Intro Ecwid Chat

Have you ever Wondered if you are using the right ecommerce platform for selling online? Can you occasionally stumble upon a new service that’s more practical and cheaper than what you’re using now? Starting a small business is all about keeping your prices low, and locating an ecommerce platform to assist you with half the battle. Unfortunately, when you operate a small company website it often becomes tricky when you would like to attract on a brand new ecommerce platform or perhaps just alter your site whatsoever. Read our Ecwid review to find out more about this option. Ecwid Chat

Click Here to sign up to Ecwid now!

Many solutions Intentionally make a closed system, which is tedious to maneuver away from once you get started. However, with a platform named Ecwid, you do not need to worry about this. In fact, the entire goal of the company, which began in 2009, is to quickly and inexpensively create an internet store system on your existing websites.

You don’t have To create a completely different website. Just implement Ecwid on any stage, CMS or social network (in five minutes) and you are all set.

This raised my Attention, because I understand the struggles that come along with attempting to migrate websites, especially in regards to ecommerce. So, I needed to gather a comprehensive review of the Ecwid system to find out if it is 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 is even more cool is that the Ecwid merchants span over 175 distinct countries, showing that this isn’t only a platform for people in the united states or Europe. Even businesses in developing nations have a opportunity to get an online store going, and you do not have to squander your previous website if you have one.

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

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 and also the 1 million is the simple fact you don’t require a WordPress site in order to implement Ecwid. So, the 20,000 simply refers to WordPress users with the plugin.

What is Ecwid, and how can this work?

Ecwid is a hosted Solution for building an internet store. Unlike competing products such as Shopify, Bigcommerce and Volusion, which permit you to build a new site with e-commerce functionality, Ecwid is geared more towards people who currently have a site and simply wish to add an online store to it.

Much like other E-commerce platforms, Ecwid lets you set up’catalogs’ of goods, and add photos, pricing, weight etc. for each. You can specify shipping prices, accept credit card payments etc — all of the crucial things that you would expect to be able to do with an e-commerce solution.

However it differs Apart from competing products such as 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 is intended to enable you add an internet store to an existing online presence.

(That said, Ecwid have Recently added some new functionality, known as’Starter Website’, that does allow you produce a one-page standalone offering. We are going to chat through this in more depth later on in the inspection.) Ecwid Chat

Click Here to sign up to Ecwid now!

The Product operates by providing you a widget which gets put on other sites — hence the title Ecwid: it is short for’E-commerce Widget’. You get a couple lines of HTML code (the widget) to add into an present website or social networking profile, and your shop is displayed wherever you have inserted this code.

Characteristics

Ecwid makes Strides in the market by catering to companies which don’t want to begin a brand-new site. The primary feature is that you can take your old site and quickly incorporate the Ecwid system inside a couple of minutes.

You can also Mirror the machine on several different sites if you plan on selling elsewhere on the web. Handle all these websites from one place instead of switching between multiple dashboards.

Another nice Feature is that the syncing between multiple devices. Sell on-the-go together with your smartphone. This usually means that you can visit a tradeshow to make a few sales and each one of these sales are reflected onto the backend of your site.

The system is Also designed to integrate nicely with social networks, and that means you can sell your items on Facebook if needed. One part of Ecwid we especially enjoy is the shipping aspect. With real-time transport integrations you always know what is happening with your orders and at which they’re 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 customers

The system has over 43 translations for selling around the planet

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

Produce your personalized email notifications

Utilize the automated tax alternative (automatic taxation charges at checkout, tax reporting and submitting )

Point-of-sale performance

Thank you Into Ecwid’s point-of-sale (POS) performance, you may use your Ecwid store to market not only online but in bodily locations too — in shops, market stalls, at theatres and so forth.

Together with Ecwid’s POS Performance, regardless of if a customer buys a product in store, online, in their phone or via Facebook, everything remains in sync – i.e., the merchant’s catalogue, inventory and client / transaction info.

