Intro Ecwid Inventory Management
Have you ever Wondered if you’re using the right ecommerce platform for sale on the internet? Can you occasionally 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 prices low, and locating an ecommerce platform that will help you with that is half the battle. Unfortunately, when you operate a small company website it frequently becomes tricky once you would like to bring on a brand new ecommerce platform or even just modify your site whatsoever. Read our Ecwid review to discover more about this option. Ecwid Inventory Management
Click Here to register up to Ecwid now!
Many options Purposefully create a closed system, which can be tedious to maneuver away from once you begin. But with a platform called Ecwid, you no longer need to be concerned about it. Actually, the whole aim of the business, which began in 2009, is to quickly and quickly make an internet store system in your present websites.
You do not have To create a completely different site. Just apply Ecwid on any stage, CMS or social network (in five minutes) and you’re good to go.
That raised my Attention, because I understand the struggles that come along with attempting to migrate websites, especially in regards to ecommerce. So, I wanted to put together an in-depth review of the Ecwid system to find out if it’s worth the time.
How Many People Use Ecwid?
It’s quite Remarkable what Ecwid has done since 2009, with more than 1 million merchants getting signed up. What’s even more cool is that the Ecwid retailers span over 175 distinct countries, showing that this isn’t only a platform for most people in the US or Europe. Even companies in developing nations have a chance to find an internet store going, and you don’t even have to squander your prior site if you have one.
The usership Continues to grow, particularly considering Ecwid is currently 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 that you and your customers’ information is safe and protected.
In addition to The total merchant count, over 20,000 active users are using the Ecwid Shopping Cart for WordPress. The difference between that 20,000 along with also the 1 million is the simple fact that you don’t require a WordPress site to implement Ecwid. So, the 20,000 simply identifies WordPress users with the plugin.
What is Ecwid, and how does it work?
Ecwid is a hosted Solution for building an online shop. Unlike competing products such as Shopify, Bigcommerce and Volusion, which permit you to build a new website with e-commerce performance, Ecwid is geared more towards people who already have a website and just want to add an internet store to it.
Much like other E-commerce programs, Ecwid lets you set up’catalogs’ of goods, and include photos, pricing, weight etc. for each. You can define shipping rates, accept credit card payments etc — all the crucial stuff that you would expect to be able to do with an e-commerce solution.
However it differs Significantly from competing products like Shopify, Volusion, Squarespace and Bigcommerce in that it is not really designed to let you produce a fully-featured, standalone e-commerce site; rather, it’s intended to enable you add an internet store to an existing online existence.
(That said, Ecwid have Recently added some new functionality, called’Starter Website’, which does let you create a one-page standalone offering. We’ll chat through this in more depth later on in the inspection.) Ecwid Inventory Management
Click Here to register up to Ecwid today!
The Product operates by providing you a widget which gets placed on other websites — hence the title Ecwid: it is short for’E-commerce Widget’. You receive a few lines of HTML code (the widget) to add to an existing website or social networking profile, and your store is displayed wherever you’ve added this code.
Characteristics
Ecwid makes Strides in the market by catering to businesses which don’t want to begin a brand new website. The main feature is that you can choose your old site and quickly integrate the Ecwid system inside a few minutes.
You can also Mirror the machine onto various different sites if you plan on selling elsewhere online. Manage all these sites from one place rather than switching between multiple dashboards.
Another pleasant Attribute is that the syncing between multiple devices. Sell on-the-go together with your smartphone. This usually means that you can go to a tradeshow to generate a few sales and all of these earnings are reflected on the backend of your site.
The system is Also made to integrate well with social networks, so you may sell your things on Facebook if desired. 1 part of Ecwid that we particularly enjoy is the shipping aspect. With real-time transport integrations you always know what is happening with your requests and where they’re being sent to.
What other cool Things are comprised with Ecwid?
It runs on a super fast framework
It comes with an address book for customers and clients
The system has over 43 translations for sale round the planet
You get a Lot of promotional tools such as vouchers, discounts, bulk pricing and much more
Produce your personalized email notifications
Use the automatic tax solution (automatic taxation charges at checkout, tax reporting and filing)
Point-of-sale functionality
Thank you To Ecwid’s point-of-sale (POS) performance, you may use your Ecwid shop to sell not only online but in bodily places too — in shops, market stalls, in theatres and so forth.
