Introduction Change Gride View Ecwid Store
Have you ever Wondered if you’re using the right ecommerce platform for sale online? Do you sometimes stumble upon a new service that’s more functional and cheaper than what you’re using now? Starting a small business is all about keeping your costs low, and locating an ecommerce platform to help you with half the battle. Unfortunately, when you run a small business site it frequently becomes tricky when you would like to attract on a brand new ecommerce platform or even just modify your website at all. Read our Ecwid review to find out more about this option. Change Gride View Ecwid Store
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Many solutions Purposefully make a closed system, which can be tedious to maneuver away from as soon as you get started. But with a stage called Ecwid, you no longer have to be concerned about it. In fact, the entire goal of the business, which began in 2009, is to quickly and quickly create an online store system on your present websites.
You do not have To create a completely different site. Just apply Ecwid on any platform, CMS or social network (in five minutes) and you are good to go.
This raised my Attention, since I know the struggles that come along with attempting to migrate websites, especially in regards to ecommerce. So, I needed to put together a comprehensive review of this Ecwid system to see if it’s worth the time.
How Many People Use Ecwid?
It is rather Remarkable what Ecwid has achieved since 2009, with more than 1 million merchants getting signed up. What’s even more cool is that the Ecwid retailers span over 175 distinct countries, demonstrating that this is not just a platform for people in the US or Europe. Even businesses in developing countries have a chance to find an internet store heading, and you don’t have to squander your prior website if you have one.
The usership Continues to grow, especially considering Ecwid is currently PCI DSS Level 1 accredited. If you’re not sure what this is, it is pretty much the gold standard for safety in the ecommerce world. You can rest easy knowing that you and your clients’ data is safe and secure.
Along with The total merchant count, over 20,000 active users are utilizing the Ecwid Shopping Cart for WordPress. The difference between that 20,000 along with the 1 million is the simple fact that you don’t require a WordPress site to implement Ecwid. So, the 20,000 simply identifies WordPress users using the plugin.
What’s Ecwid, and how does it work?
Ecwid is a hosted Solution for building an online store. Unlike competing products like Shopify, Bigcommerce and Volusion, which permit you to construct a new website with e-commerce performance, Ecwid is targeted more towards people who currently have a website and simply wish to add an online store to it.
Much like other E-commerce programs, Ecwid allows you to install’catalogs’ of goods, and include photographs, pricing, weight etc. . each. You can define shipping prices, accept credit card payments etc — all the crucial things that you’d expect to be able to perform with an e-commerce solution.
However it differs Significantly from competing products like Shopify, Volusion, Squarespace and Bigcommerce in that it isn’t really designed to let you create a fully-featured, standalone e-commerce site; instead, it’s intended to allow you add an online store to an present online presence.
(That said, Ecwid have Recently added some new functionality, called’Starter Site’, that does allow you create a one-page standalone offering. We are going to talk via this in more depth later on in the review.) Change Gride View Ecwid Store
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The Product works by giving you a widget that gets put on other sites — hence the title Ecwid: it’s short for’E-commerce Widget’. You receive a few lines of HTML code (the widget) to add to an existing website or social networking profile, and your shop is displayed wherever you have added this code.
Features
Ecwid makes Strides in the market by catering to companies that don’t need to begin a brand new website. The main feature is that you can choose your old site and immediately integrate the Ecwid system inside a couple of minutes.
You can also Mirror the system on various different websites if you anticipate selling elsewhere on the web. Manage all of these sites from one location rather than switching between multiple dashboards.
Another pleasant Attribute is that the syncing between multiple devices. Sell on-the-go together with your smartphone. This means that you can visit a tradeshow to make a number of sales and each one these sales are reflected on the back part of your website.
The system is Also made to integrate nicely with social networks, and that means you can sell your items on Facebook if desired. 1 part of Ecwid we especially enjoy is the shipping aspect. With real-time shipping integrations you constantly know what’s happening with your requests and where they are being shipped to.
