Introduction Ecwid Marketing
Have you ever Wondered if you are using the right ecommerce platform for sale on the internet? Do you occasionally stumble upon a new service that’s more practical and more economical than what you’re using today? Starting a small business is all about keeping your costs low, and locating an ecommerce platform that will help you with that is half the battle. Unfortunately, when you run a small business site it frequently becomes tricky once you want to attract on a new ecommerce platform or perhaps just alter your site at all. Read our Ecwid review to find out more about this solution. Ecwid Marketing
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Many options Intentionally make a closed system, which is tedious to maneuver away from as soon as you get started. But with a stage named Ecwid, you do not need to worry about this. Actually, the whole goal of the company, which began in 2009, would be to quickly and inexpensively make an internet store system on your existing websites.
You do not have To create a whole new site. Just apply Ecwid on any platform, CMS or social networking (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 sites, especially when it comes to ecommerce. So, I needed to put together an in-depth review of this Ecwid system to find out if it is worth the time.
How Many People Use Ecwid?
It’s 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 retailers span over 175 distinct countries, demonstrating that this isn’t only a platform for people in the united states or Europe. Even businesses in developing countries have a chance to get an online store heading, 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 certified. 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 customers’ information is safe and secure.
In addition to The total merchant count, over 20,000 active users are utilizing the Ecwid Shopping Cart for WordPress. The difference between that 20,000 and also the 1 million is the fact you don’t need a WordPress site to implement Ecwid. So, the 20,000 simply refers to WordPress users with the plugin.
What is Ecwid, and how does this 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 performance, Ecwid is geared 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 lets you set up’catalogs’ of products, and include photos, pricing, weight etc. . each. You are able to specify shipping prices, accept credit card payments etc — all of the crucial things that you would expect to be able to perform using an e-commerce alternative.
However it differs Apart from competing products such as Shopify, Volusion, Squarespace and Bigcommerce since it isn’t really designed to allow you to produce a fully-featured, standalone e-commerce website; rather, it is intended to enable you add an internet store to an existing online existence.
(That said, Ecwid have Recently added some new functionality, known as’Starter Site’, which does let you produce a one-page standalone offering. We are going to chat through this in more depth later on in the inspection.) Ecwid Marketing
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The Product works by providing you a widget that gets put on other websites — hence the name Ecwid: it is short for’E-commerce Widget’. You receive a few lines of HTML code (the widget) to add into an existing website or societal networking profile, and your shop is displayed wherever you’ve inserted this code.
Features
Ecwid makes Strides in the market by catering to businesses which don’t need to start a brand-new website. The primary feature is that you can choose your old site and quickly incorporate the Ecwid system inside a couple of minutes.
You can also Mirror the system onto several other websites if you plan on selling elsewhere on the web. Manage all of these sites from 1 place instead of switching between multiple dashboards.
Another pleasant Attribute is the syncing between multiple devices. Sell on-the-go together with your smartphone. This usually means that you can visit a tradeshow to generate a few sales and each one of these sales are represented onto the backend of your website.
The system is Also designed to integrate nicely with social networks, so that you may sell your things on Facebook if desired. 1 part of Ecwid we especially enjoy is the shipping facet. With real-time transport integrations you always know what’s happening with your orders and at which they’re being shipped to.
What other cool Items are included with Ecwid?
It runs on a super fast frame
It comes with an address book for customers and customers
The machine has over 43 translations for sale round the world
You get lots of promotional instruments such as coupons, discounts, and bulk pricing and much more
Create your personalized email notifications
Use the automatic tax alternative (automatic tax rates at checkout, tax reporting and filing)
Point-of-sale performance
Thanks To Ecwid’s point-of-sale (POS) performance, you may use your Ecwid shop to sell not only online but in physical locations too — in stores, market stalls, at concerts and so forth.
With Ecwid’s POS Performance, irrespective of whether or not a customer buys a product in store, online, on their phone or through Facebook, everything remains in sync – i.e., the merchant’s catalog, inventory and customer / transaction info.
There is a few methods you can take advantage of this feature: the simplest is probably to use’Paypal Here.’ This entails downloading the Ecwid iOS program from the Apple’s App store, connecting it to the Paypal Here service, and then taking payments utilizing a mobile card reader (pictured above).