There’s a couple of methods you can use this feature: the simplest is likely to use’Paypal Here.’ This entails downloading the Ecwid iOS app from the Apple’s App store, connecting it to the Paypal Here support, 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 arranged direct from Ecwid.

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

If you are located outside The US / UK, or want to work with another mobile device type, the fantastic thing is that Ecwid also functions with the Vend, Clover, NCR Silver and Square POS systems. These all ease using a wider selection of hardware in a physical retail location (full-sized card readers, receipt printers, cash drawers pill stands etc.) and are usable in more countries.

Although you can avail Of this Paypal Here POS option on most of paid-for plans, you’ll need to be on the most expensive’Unlimited’ program if you want to avail of a Vend, Clover, NCR Silver or Square admin.

Responsive storefronts

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

Free plan

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

Granted, it is a fairly Basic plan, where features such as discount coupons and support aren’t accessible, and it only allows you to sell up to 10 products in two categories — but this could actually be adequate for some customers, and using it is a fantastic way to try out the system.

But, A vital point to notice about the free plan is that it is not great from an SEO standpoint — you need to be on a paid program to make certain your product pages talk to search engines correctly (more on SEO below).

Speech detection

Ecwid is forward of the Pack in that its storefronts could be automatically translated into nearly 50 different languages — customers can see your shop in their own language, without you needing to worry about producing alternate versions of it. Ecwid provides this performance by detecting visitors’ language automatically according to their browser settings / IP address.

Competing products such as Shopify And Bigcommerce are yet to provide this sort of functionality — that they force you to rely on third party programs, the creation of numerous shops or Google Translate to supply different language versions of your shop, which is less than ideal. Therefore 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 relevant fields are pre-populated for you automatically, but you can tweak them to match your SEO objectives.

So Far as I could tell However, you can not manually change the URL of a product — you need to make do with the one which Ecwid generates for you. This is not ideal 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 comprise the name you’ve given to your own product – so if you include some keywords in your product title (maybe not a bad idea anyhow ) your URL will include them too. This functions as a tool of a workaround, but I’d prefer whole control over URLs. Ecwid Chat

One area where Ecwid doesn’t perform so Well on the search engine optimization front entails AMP — accelerated mobile pages. As the name implies, AMP pages load faster on cellular devices. This motivates people to remain longer on your page, thus increasing’live time’ –something which is considered by many search engine optimization experts believe to be rewarded with Google with preferential treatment in search results. Additionally, Google sometimes highlights AMP webpages in carousels in search results, providing AMP articles an extra little boost.

Unfortunately However — and unlike most competing products such as Bigcommerce or even Shopify, you can not produce AMP versions of your goods using Ecwid.

Importing and exporting data

Like many competing Goods Ecwid permits you to import and export your data in CSV format.

The Export option permits you to export product information, orders and customers (again, in CSV format) and means that if you feel the need to migrate your store to a different e-commerce platform, then you should not have any significant difficulties doing so.

Utilizing Ecwid with other programs

Ecwid and WordPress

WordPress doesn’t Supplied any e-commerce performance out of the box, so anybody wishing to sell on the stage will require a third-party solution like Ecwid. There’s an Ecwid plugin available, so adding an Ecwid shop 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 account 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 very limited — you need to use Stripe or Paypal. (And using Stripe only functions if you are selling products from certain countries). Another main problem with the built-in Squarespace selling tools is they don’t facilitate dropshipping, and full export of products is not currently possible.

Integrating Ecwid with Squarespace permits you to bypass these constraints, and adding it into a Squarespace website is quite simple: it’s 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, so again Ecwid can offer a good workaround. A dedicated program is offered by Ecwid to enable you incorporate the item on a Wix store easily.

