Introduction Ecwid Free Online Store Website

Have you ever Wondered if you are using the ideal ecommerce platform for selling online? Can you sometimes 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 costs low, and locating an ecommerce platform to assist you with that is half the battle. Unfortunately, when you operate 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 site at all. Read our Ecwid review to find out more about this solution. Ecwid Free Online Store Website

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Many options Purposefully create a closed system, which is tedious to move away from once you begin. But with a stage called Ecwid, you do not have to be concerned about it. Actually, the whole goal of the company, which began in 2009, is to quickly and inexpensively create an online store system in your present websites.

You do not have To make a whole new site. Just implement Ecwid on any platform, CMS or social networking (in five minutes) and you are all set.

This raised my Attention, since I understand the struggles that come along with attempting to migrate websites, particularly when it comes to ecommerce. So, I needed to put together an in-depth review of the Ecwid system to see if it is worth the time.

How Many People Use Ecwid?

It is rather Impressive what Ecwid has done since 2009, with more than 1 million retailers 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 nations have a opportunity to find an online store heading, and you do not even have to trash your previous site if you have one.

The usership Continues to grow, especially considering Ecwid is currently PCI DSS Level 1 certified. 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 you and your customers’ information is safe and protected.

In addition to The overall merchant count, over 20,000 active users are using the Ecwid Shopping Cart for WordPress. The gap between that 20,000 along with the 1 million is the simple fact that you don’t require a WordPress site in order to implement Ecwid. So, the 20,000 only identifies WordPress users using the plugin.

What’s Ecwid, and how can it work?

Ecwid is a hosted Alternative for building an internet store. Unlike competing products such as Shopify, Bigcommerce and Volusion, which permit you to build a fresh website with e-commerce functionality, Ecwid is targeted more towards people who already 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 products, and include photographs, pricing, weight etc. for each. You are able to specify shipping prices, accept credit card payments etc — all the key things that you would expect to be able to perform with an e-commerce alternative.

However it differs Apart from competing products such as Shopify, Volusion, Squarespace and Bigcommerce in that it is not really designed to allow you to produce a fully-featured, standalone e-commerce website; rather, it’s designed to enable you add an internet store to an existing 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’ll chat through this in more depth later on in the inspection.) Ecwid Free Online Store Website

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The Product works by providing you a widget which gets placed on other websites — 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 societal media profile, and your shop is displayed wherever you’ve inserted this code.

Features

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

You can also Mirror the system on various other sites if you plan on selling elsewhere on the web. Handle all of these sites from one location instead of switching between multiple dashboards.

Another pleasant Feature is 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 of these earnings are reflected onto the back part of your website.

The system is Also made to integrate well with social networks, so you may sell your items on Facebook if needed. 1 part of Ecwid we particularly enjoy is the shipping facet. With real-time shipping integrations you always know what’s happening with your requests and at which they’re being shipped to.

What other trendy Items are comprised 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 planet

You receive lots of promotional tools such as vouchers, discounts, and bulk pricing and much more

Create your personalized email notifications

Utilize the automated tax solution (automatic taxation rates at checkout, tax reporting and filing)

Point-of-sale functionality

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

With Ecwid’s POS Performance, regardless of whether or not a customer purchases a product in shop, online, in their phone or through Facebook, everything remains in sync – i.e., the retailer’s catalog, inventory and client / trade info.

There is a few methods that you can use this feature: the simplest is likely to use’Paypal Here.’ This involves downloading the Ecwid iOS program from the Apple’s App store, linking it to the Paypal Here support, and then taking payments utilizing a mobile card reader (pictured above).

You have 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 straight from Ecwid.

There’s a couple of Things worth noting the Paypal Here integration: first, it’s only available to merchants in america and UK. Second, it’s not yet available on Android apparatus. (On their site, Ecwid state it’ll be available shortly — but they’ve been saying that for quite some time now). Ecwid Free Online Store Website

If you are located outside That the US / UK, or need to work with another mobile device type, the good news is that Ecwid also works together with the Vend, Clover, NCR Silver and Square POS systems. These all facilitate utilizing a wider range of hardware in 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 all paid-for programs, you will 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 that they will display properly across apparatus — desktopcomputer, tablet and cellular. In a age where smartphone web browsing is eclipsing desktop surfing, this is vital.

Free program

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

Granted, it’s a fairly Basic plan, where features such as discount coupons and support aren’t accessible, and it merely lets you sell up to ten products in two categories — but this may really be sufficient for some customers, and using it’s a fantastic way to try out the system.

However, A vital point to notice about the free program is that it is not great from an SEO point of view — you have to be on a paid program to ensure your product pages talk to hunt engines correctly (more on SEO below).

