Background Customize Ecwid Store

Have you ever Wondered if you’re using the right ecommerce platform for sale online? Can you sometimes stumble upon a new service that’s more functional and more economical than what you’re using now? Starting a small business is all about keeping your costs low, and locating an ecommerce platform to assist you with half the battle. Unfortunately, when you operate a small company site it frequently becomes tricky once you would like to bring on a new ecommerce platform or even just alter your site whatsoever. Read our Ecwid review to find out more about this option. Customize Ecwid Store

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Many solutions Intentionally make a closed system, which can be tedious to maneuver away from once you get started. However, with a platform named Ecwid, you no longer have to worry about it. In fact, the entire aim of the company, which began in 2009, would be to quickly and quickly make an online store system in your existing websites.

You don’t have To make a whole new site. Just implement Ecwid on any platform, CMS or social network (in five minutes) and you’re all set.

That raised my Attention, because I know the struggles that come along with trying to migrate sites, particularly in regards to ecommerce. So, I needed to gather an in-depth review of the Ecwid system to find out if it is worth the time.

How Many People Use Ecwid?

It is quite Remarkable what Ecwid has achieved since 2009, with over 1 million merchants getting signed up. What’s even more cool is that the Ecwid retailers span over 175 distinct countries, showing that this isn’t just a platform for most people in the US or Europe. Even businesses in developing countries have a opportunity to find an online store heading, and you do not have to trash your previous website if you have one.

The usership Continues to grow, particularly considering Ecwid is currently PCI DSS Level 1 accredited. If you are not certain what that is, it is pretty much the gold standard for safety in the ecommerce world. You can rest easy knowing you and your clients’ information is safe and protected.

In addition to 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 also the 1 million is the simple fact you don’t need a WordPress site in order to implement Ecwid. So, the 20,000 simply identifies WordPress users using the plugin.

What is Ecwid, and how can it work?

Ecwid is a hosted Alternative for building an online shop. Unlike competing products such as Shopify, Bigcommerce and Volusion, which allow you to build a fresh site with e-commerce functionality, Ecwid is targeted more towards people who currently have a site and simply want to add an online store for this.

Much like other E-commerce programs, Ecwid allows you to set up’catalogs’ of all goods, and add photos, pricing, weight etc. for each. You can specify shipping rates, accept credit card payments and so on — all the key things that you would expect to be able to perform using 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 produce a fully-featured, standalone e-commerce site; instead, it’s intended to allow you add an internet store to an present online existence.

(That said, Ecwid have Recently added some new functionality, called’Starter Site’, which will let you produce a one-page standalone offering. We are going to chat through this in more detail later on in the review.) Customize Ecwid Store

Click Here to register up to Ecwid today!

The Product operates by giving you a widget that gets placed on other sites — hence the name Ecwid: it is short for’E-commerce Widget’. You receive a few lines of HTML code (the widget) to add into an present website or societal networking profile, and your store is displayed wherever you have inserted this code.

Characteristics

Ecwid makes Strides in the market by catering to businesses that don’t need to begin a brand-new site. The main attribute is that you can take your old site and immediately integrate the Ecwid system inside a few minutes.

You can also Mirror the machine on various different sites if you anticipate selling elsewhere on the web. Handle all of these sites from 1 location instead of switching between multiple dashboards.

Another nice Feature is the syncing between multiple devices. Sell on-the-go together with your smartphone. This usually means you could go to a tradeshow to make a number of sales and all of these sales are reflected onto the backend of your site.

The system is Also designed to integrate well with social networks, and that means that you may sell your things on Facebook if needed. One part of Ecwid we particularly enjoy is the delivery aspect. With real-time shipping integrations you always know what’s happening with your orders and where they are being shipped to.

What other cool Items are included with Ecwid?

It runs on a super fast framework

It comes with an address book to get customers and clients

The machine has over 43 translations for selling around the world

You receive a Lot of promotional instruments like coupons, discounts, and bulk pricing and more

Create your own customized email alerts

Use the automated tax alternative (automatic tax charges 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 market not only online but in bodily places too — in stores, market stalls, at theatres and so on.

With Ecwid’s POS Performance, regardless of whether or not a customer purchases a product in store, online, in their telephone or through Facebook, everything stays in sync – i.e., the merchant’s catalog, inventory and client / trade information.

There’s a few ways you can use this feature: the simplest 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 choices when it comes to POS Hardware and Paypal This: you can either buy a chip and swipe reader (for $24.99) or a processor and also tap reader (for $79.99). Both may be ordered direct from Ecwid.