With Ecwid’s POS Functionality, irrespective of whether or not a customer buys a product in shop, online, on their phone or through Facebook, everything stays in sync – i.e., the retailer’s catalog, inventory and customer / trade information.
There’s a couple of methods you can take advantage of this feature: the easiest is probably to use’Paypal Here.’ This entails downloading the Ecwid iOS program from the Apple’s App shop, connecting it to the Paypal Here service, and then taking payments utilizing a cell card reader (pictured above).
You’ve got two choices when it comes to POS Hardware and Paypal This: you can buy a processor and swipe reader (for $24.99) or a chip and also tap reader (for $79.99). Both may be ordered direct from Ecwid.
There’s a couple of Things worth noting about the Paypal Here integration: it’s only available to merchants in america and UK. Secondly, it’s not yet available on Android apparatus. (On their website, Ecwid say it’ll be available shortly — but they’ve been saying that for quite a while now). Ecwid Inventory Management
If you are based outside The US / UK, or need to work with another mobile device kind, the fantastic thing is that Ecwid also functions with the Vend, Clover, NCR Silver and Square POS systems. These all facilitate utilizing a larger 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 can avail Of the Paypal Here POS option on all paid-for programs, you’ll want 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 apparatus — desktopcomputer, tablet computers and cellular. In a age where smartphone internet browsing is eclipsing desktop surfing, this is vital.
Free plan
Unlike many similar Products, Ecwid provides a totally free plan.
Granted, it is a fairly Standard plan, in which attributes like discount vouchers and service aren’t accessible, and it only allows you to sell up to ten products in 2 categories — but this could actually be adequate for some customers, and using it’s a fantastic way to try the system out.
But, A vital point to note about the free plan is the fact that it is not great from an search engine optimization point of view — you have to be on a paid program to ensure your product pages talk to hunt engines accurately (more on SEO below).
Language detection
Ecwid is forward of the Pack in that its storefronts could be automatically translated into nearly 50 distinct languages — customers can see your store in their own language, without you having to worry about creating alternate versions of this. Ecwid provides this functionality by detecting visitors’ language mechanically based on their browser preferences / IP address.
Competing products such as Shopify And Bigcommerce are yet to provide this type of functionality — that they force you to rely on third party programs, the production of multiple stores or Google Translate to supply different language versions of your shop, which can be less than ideal. So a definite win for Ecwid here.
Ecwid and search engine optimisation
Search engine Optimization (search engine optimization ) in Ecwid is a fairly straightforward affair. You can edit the name of your webpage and its meta description; the applicable fields are pre-populated for you automatically, but you can tweak them to suit your search engine optimization objectives.
So Far as I could tell But you can not manually change the URL of a product — you need to make do with the one that Ecwid creates for you. This is not 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 title you have given to your own product – so in the event that you include some keywords in your product name (not a bad idea anyway) your URL will include them too. This functions as something of a workaround, but I’d prefer whole control over URLs. Ecwid Inventory Management
One place where Ecwid does not perform quite so Well on the SEO front involves AMP — accelerated mobile pages. As the name implies, AMP pages load faster on cellular devices. This motivates people to stay longer on your page, thus increasing’dwell time’ –something that’s considered by many search engine optimization experts believe to be rewarded by Google with preferential treatment in search results. Additionally, Google sometimes highlights AMP pages in carousels in search results, giving AMP content an extra little boost.
Unfortunately However — and unlike most rival products such as Bigcommerce or even Shopify, you can’t create AMP versions of your products using Ecwid.
Importing and exporting information
Like many competing Goods Ecwid allows you to import and export your data in CSV format.
The Export option permits you to export merchandise data, orders and clients (in CSV format) and means that should you ever feel the need to migrate your store to another e-commerce platform, you shouldn’t have some major difficulties doing so.
Using Ecwid with other programs
Ecwid and WordPress
WordPress does not Supplied any e-commerce performance from the box, so anybody wanting to sell on the stage will need a third-party solution like Ecwid. There is 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 for 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 need to utilize Stripe or Paypal. (And using Stripe only functions if you’re selling goods from certain countries). Another main problem 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 allows you to bypass these constraints, and adding it into a Squarespace site is very easy: it is a simple matter of including a code block into a webpage and pasting some HTML to it.
Ecwid and Wix
As With Squarespace, there’s currently no dropshipping option for Wix users, therefore again Ecwid can provide a fantastic workaround. A committed app is provided by Ecwid to enable you incorporate the product on a Wix store easily.