Speech detection

Ecwid is ahead of the Pack in that its storefronts could be automatically 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 functionality by discovering visitors’ language automatically according to their browser settings / IP address.

Competing products like Shopify And Bigcommerce are yet to provide this type of performance — they force you to rely on third party apps, the production of numerous shops or Google Translate to provide different language versions of your shop, which can be less than perfect. Therefore a definite win for Ecwid here.

Ecwid and search engine optimization

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

So Far as I can tell However, you can’t manually change the URL of a product — you need to make do with the one that Ecwid generates for you. This isn’t ideal 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’ve given to your product – so if you include some keywords on your product title (not a bad idea anyway) that your URL will comprise them too. This serves as something of a workaround, but I’d prefer whole control over URLs. Ecwid Free Online Store Website

One place where Ecwid doesn’t perform quite so Well on the SEO front involves AMP — accelerated cellular pages. As the name implies, AMP pages load faster on mobile devices. This motivates people to stay longer on your webpage, thus increasing’live time’ –something which is believed by many search engine optimization experts consider to be rewarded with Google with preferential treatment in search results. Furthermore, Google occasionally highlights AMP pages in carousels in search results, giving AMP articles an extra little boost.

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

Importing and exporting data

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

The Export option permits you to export merchandise information, orders and customers (again, in CSV format) and means that if you ever feel the need to migrate your store to a different e-commerce platform, then you shouldn’t have some major problems doing so.

Utilizing Ecwid with other programs

Ecwid and WordPress

WordPress doesn’t Supplied any e-commerce functionality from this box, so anyone wishing to market on the platform will need a third-party alternative like Ecwid. There’s an Ecwid plugin accessible, therefore adding an Ecwid shop to your WordPress site is quite simple — you can get up and running with a couple 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 attributes, but the number of payment gateway options is very limited — you need to use Stripe or Paypal. (And using Stripe only works if you are selling goods from particular countries). Another principal issue with the built-in Squarespace selling software is they don’t facilitate dropshipping, and complete export of products isn’t currently possible.

Integrating Ecwid with Squarespace permits you to bypass these limitations, and adding it into some Squarespace site is very easy: it’s a simple matter of adding a code block into a webpage and pasting some HTML into it.

Ecwid and Wix

As With Squarespace, there’s currently no dropshipping option for Wix users, so again Ecwid can provide a fantastic workaround. A committed app is provided by Ecwid to allow you incorporate the item onto a Wix shop easily.

Programs 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 fair the assortment of integrations could be more extensive — competing goods like Shopify offer a much wider assortment of apps. Notable omissions from the Ecwid store comprise Quickbooks and Zendesk, for example (that said, a Quickbooks integration is coming shortly ).

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

Interface and ease of use

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

Much like any e-commerce tool, you will have to Spend a fair amount of time getting your head around producing catalogues and product variants, establishing shipping rates and so on…but there is nothing here that should represent too much of a learning curve.

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

If You’re stuck however, you could always get in touch with Ecwid’s support team — more on that later — or, even if you’re on a’Business’ or’Unlimited’, you can make the most 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 Lawyer, so please note that the below observations should not be interpreted as legal information, but I am going to do my best to spell out some of the key GDPR problems facing Ecwid consumers under.

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 is usually a good idea to consult a lawyer on what to do); and even if your business is not based in the EU, then you still will need to obey the regulations where any website visits from the EU are worried.

According to my Understanding of the key GDPR principles, the main priorities for potential Ecwid shop owners are to:

· Provide sufficient privacy and cookie notices

· Process and store data safely

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

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

There does not Appear to be Whatever stops you fulfilling the first three requirements readily enough with Ecwid, although you will need to spend time and potentially money creating adequate notices and crafting data capture forms so they are GDPR compliant.

Where things get Complicated with Ecwid is the fourth requirement — cookie cutter approval. To Guarantee 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 run (i.e., to provide’prior permission’)

· Logs their consent to conduct biscuits Ecwid Free Online Store Website

· Enables them to revoke approval at a later point

So for example, if you Use a Facebook Advertising cookie in combination with your Ecwid store, you will be breaking GDPR laws unless you have a banner set up which does all of the above.

Nowout of the box at Least there is not a way to deal with the cookie consent issue with Ecwid. Nor is there an adequate app available from the Ecwid app shop (the only alternative on front I can find, the’EU cookie banner’, doesn’t seem to supply the essential performance — even though costing $1.99 per month to use).

It Seems to me that the only option available to Ecwid consumers is to use a professional product like CookiePro, which does supply all the essential functionality to make cookie consent fully GDPR compliant. Despite being a powerful product nonetheless, Cookiepro does need quite a lot of configuration and you’ll need to set quite a great deal of time apart to set it up.

