loyalty through product information updates, such as adding new features into the selection list without delay in delivering these changes — while also letting users know how much time they’ve spent browsing their account so far.

The most significant advantage of HubSpot CMS is it combines all publishing tools into one compact solution, where you can easily edit, test, and integrate your content using the marketing stack available. This CMS is also lightweight and responsive by design while effortlessly personalising the content as per the buyer persona details.

Integrating HubSpot CMS With Commerce Layer 🔁🤝

Integrations connect the software you’re using with third-party applications so that the two otherwise disparate systems can share information. This enhances your system’s functionality and provides additional features you may not have within your system.

If you have been using HubSpot CMS (or are wanting to), you can do something interesting by combining it with Commerce Layer. This platform allows businesses to create and manage their own eCommerce websites by natively supporting modern development workflows like Jamstack.

Here’s the innovative idea we want to suggest: You can integrate HubSpot CMS with Commerce Layer (that is, use HubSpot CMS for an eCommerce website) — and let your eCommerce site grow; without relying too much on website plugins! If that sounds unconventional (or just outright crazy!), don’t worry — we’ll walk you through what we mean!

HubSpot’s integration ecosystem is constantly growing, and it now integrates over 308 different third-party technologies. With their ecosystem, you can use HubSpot and your favourite tools together. That’s why, with HubSpot’s CMS and the cutting-edge technology it delivers, your business can overcome the limitations of traditional solutions. HubSpot integrates with many legacy systems as well as marketing and sales tools so that you can access and leverage the best third-party applications. You can connect hundreds of applications to HubSpot through API keys, including custom-built platforms.

Because of the easy API integration, the CMS then becomes fast and flexible, Jamstack-ready, and cost-effective. It’s also a great way to ensure that your technology is future-proof. That is why more and more developers worldwide are keen on using Commerce Layer in combination with HubSpot to build excellent shopping experiences, helping brands go headless effectively and scale their business globally. We’ll now teach you how to use HubSpot’s CMS for an eCommerce website.

An Innovative Way of Building eCommerce Sites! 🧠💡

If you’re looking for a more efficient and innovative way to build an eCommerce site,  Commerce Layer could be the solution you need. What’s great about it is that it integrates seamlessly with many CMS platforms (including HubSpot CMS), making setup and management reasonably straightforward.

In addition, Commerce Layer is a modern and flexible eCommerce solution that provides outstanding enterprise-level features to any business. It’s headless and CMS agnostic, so you can use it with any platform on your site without worrying about getting in the way of flows — unlike other traditional platforms, which either require extensive coding knowledge from users or choosing preexisting themes and templates!

So if you’re ready to take your online sales to the next level, keep reading further on how to get started with Commerce Layer and HubSpot CMS.

How Can Commerce Layer Work With HubSpot? ⚙️👷

Digital agencies worldwide, the best developers and innovators, have been searching for a platform to fill their clients’ needs. They needed an eCommerce solution to meet all these demands and challenge the traditional solutions like WooCommerce, Shopify, or Magneto in its own game! That is why in 2018, Commerce Layer was created — a new model explicitly designed to change how business gets done online without having any sacrifice involved whatsoever.

Yet another eCommerce platform, but why?

Mainly because Commerce Layer is a transactional commerce API that lets you build fully-fledged and interactive eCommerce websites with the help of its REST API, pre-built integrations, and a wide variety of development tools. It provides an extensive set of resources and blazing-fast APIs.

With its composable architecture, you are getting international scalability, not to mention a global edge network and a fantastic support team! Commerce Layer is the headless solution for fast-growing businesses — unlike other traditional solutions.

In addition, Commerce Layer supports high-traffic spikes. On-premise solutions seem to suffer when the traffic grows: Their slowness has become proverbial. Commerce Layer, however, adapts to the changes in web traffic and supports all business models, despite their complexities. When you have to sell internationally or scale your business rules, no other platforms come close to Commerce Layer!

Also, being CMS agnostic, it integrates with almost all CMSes available, helping brands go headless the right way and scale their business — and that’s where HubSpot as a content management system comes in.

