Introduction Ecwid Connecting Waters

Have you ever Wondered if you are using the right ecommerce platform for selling online? Do 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 finding an ecommerce platform to help you with half the battle. Unfortunately, when you run a small company site it often becomes tricky once you would like to bring on a brand new ecommerce platform or perhaps just modify your site whatsoever. Read our Ecwid review to discover more about this option. Ecwid Connecting Waters

Click Here to register up to Ecwid today!

Many solutions Intentionally create a closed system, which can be tedious to move away from as soon as you get started. But with a platform named Ecwid, you do not have to be concerned about this. Actually, the entire goal of the company, which started in 2009, is to quickly and inexpensively create an online store system in your existing websites.

You do not have To create a whole new site. Just implement Ecwid on any platform, CMS or social networking (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, particularly in regards to ecommerce. So, I wanted to put together a comprehensive review of this Ecwid system to find out whether it is worth the time.

How Many People Use Ecwid?

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

The usership Continues to grow, especially considering Ecwid is now PCI DSS Level 1 certified. If you’re not certain what this is, it is pretty much the gold standard for security in the ecommerce world. You can rest easy knowing you and your customers’ data is safe and protected.

Along with The overall merchant count, over 20,000 active users are utilizing the Ecwid Shopping Cart for WordPress. The gap between that 20,000 and also the 1 million is the fact you don’t require a WordPress site in order to implement Ecwid. So, the 20,000 only refers to WordPress users with the plugin.

What is Ecwid, and how does it work?

Ecwid is a hosted Solution for building an online shop. Unlike competing products like Shopify, Bigcommerce and Volusion, which permit you to construct a new website with e-commerce functionality, Ecwid is targeted more towards people who currently have a website and just want to add an online store for this.

Much like other E-commerce platforms, Ecwid allows you to set up’catalogs’ of products, and add photographs, pricing, weight etc. for each. You are able to define shipping rates, accept credit card payments and so on — all of the key stuff that you’d expect to be able to do using an e-commerce alternative.

However it differs Apart 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 designed to allow you add an online store to an existing online existence.

(That said, Ecwid have Recently added some new functionality, called’Starter Site’, which will allow you produce a one-page standalone offering. We’ll chat through this in more detail later on in the review.) Ecwid Connecting Waters

Click Here to sign up to Ecwid today!

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

Features

Ecwid makes Strides in the market by catering to businesses that don’t need to start a brand new website. The main attribute is that you can choose your old site and immediately incorporate the Ecwid system within a couple of minutes.

You can also Mirror the system onto various different websites if you plan on selling elsewhere online. Handle all of these sites from one location rather than switching between multiple dashboards.

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

The system is Also made to integrate nicely with social networks, so that you may sell your things on Facebook if desired. One part of Ecwid that we particularly enjoy is the delivery aspect. With real-time shipping integrations you always know what is going on with your requests and where they’re being shipped to.

What other trendy Items are included with Ecwid?

It runs on a super fast frame

It comes with an address book to get customers and customers

The machine has over 43 translations for selling round the world

You get lots of promotional instruments like vouchers, discounts, bulk pricing and more

Create your own customized email notifications

Use the automated tax alternative (automatic tax rates at checkout, tax reporting and filing)

Point-of-sale performance

Thanks Into Ecwid’s point-of-sale (POS) performance, you can use your Ecwid shop to market not just online but in physical places too — in shops, market stalls, in concerts and so forth.

Together with Ecwid’s POS Performance, regardless of if or not a customer purchases a product in shop, online, on their phone or through Facebook, everything stays in sync – i.e., the merchant’s catalogue, inventory and customer / transaction information.

There’s a couple of ways that you can use this attribute: the easiest is likely to use’Paypal Here.’ This involves downloading the Ecwid iOS app from the Apple’s App shop, linking it to the Paypal Here service, and then taking payments utilizing a cell card reader (pictured above).