There’s a few Things worth noting about the Paypal Here integration: first, it’s only available to retailers in the US and UK. Secondly, it is not yet available on Android devices. (On their site, Ecwid say it will be available shortly — but they’ve been saying that for quite a while now). Customize Ecwid Store

If you’re based outside The US / UK, or need to work with another mobile device type, the good news is that Ecwid also functions together with all the Vend, Clover, NCR Silver and Square POS systems. These all ease using a wider range 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 could avail Of this Paypal Here POS option on most of paid-for plans, you will need to be on the most expensive’Unlimited’ plan if you want to avail of a Vend, Clover, NCR Silver or Square admin.

Responsive storefronts

Ecwid Storefronts are responsive, meaning that they will display correctly across devices — desktopcomputer, tablet and mobile. In a age where smartphone web surfing is eclipsing desktop browsing, this is important.

Free plan

Unlike many similar Goods, Ecwid provides a totally free program.

Granted, it’s a fairly Standard plan, in which features like discount vouchers and service aren’t accessible, and it only lets you sell up to ten products in two categories — but this could actually be adequate for some customers, and using it is a good way to try the system out.

However, A key point to note about the free program is that it is not great from an SEO standpoint — you have to be on a paid program to make certain that your product pages talk to search engines accurately (more on SEO under ).

Speech detection

Ecwid is forward of the Pack because its storefronts can be mechanically translated into nearly 50 different languages — customers can view your store in their own language, without you having to worry about producing alternate versions of this. Ecwid provides this performance by discovering visitors’ language mechanically based on their browser settings / IP address.

Competing products such as Shopify And Bigcommerce are yet to supply this type of performance — they force you to rely on third party apps, the creation of numerous stores or Google Translate to supply different language variations of your store, which is less than ideal. Therefore a definite triumph for Ecwid here.

Ecwid and search engine optimization

Search engine Optimisation (search engine optimization ) in Ecwid is a fairly straightforward affair. You can edit the title of your page and its meta description; the applicable fields are pre-populated for you automatically, however you can tweak them to suit your SEO objectives.

So Far as I could tell But you can not manually change the URL of a product — you need to make do with the one that Ecwid generates for you. This isn’t perfect because key words in URLs are used by some search engines to categorise content through indexing.

However, The URLs which are automatically generated by Ecwid include the name you’ve given to your own product – so if you include some keywords in your product name (not a bad idea anyhow ) your URL will comprise them also. This serves as something of a workaround, but I would prefer full control over URLs. Customize Ecwid Store

1 place where Ecwid does not perform so Well on the SEO front involves AMP — accelerated mobile pages. As the name implies, AMP pages load quicker on cellular devices. This encourages people to remain longer on your webpage, thus increasing’dwell time’ –something that’s considered by many SEO experts believe to be rewarded with Google with preferential treatment in search results. Additionally, Google occasionally highlights AMP pages in carousels in search results, providing AMP articles an extra little boost.

Unfortunately However — and unlike competing products like Bigcommerce or Shopify, you can’t produce AMP versions of your goods using Ecwid.

Importing and exporting data

Like most competing Goods Ecwid allows you to import and export your data in CSV format.

The Export option allows you to export product data, orders and clients (in CSV format) and means that if you feel the need to migrate your store to another e-commerce platform, then you shouldn’t have some major problems doing so.

Using Ecwid with other platforms

Ecwid and Twitter

WordPress does not Supplied any e-commerce performance from the box, so anybody wanting to market on the stage will require a third-party alternative like Ecwid. There is an Ecwid plugin accessible, so adding an Ecwid store to your WordPress site is very simple — you can get up and running with a few clicks.

You just sign up to get an Ecwid account and then install the free plugin.

Ecwid and Squarespace

Squarespace includes Increasingly excellent e-commerce features, but the amount of payment gateway options is very limited — you have to utilize Stripe or Paypal. (And with Stripe only functions if you’re selling goods from certain countries). The other principal issue with the built-in Squarespace marketing software is they don’t facilitate dropshipping, and full export of products isn’t currently possible.

Integrating Ecwid with Squarespace allows you to bypass these constraints, and adding it into some Squarespace site is very easy: it is a simple matter of adding a code block to a page and pasting some HTML to it.

Ecwid and Wix

As With Squarespace, there’s currently no dropshipping choice for Wix users, therefore again Ecwid can provide a fantastic workaround. A dedicated program is provided by Ecwid to allow you incorporate the product onto a Wix store easily.

Programs and plugins

Ecwid provides a pretty Restricted number integrations with other well-known apps. Integrations do exist with key services Mailchimp, Xero and Freshbooks; but to be fair the assortment of integrations could be extensive — competing goods such as Shopify offer a much broader assortment of apps. Notable omissions from the Ecwid store include Quickbooks and Zendesk, for example (that said, a Quickbooks integration is coming soon).