Besides, with the drop-in library of Commerce Layer, you can make any site shoppable with almost no code! It’s a quick and straightforward way to create eCommerce. And there are many specific uses for this powerful tool—like adding shops on Jamstack sites or transforming Shopify themes into multi-market stores that sell in more than one marketplace today.

The ease and power come at little cost, but more on pricing later!

What Can You Do With Commerce Layer? 💭🤷‍♀️

• Create a new eCommerce site from scratch.

With Commerce Layer, you can build an eCommerce site from scratch — one of its primary use cases. Whether you are adding shopping carts or orchestrating all eCommerce activities, Commerce Layer will fit your current stack — and help you accomplish your business needs.

• Add a shopping cart to your existing website.

Suppose you already have a marketing website. In that case, you might want to enable eCommerce to your existing website. All you need to do is connect Commerce Layer to the website — and make it shoppable with Commerce Layer’s APIs. It’s as straightforward as that!

• Build eCommerce sites into your native mobile apps.

These days more and more businesses are being conducted via mobile devices. Consumers prefer native mobile applications over mobile-responsive websites, so your company must build an eCommerce platform for mobile devices. This is where Commerce Layer will act as a back-end API for mobile development and take your business to the next level.

• Integrate your POS software and sell in store.

Since Commerce Layer provides a headless experience for the content management system, you can integrate the eCommerce site to any platform, from kiosks to the point of sales (POS). Besides, omnichannel eCommerce is all about providing seamless integration whether your customers are shopping online or at stores.

• Add eCommerce to wearable or voice devices.

The face and fate of eCommerce platforms are changing drastically — and in the near future, people might rely more on wearable technology (smartwatches) or voice devices (Alexa or Google Assistant) to buy products. To stay future-proof, you should add your eCommerce site to such emerging devices — and Commerce Layer will help you keep abreast of the latest developments and innovations.

• Create a subscription-based model.

When you are selling online, selling through subscriptions is a sure way of increasing your revenues and building customer loyalty. To help your customers place recurring orders, Commerce Layer’s APIs will come to your assistance.

• Create a multi-vendor eCommerce.

Depending on your business model and requirements, Commerce Layer helps you create a multi-vendor eCommerce. With the help of available APIs, customers can place orders that are automatically split among multiple vendors.

• Make print catalogues shoppable through QR codes.

Imagine being able to trigger an API call just by displaying a QR code on your product page. This would allow you to connect the physical world with a Commerce Layer, just like building eCommerce websites or mobile apps!

Commerce Layer vs Shopify — An Honest Comparison 🧐🔎

Let’s compare Commerce Layer with a behemoth of an eCommerce platform, Shopify (or its premium version, Shopify Plus!) Though the Plus version offers enhanced performance in terms of speed and additional features, it’s not that different from the standard Shopify when offering online shopping functionality.

Both Shopify and Commerce Layer are fully-managed SaaS products. However, rather than providing an all-in-one solution, Commerce Layer helps you integrate tools of your choice. In that sense, Commerce Layer is more flexible than Shopify. Besides, with Commerce Layer, you can add eCommerce to any website via composable APIs.

This developer-centric approach of Commerce Layer (in contrast with the web-centric system of Shopify) helps your company build eCommerce sites via the Jamstack method — a contemporary architecture designed to make browsing faster and secure! When your eCommerce website loads faster, it’s going to have a more significant impact on your conversion rate, leading up to an 8% increase in conversions! 

Building a website on Shopify essentially means using one of their pre-built templates and themes. They have a range of such templates for product description and listing pages — all you have to do is work within the predefined structure. This limits your flexibility and controls your development workflow. You can indeed use GraphQL to leverage more features out of Shopify, but when you want to go ‘truly headless,’ Shopify curtails your options! 

Also, headless commerce is not native to Shopify, while Commerce Layer effectively decouples the website’s front-end from its back-end logic. With Commerce Layer, you can integrate the ideal CMS of your choice, such as Contentful, Sanity, HubSpot, etc. You can also define any content model and support any custom design.

Besides, Commerce Layer allows you to continue using your current CMS (or switch to a better one!) while developers can work with languages and tools of their choice. Since you are not working within the boundaries of a predefined template, you have the freedom to create your own site structure — and because of that, coding is required from Day 1.