You’ve got two options when it comes to POS Hardware and Paypal Here: you can either buy a chip and swipe reader (for $24.99) or a processor and also 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 merchants in america and UK. Secondly, it is not yet available on Android apparatus. (On their website, Ecwid say it’ll be available soon — but they have been saying that for quite some time now). Ecwid Marketing
If you are located outside That the US / UK, or want to work with another mobile device kind, the good thing is that Ecwid also functions with all the Vend, Clover, NCR Silver and Square POS systems. These all ease using a larger range 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 could avail Of the Paypal Here POS option on all paid-for plans, you will need to be to the priciest’Unlimited’ plan if you would like to avail of a Vend, Clover, NCR Silver or Square integration.
Responsive storefronts
Ecwid Storefronts are responsive, meaning that they will display correctly across apparatus — desktopcomputer, tablet and cellular. In a age where smartphone internet browsing is eclipsing desktop surfing, this is important.
Free plan
Unlike many similar Products, Ecwid offers a completely free program.
Granted, it’s a pretty Standard plan, in which attributes such as discount coupons and support aren’t available, and it merely lets you sell up to ten products in two categories — but this may really be sufficient for some users, and using it is a fantastic way to try the system out.
However, A key point to notice about the free plan is the fact that it is not great from an SEO standpoint — you need to be on a paid program to make certain that your product pages talk to search engines correctly (more on SEO under ).
Language detection
Ecwid is forward of the Pack in that its storefronts can be automatically translated into nearly 50 distinct languages — clients can view your store in their own language, without you having to worry about creating alternate versions of it. Ecwid provides this performance by discovering visitors’ language automatically based on their browser preferences / IP address.
Competing products like Shopify And Bigcommerce are yet to provide this type of performance — that they force you to rely on third party apps, the production of numerous stores or Google Translate to provide different language versions of your store, which can be less than perfect. Therefore a definite win for Ecwid here.
Ecwid and search engine optimization
Search engine Optimisation (SEO) in Ecwid is a fairly 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, however you can tweak them to suit your SEO objectives.
As far as I could tell But you can not manually change the URL of a product — you need to make do with the one that Ecwid generates for you. This is not ideal because keywords in URLs are used by some search engines to categorise content during indexing.
However, The URLs that are automatically generated by Ecwid include the name you have given to your product – so in the event that you include some keywords in your product name (maybe not a bad idea anyway) that your URL will include them also. This serves as a tool of a workaround, but I would prefer whole control over URLs. Ecwid Marketing
One area where Ecwid does not perform quite so Well on the search engine optimization front entails AMP — accelerated cellular pages. As the name implies, AMP pages load faster on cellular devices. This motivates people to remain longer on your webpage, thus increasing’dwell time’ –something that’s considered by many search engine optimization experts consider to be rewarded with Google with preferential treatment in search results. Additionally, Google occasionally highlights AMP pages in carousels in search results, providing AMP content an extra little boost.
Unfortunately However — and unlike competing products like Bigcommerce or even Shopify, you can’t create AMP variations 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 data, orders and customers (in CSV format) and ensures that should you 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 Twitter
WordPress does not Provided any e-commerce performance from the box, so anyone wishing to sell on the stage will need a third-party solution like Ecwid. There’s an Ecwid plugin accessible, so adding an Ecwid store to your WordPress site is quite simple — you can get up and running with a couple clicks.
You just sign up for an Ecwid account and then install the free plugin.
Ecwid and Squarespace
Squarespace comes with Increasingly excellent e-commerce features, but the number of payment gateway options is quite limited — you need to use Stripe or Paypal. (And with Stripe only functions if you are selling goods from certain countries). The other main issue with the built-in Squarespace selling software is they don’t facilitate dropshipping, and full export of merchandise is not currently possible.
Integrating Ecwid with Squarespace allows you to bypass these limitations, and adding it into some Squarespace site is very simple: it is a simple matter of adding a code block into a page and pasting some HTML to it.
Ecwid and Wix
As With Squarespace, there’s currently no dropshipping option for Wix users, so again Ecwid can offer a fantastic workaround. A committed program is provided by Ecwid to enable you incorporate the product on a Wix store easily.
Apps and plugins
Ecwid provides a pretty Restricted number integrations with other apps that are well-known. Integrations do exist with key services Mailchimp, Xero and Freshbooks; but to be fair the range of integrations may be extensive — competing products such as Shopify offer a much wider assortment of programs. Notable omissions from the Ecwid store include Quickbooks and Zendesk, such as (that said, a Quickbooks integration is coming shortly ).