You have two choices when it comes to POS Hardware and Paypal This: you can either buy a processor and swipe reader (for $24.99) or a chip and tap reader (for $79.99). Both can be arranged straight from Ecwid.

There is a couple of Things worth noting the Paypal Here integration: first, it’s only available to retailers in the US and UK. Second, it is not yet available on Android devices. (On their site, Ecwid state it will be available shortly — but they have been saying that for quite some time now). Ecwid Connecting Waters

If you’re based outside That the US / UK, or want to utilize another mobile device kind, the good thing is that Ecwid also functions together with the Vend, Clover, NCR Silver and Square POS systems. These all facilitate utilizing a larger 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 the Paypal Here POS choice on all paid-for plans, you’ll want to be to the priciest’Unlimited’ program if you want to avail of a Vend, Clover, NCR Silver or Square integration.

Responsive storefronts

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

Free plan

Unlike many similar Products, Ecwid offers a totally free plan.

Granted, it’s a fairly Basic plan, in which features like discount coupons and service are not available, and it merely lets you sell up to 10 products in two categories — but this could actually be sufficient for some users, and using it is a fantastic way to try out the system.

But, A key point to note about the free plan is the fact that it isn’t great from an SEO standpoint — you have to be on a paid plan to ensure your product pages talk to hunt engines correctly (more on SEO under ).

Speech detection

Ecwid is forward of the Pack because its storefronts could be mechanically 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 this. Ecwid provides this functionality by detecting visitors’ language mechanically according to their browser preferences / IP address.

Competing products such as Shopify And Bigcommerce are yet to provide this type of performance — they force you to rely on third party programs, the creation of multiple stores or Google Translate to supply different language versions of your shop, which can be less than ideal. Therefore a definite triumph for Ecwid here.

Ecwid and search engine optimization

Search engine Optimization (SEO) in Ecwid is a pretty straightforward affair. You are able to edit the title of your page and its meta description; the relevant fields are pre-populated for you automatically, but you can tweak them to suit your SEO objectives.

As far as I can 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 keywords in URLs are used by some search engines to categorise content through indexing.

However, The URLs that are automatically generated by Ecwid comprise the title you have given to your product – so in the event that you include some keywords on 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 would prefer full control over URLs. Ecwid Connecting Waters

One place where Ecwid doesn’t perform quite so Well on the SEO front entails AMP — accelerated mobile pages. As its name suggests, AMP pages load quicker on cellular devices. This encourages people to remain longer on your page, thus increasing’dwell time’ –something which is considered by many SEO experts believe to be rewarded with Google with preferential treatment in search results. Furthermore, Google occasionally highlights AMP pages in carousels in search results, providing AMP articles an extra little boost.

Regrettably However — and unlike rival products like Bigcommerce or even Shopify, you can not create AMP variations of your goods using Ecwid.

Importing and exporting data

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

The Export option permits you to export product information, orders and clients (in CSV format) and ensures that should you ever feel the need to migrate your store to a different e-commerce platform, then you should not have any major problems doing so.

Using Ecwid with other programs

Ecwid and Twitter

WordPress does not Supplied any e-commerce performance out of the box, so anyone wishing to sell on the platform will need a third-party solution like Ecwid. There is an Ecwid plugin accessible, so adding an Ecwid shop to your WordPress site is very straightforward — you can get up and running with a few clicks.

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

Ecwid and Squarespace

Squarespace comes with Increasingly good e-commerce features, but the number of payment gateway options is very limited — you have to utilize Stripe or Paypal. (And using Stripe only works if you are selling products from certain countries). Another principal issue with the built-in Squarespace marketing software is that they don’t facilitate dropshipping, and complete export of merchandise isn’t currently possible.

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

Ecwid and Wix

As With Squarespace, there is currently no dropshipping choice for Wix users, therefore again Ecwid can offer a good workaround. A dedicated app is offered by Ecwid to enable you integrate the item onto a Wix store easily.