Also, working with Commerce Layer means working in a multi-currency, multi-language, and market-specific platform: something that’s rare to find in a single software solution!

Commerce Layer Is Not ‘Content’ Layer — That’s Where HubSpot Comes In! 💡🚀

With Commerce Layer, you can make anything shoppable — anywhere!

However, Commerce Layer doesn’t work as a content management system per se though it has interactive spaces to include product descriptions and relevant details. Subsequently, HubSpot’s APIs enable teams of any shape or size to build robust integrations so that they can customise and get the most value out of HubSpot CMS. With the Commerce Layer API, you can connect it with HubSpot and get the best out of the marketing, sales, and CRM platform.

Anyone who’s ever tried to use an engineering platform as a marketing expert will know that it just doesn’t work. The same goes for any eCommerce site which tries to do the job of both content manager and website developer at once — they need flexibility, creativity, and inspiration in equal measure if things are going to be well managed!

With Commerce Layer, you can truly innovate and transform any boring catalogue into rich content that converts. This is because Commerce Layer seamlessly integrates with the best breed CMSes like Contentful, Drupal, or HubSpot, meaning you don’t have to worry about CMS lock-in! The point is to seamlessly integrate the CMS with the Commerce Layer so that you can get the best of both worlds.

Commerce Layer Pricing 💰💳

Commerce Layer is both flexible and budget-friendly.

You can sign up for free and work in test mode. You can enter your credit card details when you want to activate the premium plan. Commerce Layer is free for developers to try out their APIs without time limits. You can switch to a paid plan when you’re ready!

Besides, Commerce Layer is a subscription-based enterprise platform that anyone can use. It’s perfect for early-stage businesses and established brands looking to grow their business in new ways! You won’t see any hidden fees within — their pricing model strives to keep you profitable without sacrificing the quality of service.

As promised by the company, the eCommerce service provider comes with a fixed cost per order — no revenue share, no set-up fees, no hidden costs at all. For start-ups, you pay $0.90 per order — and you get all platform features, unlimited users/records/API calls, dedicated 24/7 support, and assisted configuration.

You can pay by credit card and cancel anytime. However, the complete pricing for a team depends on the number of orders and business requirements. This is where you can contact the company to get custom pricing!

Remember that Commerce Layer integrates with many payment gateways and third-party tools — and their cost is not added to the price per order. 

Here’s an exciting thing! 👇👇👇

Commerce Layer offers a pro bono plan, meaning they are open to helping non-profit organisations or small businesses with special needs. IF you feel this is you, all you have to do is write to them so that they can evaluate if you’re a viable candidate and go from there.

Challenges When Using Commerce Layer With HubSpot 🤨👀

Digital commerce has changed, and there is an increasing demand for faster and more efficient solutions. More technologies are arising, more online stores are erupting, and customers make purchases mostly on mobile devices.

There are challenges with traditional commerce, and a headless platform solves those challenges — and Commerce Layer supercharges your digital experiences. However, you need to consider this before you sign up!

There’s a reason why Commerce Layer was created. It’s best for innovators who want to create their own customer experience rather than rely on templates — or work with an API and take charge of your front-end layer. If you are not too confident about APIs or frontends, this might not be an option for you.

Since we’re talking about the Jamstack approach, coding is essential from the very beginning. That’s why having access to developers who can work competency with these technologies is a must if you want to leverage the best out of both platforms.

Final Thoughts 🏁👇

So the idea is to connect HubSpot CMS with Commerce Layer to create a fully-fledged eCommerce platform, one that utilises the best of both worlds.

By now you must’ve understood that Commerce Layer is the commerce API for everything a brand needs. It’s easy to use and integrates with all of your favourite developer tools. Plus, it makes your website shoppable with just a few clicks. Besides, when combined with HubSpot CMS, Commerce Layer works to build a fully-fledged and interactive eCommerce website.

Ready to get started? Contact us today, and we’ll show you how easy it is to add multi-market eCommerce to your digital experience by leveraging Commerce Layer with the HubSpot CMS.