What other trendy Things are comprised with Ecwid?
It runs on a super quick frame
It comes with an address book for customers and clients
The system has over 43 translations for sale around the planet
You get lots of promotional tools like vouchers, discounts, bulk pricing and more
Produce your personalized email alerts
Utilize the automated tax solution (automatic tax rates at checkout, tax reporting and submitting )
Point-of-sale functionality
Thanks To Ecwid’s point-of-sale (POS) performance, you can use your Ecwid store to sell not just online but in bodily locations too — in stores, market stalls, in theatres and so on.
Together with Ecwid’s POS Functionality, regardless of whether or not a customer purchases a product in shop, online, in their telephone or via Facebook, everything remains in sync – i.e., the retailer’s catalog, inventory and customer / trade info.
There is a couple of methods that you can take advantage of this attribute: the easiest is probably to use’Paypal Here.’ This involves downloading the Ecwid iOS app from the Apple’s App shop, linking it to the Paypal Here support, and then taking payments using a cell card reader (pictured above).
You’ve got two options when it comes to POS Hardware and Paypal This: you can buy a chip and swipe reader (for $24.99) or a processor and tap reader (for $79.99). Both may be ordered straight from Ecwid.
There is a few Things worth noting about the Paypal Here integration: it’s only available to merchants in america and UK. Second, it is not yet available on Android apparatus. (On their site, Ecwid say it will be available soon — but they’ve been saying that for quite some time now). Change Gride View Ecwid Store
If you’re located outside The US / UK, or want to utilize another mobile device type, the fantastic news is that Ecwid also works with all the Vend, Clover, NCR Silver and Square POS systems. These all facilitate using a wider selection of hardware at a physical retail location (full-sized card readers, receipt printers, cash drawers tablet stands etc.) and are usable in more countries.
Although you can avail Of this Paypal Here POS option on all paid-for plans, you will want to be on the most expensive’Unlimited’ plan if you want to avail of a Vend, Clover, NCR Silver or Square integration.
Reactive storefronts
Ecwid Storefronts are responsive, meaning that they will display correctly across apparatus — desktop, tablet computers and mobile. In an era where smartphone web browsing is eclipsing desktop browsing, this is important.
Free plan
Unlike many similar Goods, Ecwid provides a completely free program.
Granted, it’s a fairly Basic plan, in which attributes such as discount coupons and support aren’t available, and it only lets you sell up to ten products in two categories — but this may really be sufficient for some users, and using it is a good way to try the system out.
But, A vital point to note about the free plan is that it is not great from an search engine optimization standpoint — you have to be on a paid program to make certain your product pages speak to search engines correctly (more on SEO under ).
Language detection
Ecwid is forward of the Pack in that its storefronts could be mechanically translated into nearly 50 different languages — customers can view your shop in their own language, without you having to worry about producing alternate versions of this. Ecwid provides this performance by detecting visitors’ language automatically according to their browser settings / IP address.
Competing products like Shopify And Bigcommerce are nevertheless to provide this type of performance — that they force you to rely on third party apps, the creation of numerous stores or Google Translate to supply different language variations of your shop, which is less than perfect. So a definite win for Ecwid here.
Ecwid and search engine optimisation
Search engine Optimization (SEO) in Ecwid is a pretty straightforward affair. You are able to edit the title of your page and its own meta description; the applicable fields are pre-populated for you automatically, but you can tweak them to suit your search engine optimization objectives.
So Far as I could tell But you can not manually change the URL of a product — you have to make do with the one that Ecwid generates for you. This isn’t ideal because key words in URLs are used by some search engines to categorise content through indexing.
But, The URLs which are automatically generated by Ecwid comprise the name you’ve given to your product – so if you include some keywords on your product title (not a bad idea anyhow ) your URL will include them also. This serves as a tool of a workaround, but I would prefer full control over URLs. Change Gride View Ecwid Store
One place where Ecwid does not perform so Well on the search engine optimization front entails AMP — accelerated mobile pages. As its name implies, AMP pages load quicker on mobile devices. This encourages people to stay longer on your page, thus increasing’live time’ –something which is considered by many SEO experts believe to be rewarded by Google with preferential treatment in search results. Additionally, Google occasionally highlights AMP webpages in carousels in search results, giving AMP articles an extra little boost.