The Picture is better in regards to CMS plugins: these are offered for WordPress, Wix and Joomla, allowing for you to install Ecwid on one of these platforms very easily. Customize Ecwid Store

Interface and ease of use

Ecwid’s Interface is pretty user friendly. Like most similar online shop builders, you receive a vertical menu on the left that lets you access key functionality, and the place on the right can be used to edit or display related products, website content and reports.

Much like any e-commerce tool, you’ll need to Spend a fair amount of time getting your head around creating catalogues and product variants, setting up transport prices and so on…but there isn’t anything here that should represent too much of a learning curve.

Matters are helped by an ‘onboarding checklist’ that’s provided to you once you log in for the first time.

If You are stuck nonetheless, you could always get in contact with Ecwid’s support staff — more on that later — or, if you are on a’Business’ or’Unlimited’, you are able to make the most of the included customization service (you get 2 hours and 12 hours personalization time from Ecwidon these plans).

Ecwid and GDPR

I’m not a Attorney, so please be aware that the below observations shouldn’t be interpreted as legal advice, but I’m planning to do my best to spell out a number of the major GDPR issues facing Ecwid users under.

With the introduction of The EU’s new GDPR legislation, there are several legal measures that site owners now should take to ensure they are adequately protecting EU customers’ and visitors’ privacy. There are severe financial penalties for doing this (to the point where it is usually a good idea to consult a lawyer about what to do); and even when your business is not located in the EU, you still need to obey 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 adequate privacy and cookie notices

· Process and store information securely

· Get explicit consent from people registering to mailing lists it is okay to send them e-newsletters

· Provide a means to opt in or revoke permission to use of non-essential biscuits onto a site (and also to log that approval ).

There doesn’t Appear to be Anything that stops you fulfilling the first three requirements easily enough with Ecwid, though you will have to devote time and possibly money creating adequate notices and crafting information capture forms so that they are GDPR compliant.

Where things get Complicated with Ecwid is your fourth requirement — cookie cutter consent. To ensure GDPR compliance, you need to exhibit a cookie banner to your customers which

· Allows them to select which cookies they would like to conduct BEFORE those cookies are conducted (i.e., to give’prior consent’)

· Logs their consent to run cookies Customize Ecwid Store

· Enables them to revoke approval at a later stage

So for Instance, If you Use a Facebook Ads cookie in combination with your Ecwid shop, you’ll be breaking up GDPR legislation unless you have a banner set up which does all of the above.

Nowout of the box at Least there is not a means to take care of the cookie approval issue with Ecwid. Nor is there an adequate app accessible from the Ecwid app store (the only option on front that I can find, the’EU cookie banner’, does not seem to provide the essential performance — even though costing $1.99 a month to use).

It Seems to me that the only option available to Ecwid consumers is to use a specialist product such as CookiePro, which will supply all the essential performance to generate cookie consent fully GDPR compliant. Despite being a powerful product nonetheless, Cookiepro does need quite a lot of configuration and you’ll want to put quite a lot of time apart to set this up.

Setup and Design

I really enjoy The simple fact that you’re able to run a website without paying for anything. This makes the installation process that much easier, because you simply have to punch in your email and create a password to proceed straight to the backend port.

The machine has Wizards for every platform that you would like to place your store on. In case you’ve got a WordPress site, simply walk through three steps to get up and running. You can even click on choices like Facebook and Joomla, depending on where you would like to market.

The backend Design is perfect, since it walks you through each site creation and integration step with a few nice photos and text. Once you get your shop implemented on a website or social page it appears fairly slick.

The design Depends upon the subject you’ve got on your website, but as you can see below, it displays photos well and looks clean and simple to navigate. I particularly enjoy the Shopping Bag area, which is prominent and easy to locate for customers when they want to market.

Though many Sites are going to be cellular friendly, its nice understanding that Ecwid includes a native shopping program for both iOS and Android. Merchants now receive a native shopping program for iOS and Android.

This means you Can mange your shop and market on the move, while also providing your clients a chance to buy products from the cell interface.

The closing Design item that makes sense to mention is the language instrument. Since conducting an internet store generally requires you to reach out to individuals from all over the planet, you are bound to stumble upon a few customers who would love to read product pages and other content in their native tongue. Ecwid supports 45 languages, so when a user would like to translate from English into Spanish, that’s no problem in any respect.