The Picture is better in regards to CMS plugins: these are available for WordPress, Wix and Joomla, enabling to you set up Ecwid on these platforms quite easily. Ecwid Marketing
Interface and ease of use
Ecwid’s Interface is rather user friendly. Like most 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 fair amount of time getting your head about creating catalogues and product variations, setting up transport prices etc…but there isn’t anything here that should represent too 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 touch with Ecwid’s support staff — more on that later — or, if you’re on a’Business’ or’Unlimited’, you are able to make the most of this included customization support (you get 2 hours and 12 hours customization time from Ecwidon these plans).
Ecwid and GDPR
I am not a Attorney, so please be aware that the below observations should not be interpreted as legal advice, but I am planning to do my best to spell out some of the major GDPR issues facing Ecwid users below.
With the introduction of The EU’s new GDPR legislation, there are several legal steps that site owners now need to take to ensure that they are adequately protecting EU clients’ and visitors’ privacy. There are serious financial penalties for not doing so (to the point where it is usually a good idea to consult an attorney on what to do); and even if your company is not located in the EU, then you still will need to comply with the regulations where any site visits in the EU are worried.
Based on my Understanding of the key GDPR rules, the main priorities for potential Ecwid shop owners would be to:
· Provide adequate privacy and cookie cutter notices
· Process and store information securely
· Get explicit permission from people registering to mailing lists that it is okay to send them e-newsletters
· Provide a way to opt in or revoke consent to use of non-essential biscuits onto a site (and to log that consent).
There doesn’t seem 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 that they are GDPR compliant.
Where things get Complex with Ecwid is your fourth requirement — cookie consent. To ensure GDPR compliance, You Have to display a cookie banner to your customers which
· Allows them to select which cookies they want to run BEFORE those biscuits are run (i.e., to provide’prior permission’)
· Logs their consent to run biscuits Ecwid Marketing
· Enables them to revoke approval at a later point
So for example, if you Use a Facebook Advertising cookie in conjunction with your Ecwid shop, you will be breaking GDPR legislation unless you’ve got a banner set up which does all of the above.
Nowout of the box at Least there isn’t a means to deal with the cookie approval issue with Ecwid. Nor is there a decent app accessible from the Ecwid app shop (the only option on this front that I can locate, the’EU cookie banner’, doesn’t seem to provide the essential performance — even though costing $1.99 a month to use).
It Appears to me that the only alternative available to Ecwid users would be to use a professional product like CookiePro, which will supply all the necessary performance to make cookie consent fully GDPR compliant. Despite being a strong product nonetheless, Cookiepro does require quite a great deal of configuration and you’ll want to set quite a great deal of time apart to set this up.
Setup and Layout
I really like The simple fact that you can run a website without paying anything. This makes the installation process that much easier, because you just have to punch in your email and make a password to go straight to the backend interface.
The machine has Wizards for each platform that you want to set your store on. In case you’ve got a WordPress site, simply walk through three steps to get up and running. You can also click on options like Facebook and Joomla, depending on the place you want to market.
The backend Design is perfect, since it walks you through every site creation and integration measure with some nice photos and text. As soon as you obtain your shop implemented on a website or societal page it looks fairly sleek.
The design Depends upon the subject you’ve got on your website, however as you can see below, it displays photos well and looks clean and simple to navigate. I especially enjoy the Shopping Bag place, which is prominent and easy to locate for clients when they want to checkout.
Although many Sites are going to be cellular friendly, its fine understanding that Ecwid includes a native shopping application for both iOS and Android. Merchants now receive a native shopping application for iOS and Android.
This means you Can mange your shop and market on the move, while also giving your clients a chance to get products from the mobile interface.
The closing Design item that makes sense to mention is your language tool. Since running an internet store generally requires one to reach out to individuals from throughout the planet, you are bound to stumble upon some clients who’d love 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’s no problem at all.
The Ecwid App Market
Having the Chance to put in applications is a sure fire way to scaling up your ecommerce website in a reasonable way. Ecwid includes a place known as the Ecwid App Market. It offers 65 software, helping retailers extend their store functionality readily. Ecwid Marketing
Some of the apps Will give you a hand with reviews and rating, rewards programs, automatic ad tools, analytics, customized design themes and much more.