Installation and Design

I Truly enjoy The simple fact that you’re able to run a website without paying anything. This makes the setup process that much easier, because you simply need to punch in your email and create a password to go straight to the backend interface.

The machine has Wizards for each 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 also click on choices like Facebook and Joomla, based on where you would like to sell.

The backend Design is perfect, since it walks you through each site creation and integration measure with a few fine text and photos. As soon as you get your shop implemented on a website or societal page it looks fairly slick.

The layout Depends upon the theme you have on your site, however as you can see below, it shows photos well and appears clean and easy to navigate. I particularly enjoy the Shopping Bag place, which can be outstanding and easy to locate for clients when they wish to market.

Although many Sites will be mobile friendly, its fine knowing that Ecwid involves 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 store and sell on the move, while also giving your customers an opportunity to get products from the cell interface.

The closing Design item which makes sense to mention is your language tool. Since running an internet store generally requires one to attain out to people from all over the world, you’re bound to stumble upon a few customers who would like to read product webpages and other content in their native tongue. Ecwid supports 45 languages, so when a user wants to translate from English to Spanish, that is not a problem in any respect.

The Ecwid App Economy

Having the Opportunity to put in software is a sure fire way to scaling your ecommerce website in a reasonable way. Ecwid includes a place called the Ecwid App Market. It provides 65 applications, helping retailers extend their store functionality easily. Ecwid Free Online Store Website

A Few of the programs Will give you a hand with rating and reviews, rewards programs, automatic ad tools, analytics, custom design topics and more.

SEO and Marketing

Ecwid is a Third party remedy to your current site, so you would typically have to employ additional SEO and advertising tools to really get the word out. That said, Ecwid provides quality SEO qualities 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 excess work. It gets even better with WordPress websites, as you acquire access to additional search engine optimization plugins and also the default search engine functionality around the dashboard.

Managing Your Inventory

The Ecwid Inventory process is as straightforward as they come, since it doesn’t seem to include any of those unnecessary bells and whistles you might find on other ecommerce platforms.

Each measure is Concise and clear, so you may just go in there and sort in a product name, price and picture then save the product for later. Of course you can always open the More Powerful Options, however they different these for if you are all set to start ramping up your store.

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

Customer Care

Ecwid offers A Chat With Sales attribute which is one of my favorite ways to converse 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 section with FAQs, a knowledge base, email capabilities and a forum.

Overall, the Service outlets include phone service, online chat support and email support, maintaining the response time brief and support quality .

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

Payments and Security

It is 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 trade fee with any of the programs they provide, which makes it desirable for any store that’s trying to keep down costs and to improve margins.

Remember that Ecwid is not a payment processor, so you have to set up something like PayPal or Stripe to process all the trades that come through your site. It is rather simple to employ one of these systems, since Ecwid integrates with over 40 international payment options. However, each of those processors have their particular trade fees so that you need to get ready for these.

It is rather Clear that Ecwid takes safety seriously, since the provider is a PCI DSS Level 1 accredited supplier. The business also states that every trade that includes sensitive information is transferred via a secure HTTPS channel. Ecwid Free Online Store Website

What if you Would love to collect both online and offline 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 cons of utilizing Ecwid

Advantages

· Ecwid signifies a very simple way to add e-commerce to any existing website.

· Point-of-sale performance is available, and there are a number of ways to implement it.

· The product is cheap compared to other alternatives.

· It supports multi-language variations of your shop.

· The store layouts are responsive.

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

· It permits users of website building products which don’t facilitate dropshipping to begin doing so (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 program is not time-limited, includes support, and is rather generous concerning attributes.

Disadvantages

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

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

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

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

· You can’t change product URLs, which can be slightly annoying from an search engine optimization point of view.

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

· Creating Ecwid GDPR-compliant (with respect to obtaining cookie consent) sounds hard.

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

Pricing

Ecwid comes With four plans, among which is completely free. They market the free plan like mad, and mention that many different platforms drag you into a free trial, even where you will finally 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, while the Venture plan ups that count to 100 products and you get items like an iPhone management app. The company program goes up to 2500 products for a wonderful price and you also get live chat service. Priority support comes alongside the Unlimited program and you can also market an unlimited number of products.

Ecwid is one of The most economical solutions available on the market. You may see that it’s actually more affordable than a lot of the other platforms we have reviewed previously, so if you’re searching for value, this could be the right plugin for you.

Wrap-up

In short, I am Beginning to think that Ecwid is one of the greatest ways to market online, as long as you implement the best methods to enhance your earnings online as well. Ecwid is a slick system, with superb easy implementation measures, making it ideal for the small business crowd. Ecwid Free Online Store Website

Click Here to register up to Ecwid today!