Programs and plugins

Ecwid provides a fairly Limited number integrations with other well-known apps. Integrations do exist together with key services Mailchimp, Xero and Freshbooks; but to be fair the assortment of integrations may be more extensive — competing goods such as Shopify provide a much wider range of apps. Notable omissions from the Ecwid store include Quickbooks and Zendesk, such as (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, enabling for you to install Ecwid on these platforms quite easily. Ecwid Chat

Interface and ease of use

Ecwid’s Interface is rather user friendly. Like many similar online shop builders, you receive a vertical menu on the left that allows you to access key performance, and the area on the right is used to edit or display related products, site content and reports.

As with any e-commerce tool, you’ll need to Spend a reasonable amount of time getting your head around producing catalogues and product variants, setting up transport prices etc…but there isn’t anything that should represent too a lot of a learning curve.

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

If You are stuck nonetheless, you can 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 this included customization service (you get 2 hours and 12 hours personalization time from Ecwidon these programs ).

Ecwid and GDPR

I am not a Lawyer, so please note that the below observations shouldn’t be interpreted as legal advice, but I am planning to do my very best to spell out a number of the major GDPR issues facing Ecwid consumers under.

With the introduction of The EU’s new GDPR legislation, there are several legal steps that site owners now should take to ensure that they are adequately protecting EU customers’ and visitors’ privacy. There are serious financial penalties for doing this (to the point where it is typically a great idea to consult a lawyer about what to do); and even if your business is not located in the EU, you still need to comply with the regulations where any website visits from the EU are worried.

Based on my Understanding of the key GDPR principles, the main priorities for potential Ecwid shop owners would be to:

· Provide adequate privacy and cookie cutter notices

· Process and store data safely

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

· Provide a means to opt in or revoke consent to use of non-essential cookies onto a website (and to log that consent).

There does not Appear to be Anything that stops you meeting the first three requirements readily enough with Ecwid, although you will have to spend 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 the fourth requirement — cookie approval. To ensure GDPR compliance, You Have to exhibit a cookie banner to your customers which

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

· Logs their consent to conduct cookies Ecwid Chat

· Enables them to revoke approval at a later stage

So for Instance, If you Use a Facebook Ads cookie in conjunction with your Ecwid shop, you’ll be breaking GDPR laws unless you’ve got a banner in place which does all the above.

Nowout of the box at Least there isn’t a way to take care of the cookie approval issue with Ecwid. Nor is there an adequate program available from the Ecwid app shop (the only alternative on front I can find, the’EU cookie banner’, doesn’t appear to provide the necessary functionality — even though costing $1.99 a month to utilize ).

It Seems to me that the only alternative available to Ecwid consumers is to use a specialist product like CookiePro, which does supply all the necessary functionality to make cookie approval fully GDPR compliant. Despite being a strong product however, Cookiepro does need quite a great deal of configuration and you will need to set quite a lot of time apart to set this up.

Installation and Layout

I Truly like The fact which you’re able to run a website without paying anything. This makes the installation process that much easier, because you simply need to punch in your email and make a password to go right to the backend interface.

The system has Wizards for every platform you would like to set your store on. If you’ve got a WordPress site, simply walk through three steps to get up and running. You could even click on options like Facebook and Joomla, depending on the place you want to sell.

The backend Design is perfect, because it walks you through each website creation and integration measure with a few nice text and photos. As soon as you get your shop implemented on a website or social page it appears fairly slick.

The layout Depends upon the theme you’ve got on your site, but as you can see below, it shows photos well and looks clean and easy to navigate. I especially enjoy the Shopping Bag place, which can be outstanding and easy to find for customers when they want to market.

Though many Sites are going to be mobile friendly, it;s fine knowing that Ecwid includes a native shopping application 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 get products from the cell interface.

The closing Design thing which makes sense to mention is the vocabulary tool. Since running an internet store generally requires one to reach out to individuals from all over the planet, you’re bound to stumble upon a few customers who’d love to read product pages 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 at all.