The Ecwid Program Economy

Possessing the Chance to put in applications is a sure fire way to scaling your ecommerce site in a fair way. Ecwid includes a location called the Ecwid App Market. It offers 65 software, helping merchants extend their store functionality easily. Customize Ecwid Store

A Few of the apps Will give you a hand with rating and reviews, rewards programs, automatic advertising tools, analytics, customized layout themes and much more.

SEO and Marketing

Ecwid is a Third party remedy to your present website, so you’d typically have to employ additional SEO and advertising tools to truly get the word out. That said, Ecwid provides quality SEO features to help retailers increase their visibility in Google searches.

Moreover, Google now indexes AJAX sites, therefore all Ecwid stores are indexed by Google without any extra effort. It gets better with WordPress sites, since you gain access to additional search engine optimization plugins and also the default search engine performance on the dashboard.

Managing Your Inventory

The Ecwid Inventory process is as simple as they come, because it doesn’t appear to include any of the unnecessary bells and whistles you might find on other e commerce platforms.

Each step is Concise and clear, so that you may just go in there and type in a product name, price and image then save the product for later. Of course you could always open the More Powerful Options, but they separate these for when you are ready to start ramping up your store.

As an example of the stock Rich direction toolset, you gain access to things like from stock product monitoring, mobile device stock management, barcode scanning and much more.

Customer Care

Ecwid offers A Chat With Earnings attribute that is always one of my favourite ways to converse to companies. Only send them a query 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 telephone service, online chat service and email support, keeping the response time short and support quality .

In my mind, the Platform has everything you might want in terms of support.

Payments and Safety

It’s not necessarily Easy to locate an ecommerce platform which does not charge transaction fees, but that’s just what you get with Ecwid. They never control any kind of transaction fee with any of those plans they offer, making it desirable for any shop that’s hoping to keep costs down and also to improve margins.

Keep in mind that Ecwid isn’t a payment processor, so you’ve got to set up something such as PayPal or Stripe to process all of the transactions that come through your website. It’s rather simple to implement one of these systems, since Ecwid incorporates with over 40 global payment choices. However, each of those processors have their particular transaction fees so you need to get ready for them.

It’s rather Evident that Ecwid takes safety seriously, because the provider is a PCI DSS Grade 1 certified supplier. The company also states that every trade that includes sensitive data is transferred through a secure HTTPS channel. Customize Ecwid Store

Imagine if you Would love to collect both online and offline payments? Perhaps you’d like a point of sale integration?

Ecwid Integrates with with Square, Clover, Vend POS, iZettle and PayPal card readers, enabling Ecwid to turn your operation into both an online and offline system.

Advantages and cons of using Ecwid

Advantages

· Ecwid represents a really easy way to add e-commerce to any present website.

· Point-of-sale performance 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 shop.

· The store designs are responsive.

· Plugins / programs are available for major platforms (like WordPress, Drupal and Wix).

· It permits users of site building products which don’t facilitate dropshipping to start doing so (i.e., Squarespace, Jimdo, Wix etc.)

· The’starter site’ option is a fantastic stopgap measure for retailers who want a store fast, but have yet to develop a full website to bring the Ecwid widget to.

· The free Ecwid program isn’t time-limited, includes support, and is fairly generous in terms of attributes.

Disadvantages

· The Paypal Here POS system is Limited to the US and UK.

· The Paypal Here POS process is limited to iOS users.

· Phone support is only available on the more expensive plans.

· There’s a restricted number of programs / integrations available from the Ecwid Program store.

· You can not alter product URLs, which can be slightly annoying from an search engine optimization point of view.

· You can’t create AMP versions of merchandise pages using Ecwid.

· Making Ecwid GDPR-compliant (with regard to obtaining cookie consent) seems hard.

· The free version will not allow you to access any of the SEO tools.

Pricing

Ecwid comes With four plans, one of which is completely free. They promote the free plan like crazy, and mention that a number of different platforms drag you in free trial, even where you may finally need to pay.

That is where Ecwid stands out, and you’ll be able to see the other payment programs are fairly affordable.

The Free plan Allows you to sell 10 products, while the Venture program ups that count to 100 products and you get things like an iPhone management program. The Business plan goes up to 2500 products for a superb price and you also get live chat support. Priority support comes alongside the Unlimited program and you can also sell an unlimited amount of products.

Ecwid is one of The most economical solutions on the marketplace. You can see that it is actually cheaper than a lot of the other platforms we have reviewed in the past, so if you’re looking for value, this could be the right plugin for you.

Conclusion

In short, I’m Beginning to think that Ecwid is one of the best ways to sell online, provided that you employ the best ways to enhance your sales online as well. Ecwid is a slick system, with superb simple implementation steps, which makes it ideal for your small business audience. Customize Ecwid Store

Click Here to register up to Ecwid today!