Regrettably However — and unlike most competing products like Bigcommerce or even Shopify, you can not produce AMP variations of your products using Ecwid.
Importing and exporting data
Like most competing Products Ecwid permits you to import and export your data in CSV format.
The Export option permits you to export merchandise data, orders and customers (again, in CSV format) and ensures that should you feel the need to migrate your store to a different e-commerce platform, you should not have some significant difficulties doing so.
Utilizing Ecwid with other platforms
Ecwid and Twitter
WordPress does not Supplied any e-commerce performance out of this box, so anyone wanting to sell on the platform will require a third-party alternative like Ecwid. There’s an Ecwid plugin available, therefore adding an Ecwid store to your WordPress site is quite simple — you can get up and running with a couple clicks.
You simply sign up to get an Ecwid accounts and then install the free plugin.
Ecwid and Squarespace
Squarespace comes with Increasingly good e-commerce attributes, but the amount of payment gateway options is quite limited — you have to utilize Stripe or Paypal. (And using Stripe only works if you’re selling products from particular countries). The other principal problem with the built-in Squarespace selling software is that they don’t facilitate dropshipping, and full export of merchandise isn’t currently possible.
Integrating Ecwid with Squarespace allows you to bypass these constraints, and adding it into a Squarespace site is very simple: it’s a simple matter of adding a code block into a page and pasting some HTML to it.
Ecwid and Wix
As With Squarespace, there is currently no dropshipping choice for Wix users, so again Ecwid can offer a good workaround. A committed app is provided by Ecwid to enable you integrate the product on a Wix store easily.
Apps and plugins
Ecwid provides a pretty Restricted number integrations with other well-known apps. Integrations do exist together with key services Mailchimp, Xero and Freshbooks; but to be honest the assortment of integrations could be extensive — competing products such as Shopify offer a much broader assortment of programs. Notable omissions from the Ecwid store comprise Quickbooks and Zendesk, such as (that said, a Quickbooks integration is coming shortly ).
The Picture is better when it comes to CMS plugins: All these are offered for WordPress, Wix and Joomla, allowing to you install Ecwid on one of these platforms very easily. Change Gride View Ecwid Store
Interface and ease of use
Ecwid’s Interface is pretty user friendly. Like many similar online shop builders, you get a vertical menu on the left which lets you access key functionality, and the area on the right can be used to display or edit associated products, site content and reports.
As with any e-commerce tool, you’ll need to Spend a fair amount of time getting your head around producing catalogues and product variants, establishing transport prices and so on…but there isn’t anything here that should represent also much of a learning curve.
Things are aided by an ‘onboarding checklist’ that’s supplied to you when you log in for the very first time.
If You’re stuck however, you could always get in contact with Ecwid’s support team — more on that later — or, if you are on a’Business’ or’Unlimited’, you are able to make the most of the included customization support (you get two hours and 12 hours personalization period from Ecwidon these plans).
Ecwid and GDPR
I am not a Attorney, so please be aware that the below observations shouldn’t be interpreted as legal information, but I am planning to do my best to spell out some of the key GDPR problems facing Ecwid consumers below.
With the introduction of The EU’s new GDPR laws, there are many legal steps that site owners now need to take to ensure that they are adequately protecting EU clients’ and visitors’ privacy. There are serious financial penalties for not doing this (to the point where it’s usually a good idea to speak with a lawyer about what to do); and even when your company isn’t based in the EU, then you still need to comply with the regulations where any website visits in the EU are concerned.