Programs and plugins

Ecwid provides a pretty Limited number integrations with other well-known apps. Integrations do exist together with services Mailchimp, Xero and Freshbooks; but to be fair the range of integrations may be more extensive — competing goods like Shopify offer a much wider range of apps. Notable omissions from the Ecwid store comprise Quickbooks and Zendesk, for example (that said, a Quickbooks integration is coming shortly ).

The Image is better in regards to CMS plugins: these are available for WordPress, Wix and Joomla, enabling to you install Ecwid on one of these platforms quite easily. Ecwid Connecting Waters

Interface and ease of use

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

Much like any e-commerce tool, you’ll need to Spend a reasonable amount of time getting your head about producing catalogues and product variations, setting up shipping prices and so on…but there is nothing here that should represent too much of a learning curve.

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

If You’re stuck nonetheless, you can always get in touch with Ecwid’s support staff — more on this later — or, if you are on a’Business’ or’Unlimited’, you can take advantage of this included customization support (you get two hours and 12 hours personalization period from Ecwidon these plans).

Ecwid and GDPR

I’m not a Attorney, so please note that the below observations should not be interpreted as legal advice, but I am going to do my best to spell out some of the key GDPR problems facing Ecwid users below.

With the introduction of The EU’s new GDPR laws, there are many legal measures that site owners now need to take to ensure that they are adequately protecting EU clients’ and visitors’ privacy. There are severe financial penalties for not doing this (to the point where it’s typically a great idea to consult an attorney on what to do); and even when your business isn’t based in the EU, then you still need to obey the regulations where any site visits in the EU are concerned.

Based on my Understanding of the key GDPR rules, the main priorities for potential Ecwid store owners are to:

· Provide adequate privacy and cookie cutter notices

· Process and store information safely

· Get explicit permission from people registering to mailing lists that 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 to log that approval ).

There does not Appear to be Whatever stops you meeting the first few requirements easily enough with Ecwid, though you will need to spend time and possibly money generating adequate notices and crafting data capture forms so they are GDPR compliant.

Where things get Complex with Ecwid is your fourth requirement — cookie approval. 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 biscuits are conducted (i.e., to provide’prior consent’)

· Logs their consent to run biscuits Ecwid Connecting Waters

· Allows them to revoke consent at a later point

So for Instance, If you Use a Facebook Ads cookie in combination with your Ecwid shop, you will be breaking up GDPR laws unless you have a banner in place which does all the above.

Now, out of the box at There isn’t a way to take care of the cookie approval issue with Ecwid. Nor is there a decent program accessible from the Ecwid app shop (the only option on this front I can locate, the’EU cookie banner’, doesn’t seem to supply the necessary performance — despite costing $1.99 a month to use).

It Appears to me that the only option available to Ecwid consumers 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 powerful product nonetheless, Cookiepro does need quite a great deal of configuration and you will want to put quite a lot of time apart to set it up.

Setup and Design

I really like The fact which you can run a web site without paying anything. This makes the setup process that much simpler, because you simply have to punch in your email and make a password to go straight to the backend interface.

The machine has Wizards for each platform you want to place your store on. In case you have a WordPress site, simply walk through three steps to get up and running. You can even click on choices like Facebook and Joomla, based on the place you would like to market.

The backend Design is flawless, because it walks you through every site creation and integration measure with some fine photos and text. As soon as you obtain your shop implemented on a site or social page it appears fairly sleek.

The layout Depends upon the subject you have on your website, but as you can see below, it displays photos well and appears clean and easy to navigate. I particularly enjoy the Shopping Bag area, which is prominent and easy to locate for customers when they wish to checkout.

Although many Websites will be mobile friendly, its nice knowing that Ecwid includes a native shopping program for both iOS and Android. Merchants now get a native shopping application 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 mobile interface.