Programs and plugins
Ecwid provides a pretty Restricted number integrations with other apps that are well-known. Integrations do exist together with services Mailchimp, Xero and Freshbooks; but to be honest 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, such as (that said, a Quickbooks integration is coming shortly ).
The Image is better when it comes to CMS plugins: these are available for WordPress, Wix and Joomla, enabling for you to set up Ecwid on these platforms quite easily. Ecwid Inventory Management
Interface and ease of use
Ecwid’s Interface is pretty user friendly. Like most similar online store builders, you get a vertical menu on the left which allows you to access key functionality, and the place on the right can be used to display or edit associated products, site 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 variations, establishing transport prices etc…but there is nothing here that should represent also a lot of a learning curve.
Things are aided 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 this later — or, if you’re on a’Business’ or’Unlimited’, you are able to take advantage of the included customization support (you get two hours and 12 hours personalization period from Ecwidon these programs ).
Ecwid and GDPR
I’m not a Lawyer, so please be aware that the below observations shouldn’t be interpreted as legal information, but I am going to do my very best to spell out some of the major GDPR issues facing Ecwid users below.
With the introduction of That the EU’s new GDPR laws, there are several legal measures that website owners now should take to ensure that they are adequately protecting EU customers’ and visitors’ privacy. There are severe financial penalties for not doing so (to the point where it is typically a great idea to speak with an attorney about what to do); and even if your business isn’t located in the EU, then you still need to comply with the regulations where any website visits from the EU are concerned.
Based on my Understanding of the key GDPR rules, the principal priorities for potential Ecwid shop owners would be to:
· Provide sufficient privacy and cookie cutter notices
· Process and store information safely
· Get explicit permission from people registering to mailing lists it is okay to send them e-newsletters
· Provide a means to opt in or revoke consent to use of non-essential biscuits onto a site (and to log that consent).
There doesn’t Appear to be Whatever stops you meeting the first three requirements easily enough with Ecwid, though you will need to devote time and potentially money creating adequate notices and crafting information capture forms so that they are GDPR compliant.
Where things get Complex with Ecwid is the fourth requirement — cookie approval. To Guarantee GDPR compliance, You Have to display a cookie banner to your visitors which
· Allows them to choose which cookies they would like to conduct BEFORE those cookies are conducted (i.e., to provide’prior permission’)
· Logs their approval to run biscuits Ecwid Inventory Management
· Enables them to revoke approval at a later stage
So for Instance, If you Use a Facebook Advertising cookie in combination with your Ecwid shop, you will be breaking GDPR legislation unless you have a banner in place which does all of the above.
Nowout of the box at There is not a means to deal with the cookie approval issue with Ecwid. Nor is there a decent app available from the Ecwid app shop (the only alternative on front I can locate, the’EU cookie banner’, doesn’t appear to provide the essential functionality — even though costing $1.99 a month to utilize ).
It Appears to me that the only alternative available to Ecwid consumers would be to use a specialist product such as CookiePro, which does provide all the essential functionality to make cookie consent fully GDPR compliant. Despite being a powerful product nonetheless, Cookiepro does need quite a great deal of configuration and you’ll need to set quite a lot of time aside to set this up.
Installation and Layout
I Truly like The fact that you can run a web site without paying anything. This makes the installation process that much easier, because you just need to punch in your email and create a password to proceed right to the backend port.
The machine has Wizards for every platform that you would like to set your shop on. In case you’ve got a WordPress site, just walk through three steps to get up and running. You can even click on choices like Facebook and Joomla, based on where you want to sell.
The backend Design is flawless, because it walks you through each website creation and integration step with a few fine photos and text. As soon as you get your shop implemented on a site or social page it appears fairly slick.
The layout Depends upon the theme you have on your website, but as you can see below, it displays photos well and appears clean and easy to navigate. I especially enjoy the Shopping Bag place, which is prominent and easy to locate for clients when they wish to checkout.
Though many Sites will be cellular friendly, its fine understanding 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 go, while also providing your clients an opportunity to buy products from the mobile interface.
The final Design thing which makes sense to mention is the vocabulary instrument. Since running an internet store generally requires one to reach out to individuals 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 if a user would like to translate from English to Spanish, that’s no problem in any respect.