According to my Understanding of the crucial GDPR rules, the main priorities for prospective Ecwid store owners are to:
· Provide sufficient privacy and cookie notices
· Process and store information safely
· Get explicit permission from people signing up to mailing lists that it is fine to send them e-newsletters
· Provide a way to opt in or revoke consent to use of non-essential cookies on a site (and to log that approval ).
There does not Appear to be Anything that stops you fulfilling the first three requirements easily enough with Ecwid, though you will need to spend time and potentially money generating adequate notices and crafting information capture forms so they are GDPR compliant.
Where things get Complex with Ecwid is your fourth requirement — cookie cutter consent. To Guarantee GDPR compliance, you need to display a cookie banner to your customers which
· Allows them to select which cookies they would like to conduct BEFORE those cookies are run (i.e., to give’prior consent’)
· Logs their approval to conduct cookies Change Gride View Ecwid Store
· Enables them to revoke approval at a later stage
So for example, if you Use a Facebook Ads cookie in conjunction with your Ecwid shop, you will be breaking GDPR laws unless you have a banner in place which does all of the above.
Nowout of the box at There is not a means to take care of the cookie approval issue with Ecwid. Nor is there an adequate program accessible from the Ecwid app store (the only alternative on this front I can locate, the’EU cookie banner’, doesn’t seem to supply the necessary functionality — even though costing $1.99 a month to utilize ).
It Seems to me that the only option available to Ecwid users is to use a professional product such as CookiePro, which does supply all the necessary functionality to generate cookie consent fully GDPR compliant. Despite being a strong product nonetheless, Cookiepro does require quite a lot of configuration and you’ll want to set quite a lot of time apart to set this up.
Setup and Design
I really enjoy The simple fact that you can run a web site without paying for anything. This makes the setup process that much simpler, since you simply have to punch in your email and create a password to go right to the backend interface.
The machine has Wizards for each platform that you want to set your shop on. If you have a WordPress site, just walk through three steps to get up and running. You could even click on options like Facebook and Joomla, based on the place you would like to sell.
The backend Design is flawless, because it walks you through every site creation and integration measure with some fine photos and text. Once you obtain your store implemented on a website or societal page it looks fairly slick.
The design Depends somewhat on the subject you have on your website, but as you can see below, it displays photos well and appears clean and simple to navigate. I particularly enjoy the Shopping Bag place, which is outstanding and easy to find for clients when they wish to checkout.
Though many Websites are going to be cellular friendly, it;s fine knowing that Ecwid includes a native shopping program for both iOS and Android. Merchants now receive a native shopping application for iOS and Android.
This means you Can mange your store and market on the move, while also giving your clients an opportunity to buy products from the cell interface.
The closing Design thing that makes sense to mention is the language tool. Since running an online store generally requires one to attain out to individuals from all over the world, you are bound to stumble upon some clients who would love to read product webpages and other content in their native language. Ecwid supports 45 languages, so when a user would like to translate from English to Spanish, that’s no problem in any respect.
The Ecwid Program Economy
Having the Opportunity to install applications is a sure fire way to scaling up your ecommerce website in a fair way. Ecwid has a place called the Ecwid App Market. It provides 65 software, helping merchants extend their shop functionality readily. Change Gride View Ecwid Store
A Few of the programs Will give you a hand with reviews and rating, rewards programs, automated ad tools, analytics, customized layout themes and much more.
SEO and Marketing
Ecwid is a Third party solution to your present site, so you would typically have to implement additional SEO and advertising tools to truly get out the word. That said, Ecwid provides quality SEO features to help merchants increase their visibility in Google searches.
Moreover, Google now indexes AJAX websites, so all Ecwid stores are indexed by Google without any extra work. It gets better with WordPress websites, as you gain access to additional search engine optimization plugins as well as the default search engine performance around the dashboard.
Managing Your Inventory
The Ecwid Inventory system is as straightforward as they come, since it doesn’t seem to incorporate any of those unnecessary bells and whistles you may find on other ecommerce platforms.
Each measure is Clear and concise, so you may just go in there and type in a product name, price and picture then save the product for later. Of course you can always open the Powerful Options, however they separate these for if you’re ready to start ramping up your store.