The closing Design item that makes sense to mention is your vocabulary tool. Since running an internet store generally requires one to attain out to individuals from all over the planet, you’re bound to stumble upon a few clients who would like 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 is not a problem at all.

The Ecwid Program Economy

Having the Chance to put in software is a sure fire way to scaling your ecommerce website in a reasonable way. Ecwid includes a location called the Ecwid App Market. It provides 65 software, helping merchants extend their store performance readily. Ecwid Connecting Waters

A Few of the programs Can give you a hand with rating and reviews, rewards programs, automated advertising tools, analytics, custom design themes and much more.

SEO and Marketing

Ecwid is a Third-party remedy to your present website, so you would normally need to implement additional SEO and marketing 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, therefore all Ecwid stores are indexed by Google with no extra work. It gets better with WordPress sites, since you acquire access to additional SEO plugins as well as also the default search engine performance around the dashboard.

Managing Your Inventory

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

Each measure is Concise and clear, so that you can just go in there and sort in a product name, price and picture then save the product for later. Obviously you can always open up the Powerful Options, however they separate these for if you are all set to get started ramping up your store.

As an example of the stock Rich management toolset, you gain access to items like from stock merchandise tracking, mobile device inventory management, barcode scanning and more.

Customer Support

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

The company also Provides a potent support department with FAQs, a knowledge base, email capabilities and a forum.

Overall, the Support outlets include telephone support, online chat service and email support, keeping the response time brief and support quality .

In my eyes, the Platform has everything you could want in terms of support.

Payments and Security

It is not necessarily Simple to locate an ecommerce platform that does not charge fees, but that is exactly what you get with Ecwid. They never control any sort of transaction fee with any of the programs they provide, which makes it desirable for any shop that is hoping to keep costs down and to improve margins.

Keep in mind that Ecwid isn’t a payment processor, which means you’ve got to set up something like PayPal or Stripe to process all the transactions that come through your site. It’s pretty easy to implement one of these systems, since Ecwid integrates with over 40 global payment choices. However, each of those processors have their own trade fees so you have to get ready for them.

It’s rather Clear that Ecwid takes security seriously, since the provider is a PCI DSS Level 1 certified service provider. The company also claims that every trade that includes sensitive information is transferred through a secure HTTPS channel. Ecwid Connecting Waters

What if you Would like to collect both online and offline payments? Maybe you’d prefer a point of sale integration?

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

Advantages and cons of utilizing Ecwid

Advantages

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

· Point-of-sale functionality is available, and there are a number of strategies to apply it.

· The product is cheap compared to other alternatives.

· It supports multi-language versions of your store.

· The store layouts are responsive.

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

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

· The’starter website’ option is a good stopgap measure for retailers who want a store fast, but have yet to develop a complete website in order to add the Ecwid widget to.

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

Cons

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

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

· Telephone support is only available on the more expensive programs.

· There’s a limited number of apps / integrations offered from the Ecwid App store.

· You can not alter product URLs, which can be slightly annoying in the SEO point of view.

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

· Making Ecwid GDPR-compliant (with respect to getting cookie consent) sounds hard.

· The free version doesn’t let you get any of the search engine optimization tools.

Pricing

Ecwid comes With four plans, among which is totally free. They market the free program like crazy, and mention that a number of other platforms drag you into a free trial, where you may eventually need to pay.

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

The Free program Lets you sell 10 products, whereas the Venture plan ups that count to 100 goods and you get items like an iPhone management program. The Business plan goes up to 2500 products for a wonderful price and you get live chat service. Priority support comes alongside the Unlimited plan and you might also market an unlimited number of products.

Ecwid is one of The most economical solutions on the market. You may see that it’s 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.

Summary

In short, I am Beginning to think that Ecwid is one of the best ways to sell online, as long as you implement the best ways to enhance your earnings online too. Ecwid is a slick system, with superb simple implementation steps, which makes it perfect for your small business audience. Ecwid Connecting Waters

Click Here to sign up to Ecwid today!