The Ecwid Program Market

Possessing the Chance to install applications is a sure fire way to scaling up your ecommerce site in a reasonable way. Ecwid has a location known as the Ecwid App Market. It offers 65 software, helping merchants extend their store functionality easily. Ecwid Chat

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

SEO and Marketing

Ecwid is a Third-party solution to your current site, so you would typically have to employ additional SEO and marketing tools to truly get the word out. That said, Ecwid supplies quality SEO features to help merchants increase their visibility in Google searches.

Moreover, Google now indexes AJAX sites, so all Ecwid stores are indexed by Google with no excess effort. It gets even better with WordPress websites, since you acquire access to additional SEO plugins and also the default search engine performance on the dashboard.

Managing Your Inventory

The Ecwid Inventory process is as simple as they come, since it doesn’t seem to incorporate any of those unnecessary bells and whistles you might find on other ecommerce 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. Obviously you can always open up the More Powerful Options, however they separate these for if you’re all set 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 Care

Ecwid offers A Chat With Earnings feature that is one of my favorite ways to talk with companies. Simply send them a query and you are able to work on something else until they respond.

The company also Provides a powerful 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 encourage quality .

In my mind, the Platform has all you might want concerning support.

Payments and Security

It’s not always Simple to find an ecommerce platform which doesn’t charge transaction fees, but that’s exactly what you get with Ecwid. They never control any sort of transaction fee with any of those programs they offer, making it desirable for any shop that is trying to keep down costs and also to improve margins.

Remember that Ecwid is not a payment processor, which means you have to set up something such as PayPal or Stripe to process all of the transactions that come through your site. It is rather simple to implement one of these systems, because Ecwid integrates with over 40 international payment choices. However, each of those processors have their own transaction fees so that you have to prepare for these.

It is quite Clear that Ecwid takes safety seriously, because the company is a PCI DSS Grade 1 accredited supplier. The company also states that every transaction that includes sensitive data is transferred via a secure HTTPS channel. Ecwid Chat

What if you Would love to accumulate both offline and online payments? Perhaps you’d prefer 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 signifies a really easy way to add e-commerce to any present website.

· Point-of-sale functionality can be obtained, and there are quite a few ways to implement it.

· The product is cheap compared to other solutions.

· It supports multi-language versions of your shop.

· The shop designs are responsive.

· Plugins / programs are available for major platforms (such as 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 website’ option is a fantastic stopgap measure for retailers who want a shop quickly, but have yet to create a full website to add the Ecwid widget to.

· The free Ecwid plan isn’t time-limited, includes service, and is fairly generous concerning features.

Cons

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

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

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

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

· You can not alter merchandise URLs, which is slightly annoying in the search engine optimization perspective.

· You can not create AMP variations of merchandise pages utilizing Ecwid.

· Creating Ecwid GDPR-compliant (with respect to getting cookie consent) seems difficult.

· The free version doesn’t allow you to access any of the SEO tools.

Pricing

Ecwid comes With four strategies, among which is totally free. They promote the free program like crazy, and mention that many different platforms drag you into a free trial, even where you may eventually need to pay.

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

The Free plan Lets you sell 10 products, whereas the Venture plan ups that count to 100 products and you get things like an iPhone direction program. The company program goes up to 2500 merchandise for a wonderful price and you also get live chat service. Priority support comes along with the Unlimited plan and you can also market an unlimited amount of merchandise.

Ecwid is one of The cheapest solutions available on the market. You can see that it’s actually more affordable than a lot of the other programs we’ve reviewed in the past, so if you’re searching for value, this could be the right plugin for you.

Summary

In short, I am Starting to believe that Ecwid is one of the greatest ways to market online, provided that you employ the best ways to enhance your earnings online as well. Ecwid is a sleek system, with superb simple implementation steps, which makes it ideal for your small business audience. Ecwid Chat

Click Here to sign up to Ecwid now!