As an example of the inventory Rich direction toolset, you obtain access to things like from stock product monitoring, mobile device stock management, barcode scanning and much more.
Customer Support
Ecwid offers A Chat With Sales attribute which is one of my favorite ways to talk to companies. Simply send them a question and you are able to work on something else until they respond.
The company also Provides a potent support section with FAQs, a knowledge base, email capabilities and a forum.
Overall, the Support outlets include phone support, online chat support and email support, maintaining the response time brief and support quality high.
In my mind, the Platform has all you could want in terms of support.
Payments and Safety
It’s not always Simple to locate an ecommerce platform which does not charge fees, but that’s just what you get with Ecwid. They never charge any sort of transaction fee with any of the plans they provide, making it desirable for any shop that is trying to keep down costs and to improve margins.
Remember that Ecwid isn’t a payment processor, so you’ve got to set up something such as PayPal or Stripe to process all the trades that come through your site. It is pretty easy to implement these systems, since Ecwid integrates with over 40 international payment choices. However, each of these processors have their particular transaction fees so you have to prepare for them.
It is rather Evident that Ecwid takes security seriously, since the company is a PCI DSS Level 1 accredited service provider. The company also claims that each trade that includes sensitive data is transferred through a secure HTTPS channel. Change Gride View Ecwid Store
Imagine if you Would like to collect both offline and online payments? Perhaps you’d like a point of sale integration?
Ecwid Integrates together with Square, Clover, Vend POS, iZettle and PayPal card readers, allowing Ecwid to turn your operation into both an offline and online system.
Advantages and disadvantages of using Ecwid
Advantages
· Ecwid represents a very easy way to add e-commerce to some present website.
· Point-of-sale functionality is available, and there are a number of strategies to apply it.
· The product is cheap by comparison to other alternatives.
· It supports multi-language versions of your store.
· The shop designs are responsive.
· Plugins / programs are available for major platforms (such as WordPress, Drupal and Wix).
· It permits users of website building products that don’t facilitate dropshipping to start doing this (i.e., Squarespace, Jimdo, Wix etc.. )
· The’starter website’ option is a good stopgap measure for merchants who want a shop quickly, but have yet to create a full site to add the Ecwid widget to.
· The free Ecwid plan is not time-limited, includes service, and is rather generous concerning features.
Disadvantages
· The Paypal Here POS system is limited to the US and UK.
· The Paypal Here POS system is limited to iOS users.
· Telephone support is only available on the more expensive programs.
· There’s a limited number of programs / integrations available from the Ecwid App shop.
· You can not alter product URLs, which is slightly annoying in the SEO perspective.
· You can’t create AMP variations of merchandise pages using Ecwid.
· Making Ecwid GDPR-compliant (with regard to obtaining cookie approval ) seems hard.
· The free version will not let you access any of the SEO tools.
Pricing
Ecwid comes With four strategies, among which is completely free. They promote the free program like crazy, and mention that a number of different platforms drag you into a free trial, even where you may finally have to pay.
That is where Ecwid stands outside, and you’ll be able to see that the other payment programs are rather reasonably priced.
The Free plan Lets you sell 10 products, whereas the Venture plan ups that count to 100 products and you get items like an iPhone direction app. The Business plan goes up to 2500 merchandise for a wonderful price and you also get live chat support. Priority support comes along with the Unlimited plan and you might also sell an unlimited amount of products.
Ecwid is one of The cheapest solutions on the marketplace. You can see that it’s actually cheaper than many of the other platforms we have reviewed previously, so if you’re looking for value, this might be the perfect plugin for you.
Summary
In short, I am Beginning to believe that Ecwid is among the best ways to market online, provided that you implement the best ways to enhance your sales online too. Ecwid is a slick system, with superb simple implementation steps, which makes it perfect for your small business crowd. Change Gride View Ecwid Store
Click Here to sign up to Ecwid today!