The Ecwid Program Market
Having the Opportunity to install applications is a sure fire way to scaling your ecommerce website in a fair manner. Ecwid includes a location called the Ecwid App Market. It provides 65 software, helping merchants extend their store performance easily. Ecwid Inventory Management
A Few of the apps Will help you out with rating and reviews, rewards programs, automated advertising tools, analytics, customized design themes and much more.
SEO and Marketing
Ecwid is a Third party solution to your current website, so you would typically have to employ additional SEO and advertising tools to really get out the word. That said, Ecwid supplies quality SEO qualities to help retailers increase their visibility in Google searches.
Moreover, Google now indexes AJAX websites, therefore all Ecwid stores are indexed by Google without any excess effort. It gets even better with WordPress sites, as you acquire access to additional search engine optimization plugins and the default search engine functionality on the dashboard.
Managing Your Inventory
The Ecwid Inventory system is as simple as they come, since it doesn’t appear to include any of those unnecessary bells and whistles you may find on other ecommerce platforms.
Each step is Clear and concise, so you can just go in there and sort in a product name, price and picture then save the merchandise for later. Of course you could always open the Powerful Options, but they different these for if you are ready to start ramping up your store.
As an example of the inventory Rich management toolset, you obtain access to items like from stock product tracking, mobile device inventory management, barcode scanning and much more.
Customer Care
Ecwid provides A Chat With Sales feature that is one of my favourite ways to talk with companies. Simply send them a question and you can 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 brief and support quality .
In my eyes, the Platform has everything you might want in terms of support.
Payments and Security
It’s not necessarily Easy to locate an ecommerce platform that doesn’t charge transaction fees, but that is exactly what you get with Ecwid. They never control any kind of transaction fee with any of those programs they offer, making it desirable for any store 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 site. It’s pretty easy to employ one of these systems, since Ecwid incorporates with over 40 international payment choices. However, each one of these processors have their own transaction fees so you need to prepare for them.
It’s quite Evident that Ecwid takes safety seriously, since the company is a PCI DSS Grade 1 accredited service provider. The business also states that each trade that includes sensitive data is transferred via a secure HTTPS channel. Ecwid Inventory Management
What if you Would love 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 performance into both an offline and online system.
Benefits and cons of utilizing Ecwid
Advantages
· Ecwid represents a really simple way to add e-commerce to some existing website.
· Point-of-sale functionality can be obtained, and there are a number of ways to implement it.
· The product is cheap compared to other alternatives.
· It supports multi-language versions of your shop.
· The store designs are responsive.
· Plugins / programs are available for major platforms (such as WordPress, Drupal and Wix).
· It permits users of website building products that don’t facilitate dropshipping to start doing so (i.e., Squarespace, Jimdo, Wix etc.. )
· The’starter website’ option is a good stopgap measure for merchants who want a shop fast, but have yet to develop a complete site in order to add the Ecwid widget to.
· The free Ecwid program is not time-limited, includes service, and is rather generous concerning features.
Cons
· The Paypal This POS system is limited to the US and UK.
· The Paypal Here POS system is limited to iOS users.
· Telephone support is only available on the more expensive programs.
· There’s a limited number of apps / integrations offered in the Ecwid Program store.
· You can not alter merchandise URLs, which is slightly annoying from an search engine optimization perspective.
· You can’t create AMP versions of merchandise pages using Ecwid.
· Creating Ecwid GDPR-compliant (with regard to obtaining cookie approval ) sounds hard.
· The free version doesn’t allow you to get any of the SEO tools.
Pricing
Ecwid comes With four strategies, among which is completely free. They promote the free program like mad, and mention that many different platforms drag you into a free trial, where you may eventually have to pay.
That is where Ecwid stands outside, and you’ll be able to see that the other payment plans are fairly affordable.
The Free plan Lets you sell 10 products, while the Venture plan ups that depend to 100 products and you get things like an iPhone direction program. The company plan goes up to 2500 products for a wonderful price and you get live chat support. Priority support comes along with the Unlimited plan and you might also sell an unlimited number of merchandise.
Ecwid is one of The cheapest solutions available on the market. You may see that it is actually more affordable than a lot of the other platforms we have reviewed previously, so if you’re searching for value, this might be the perfect plugin for you.
Wrap-up
In short, I’m Starting to think that Ecwid is among the greatest ways to sell online, provided that you employ the best methods to improve your sales online too. Ecwid is a sleek system, with super easy implementation steps, making it ideal for your small business audience. Ecwid Inventory Management
Click Here to sign up to Ecwid today!