Intro Ecwid Review 2018
Have you ever Wondered if you are using the right ecommerce platform for selling on the internet? Do you occasionally stumble upon a new service that’s more practical and cheaper than what you’re using now? Starting a small business is all about keeping your prices low, and locating an ecommerce platform that will assist you with that is half the battle. Unfortunately, when you run a small business website it often becomes tricky when you want to attract on a new ecommerce platform or even just alter your website whatsoever. Read our Ecwid review to discover more about this option. Ecwid Review 2018
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Many solutions Purposefully make a closed system, which is tedious to maneuver away from once you begin. But with a stage named Ecwid, you no longer have to be concerned about this. In fact, the whole aim of the company, which began in 2009, would be to quickly and inexpensively make an internet store system in your present websites.
You don’t have To create a completely different site. Just implement Ecwid on any platform, CMS or social networking (in five minutes) and you’re good to go.
This increased my Attention, since I know the struggles that come along with trying to migrate sites, particularly in regards to ecommerce. So, I wanted to put together an in-depth review of this Ecwid system to find out whether it’s worth the time.
How Many Men and Women Use Ecwid?
It is quite Remarkable what Ecwid has done since 2009, with over 1 million merchants getting signed up. What’s even more cool is that the Ecwid merchants span over 175 distinct countries, demonstrating that this is not only a platform for most people in the united states or Europe. Even companies in developing countries have a opportunity to get an internet store going, and you don’t have to squander your prior website in case you have one.
The usership Continues to grow, especially considering Ecwid is currently PCI DSS Level 1 certified. If you’re not sure what that is, it’s pretty much the gold standard for safety in the ecommerce world. You can rest easy knowing you and your clients’ data is safe and secure.
Along with The total merchant count, over 20,000 active users are utilizing the Ecwid Shopping Cart for WordPress. The difference between that 20,000 along with also the 1 million is the fact that you don’t require a WordPress site to implement Ecwid. So, the 20,000 only refers to WordPress users with the plugin.
What’s Ecwid, and how does it function?
Ecwid is a hosted Solution for building an internet store. Unlike competing products such as Shopify, Bigcommerce and Volusion, which permit you to construct a fresh website with e-commerce performance, Ecwid is geared more towards people who currently have a site and just wish to add an internet store to it.
Much like other E-commerce platforms, Ecwid allows you to set up’catalogs’ of all products, and add photographs, pricing, weight etc. for each. You can specify shipping prices, accept credit card payments etc — all the crucial things that you’d expect to be able to do using an e-commerce alternative.
However it differs Significantly from competing products like Shopify, Volusion, Squarespace and Bigcommerce since it isn’t really designed to allow you to create a fully-featured, standalone e-commerce site; instead, it’s designed to enable you add an online store to an existing online presence.
(That said, Ecwid have Recently added some new functionality, called’Starter Website’, which will allow you produce a one-page standalone offering. We’ll talk via this in more depth later on in the review.) Ecwid Review 2018
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The Product operates by giving 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 to an present website or societal networking profile, and your shop is displayed wherever you have inserted this code.
Features
Ecwid makes Strides in the market by catering to businesses that don’t want to begin a brand-new site. The main attribute is that you can choose your old website and quickly incorporate the Ecwid system within a couple of minutes.
You can also Mirror the system onto several other websites if you anticipate selling elsewhere on the web. Handle all these websites from one place 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 visit a tradeshow to make a few sales and each one these sales are represented on the backend of your website.
The system is Also made to integrate well with social networks, so you can sell your items on Facebook if desired. 1 part of Ecwid that we especially enjoy is the shipping facet. With real time shipping integrations you constantly know what is going on with your orders and where they are being sent to.
What other cool Things are comprised with Ecwid?
It runs on a super quick frame
It comes with an address book to get customers and customers
The machine has over 43 translations for sale around the world
You get a Lot of promotional instruments like coupons, discounts, and bulk pricing and more
Create your own customized email notifications
Utilize the automatic tax alternative (automatic tax rates at checkout, tax reporting and filing)
Point-of-sale functionality
Thank you To Ecwid’s point-of-sale (POS) functionality, you may use your Ecwid store to market not only online but in physical locations too — in shops, market stalls, in theatres and so on.
Together with Ecwid’s POS Performance, irrespective of whether or not a customer buys a product in shop, online, in their phone or through Facebook, everything stays in sync – i.e., the merchant’s catalog, inventory and client / transaction information.
There’s a couple of methods you can use this feature: the easiest is likely to use’Paypal Here.’ This entails downloading the Ecwid iOS app from the Apple’s App shop, linking it to the Paypal Here support, then taking payments using a cell card reader (pictured above).
You have 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 chip and tap reader (for $79.99). Both may be ordered direct from Ecwid.