SEO and Marketing
Ecwid is a Third party remedy to your current site, so you’d normally need to implement additional SEO and advertising tools to really get the word out. Nevertheless, Ecwid supplies quality SEO qualities to help retailers increase their visibility in Google searches.
Moreover, Google now indexes AJAX sites, so all Ecwid shops are indexed by Google without any excess effort. It gets better with WordPress sites, as you gain access to additional SEO plugins and also the default search engine performance around the dashboard.
Managing Your Inventory
The Ecwid Inventory process is as simple as they come, because it doesn’t appear to incorporate any of those unnecessary bells and whistles you may find on other e commerce platforms.
Each step is Concise and clear, so you can just go in there and type in a product name, price and picture then save the product for later. Of course you could always open the More Powerful Options, but they different these for if you’re all set to get started ramping up your store.
As an example of the inventory Rich direction toolset, you obtain access to items like out of stock merchandise monitoring, mobile device inventory management, barcode scanning and much more.
Customer Care
Ecwid offers A Chat With Earnings attribute that is always one of my favorite ways to converse to companies. Simply send them a question and you can work on something else until they respond.
The company also Provides a powerful support department with FAQs, a knowledge base, email capabilities and a forum.
Overall, the Support outlets include phone support, online chat service and email support, maintaining the response time brief and support quality .
In my mind, the Platform has all you could want in terms of support.
Payments and Safety
It’s not always Easy to find an ecommerce platform which doesn’t charge fees, but that is exactly what you get with Ecwid. They never charge any kind of transaction fee with any of those plans they offer, which makes it desirable for any shop that’s hoping to keep down costs and to improve margins.
Remember that Ecwid isn’t a payment processor, so you’ve got to set up something such as PayPal or Stripe to process all the transactions that come through your site. It’s pretty easy to employ these systems, because Ecwid integrates with over 40 global payment options. However, each one of those processors have their particular transaction fees so you have to prepare for them.
It’s quite Clear that Ecwid takes security seriously, because the provider is a PCI DSS Grade 1 certified service provider. The business also claims that each trade that includes sensitive data is transferred through a secure HTTPS channel. Ecwid Marketing
What if you Would like to accumulate both online and offline payments? Perhaps 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 online and offline system.
Advantages and cons of utilizing Ecwid
Benefits
· Ecwid represents a very easy way to add e-commerce to some existing website.
· Point-of-sale functionality is available, and there are a number of strategies to implement it.
· The item is cheap by comparison to other solutions.
· It supports multi-language versions of your shop.
· The store layouts are responsive.
· Plugins / apps are available for major platforms (such as WordPress, Drupal and Wix).
· It allows users of site building products that don’t facilitate dropshipping to begin doing this (i.e., Squarespace, Jimdo, Wix etc.)
· The’starter site’ option is a fantastic stopgap measure for merchants who need a shop fast, but have yet to develop a full site in order to add the Ecwid widget to.
· The free Ecwid plan is not time-limited, includes service, and is fairly generous concerning features.
Disadvantages
· The Paypal This 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 plans.
· There is a limited number of programs / integrations available in the Ecwid App shop.
· You can not change merchandise URLs, which is slightly annoying from an search engine optimization perspective.
· You can not create AMP versions of product pages utilizing Ecwid.
· Making Ecwid GDPR-compliant (with regard to getting cookie consent) sounds hard.
· The free version doesn’t let you get any of the SEO tools.
Pricing
Ecwid comes With four plans, among which is totally free. They market the free program like mad, and mention that many other platforms drag you in free trial, even where you will finally need to pay.
This is where Ecwid stands out, and you’ll be able to see the other payment plans are fairly affordable.
The Free plan Lets you sell 10 products, whereas the Venture program ups that count to 100 goods 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 program and you can also sell an unlimited amount of products.
Ecwid is one of The most economical solutions available on the marketplace. You can see that it is actually cheaper than many of the other programs we’ve reviewed previously, so if you’re searching for value, this might be the perfect plugin for you.
Summary
In short, I’m Starting to think that Ecwid is one of the best ways to market online, provided that you employ the best methods to improve your earnings online as well. Ecwid is a slick system, with superb simple implementation measures, which makes it ideal for your small business crowd. Ecwid Marketing
Click Here to sign up to Ecwid now!