There’s a couple of Things worth noting the Paypal Here integration: it’s only available to retailers in the US and UK. Secondly, it is not yet available on Android devices. (On their site, Ecwid state it’ll be available soon — but they’ve been saying that for quite a while now). Ecwid Review 2018
If you’re based outside The US / UK, or want to utilize another mobile device type, the good news is that Ecwid also functions with the Vend, Clover, NCR Silver and Square POS systems. These all ease using a wider range of hardware at a physical retail location (full-sized card readers, receipt printers, cash drawers tablet racks etc.) and are usable in more countries.
Although you could avail Of the Paypal Here POS choice on most of paid-for plans, you’ll need to be to the priciest’Unlimited’ plan if you would like to avail of a Vend, Clover, NCR Silver or Square integration.
Reactive storefronts
Ecwid Storefronts are responsive, meaning that they will display correctly across apparatus — desktopcomputer, tablet and mobile. In a age where smartphone internet browsing is eclipsing desktop browsing, this is important.
Free program
Unlike many similar Goods, Ecwid offers a totally free program.
Granted, it’s a pretty Basic plan, where features like discount coupons and service are not accessible, and it merely lets you sell up to ten products in 2 categories — but this could actually be adequate for some users, and using it’s a fantastic way to try the system out.
However, A key point to note about the free plan is that it isn’t good from an search engine optimization standpoint — you need to be on a paid plan to ensure your product pages talk to hunt engines accurately (more on SEO below).
Language detection
Ecwid is forward of the Pack because its storefronts can be automatically translated into nearly 50 different languages — clients can see your shop in their own language, without you having to worry about producing alternate versions of it. Ecwid provides this functionality by discovering visitors’ language automatically based on their browser settings / IP address.
Competing products such as Shopify And Bigcommerce are yet to supply this type of functionality — that they force you to rely on third party apps, the creation of multiple stores or Google Translate to provide different language versions of your store, which can be less than ideal. Therefore a definite win for Ecwid here.
Ecwid and search engine optimization
Search engine Optimisation (SEO) in Ecwid is a fairly straightforward affair. You can edit the name of your webpage and its own meta description; the relevant fields are pre-populated for you automatically, but you can tweak them to match your search engine optimization 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 during indexing.
However, The URLs that are automatically generated by Ecwid include the title you have given to your product – so if you include some keywords on your product title (maybe not a bad idea anyhow ) your URL will include them also. This serves as a tool of a workaround, but I’d prefer whole control over URLs. Ecwid Review 2018
1 area where Ecwid doesn’t perform quite so Well on the search engine optimization front involves AMP — accelerated mobile pages. As its name implies, AMP pages load faster on mobile devices. This encourages people to remain longer on your page, thus increasing’dwell time’ –something which is believed by many SEO experts believe to be rewarded by Google with preferential treatment in search results. Furthermore, Google sometimes highlights AMP pages in carousels in search results, giving AMP content an extra little boost.
Unfortunately However — and unlike rival products like Bigcommerce or even Shopify, you can’t create AMP variations 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 allows you to export product data, orders and customers (again, in CSV format) and ensures that should you ever feel the need to migrate your shop to a different e-commerce platform, then you should not have some significant difficulties doing so.
Using Ecwid with other programs
Ecwid and WordPress
WordPress doesn’t Provided any e-commerce functionality out of the box, so anybody wishing to market on the stage will need a third-party solution like Ecwid. There’s an Ecwid plugin accessible, so adding an Ecwid shop to your WordPress site is quite simple — you can get up and running with a few clicks.
You just sign up for an Ecwid accounts and then install the free plugin.
Ecwid and Squarespace
Squarespace includes Increasingly excellent e-commerce features, but the amount of payment gateway options is very limited — you need to use Stripe or Paypal. (And with Stripe only works if you are selling goods from particular countries). Another principal problem with the built-in Squarespace marketing software is that they don’t facilitate dropshipping, and complete export of products is not currently possible.
Integrating Ecwid with Squarespace permits you to bypass these constraints, and adding it to some Squarespace website is quite simple: it’s a simple matter of including a code block to a webpage and pasting some HTML into it.
Ecwid and Wix
As With Squarespace, there’s currently no dropshipping choice for Wix users, so again Ecwid can offer a good workaround. A committed app is provided by Ecwid to enable you incorporate the item on a Wix shop easily.
Programs 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 honest the range of integrations could be extensive — competing goods such as Shopify provide a much broader assortment of programs. Notable omissions from the Ecwid store comprise Quickbooks and Zendesk, such as (that said, a Quickbooks integration is coming shortly ).
The Image is better when it comes to CMS plugins: All these are offered for WordPress, Wix and Joomla, enabling for you to install Ecwid on one of these platforms quite easily. Ecwid Review 2018
Interface and ease of use
Ecwid’s Interface is rather user friendly. Like most similar online store builders, you get a vertical menu on the left that allows you to access key performance, and the place on the right can be used to display or edit related products, site reports and content.
As with any e-commerce tool, you’ll need to Spend a reasonable amount of time getting your head about producing catalogues and product variations, establishing shipping rates and so on…but there is nothing that should represent also 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 are stuck however, you can always get in contact with Ecwid’s support staff — more on this later — or, if you are on a’Business’ or’Unlimited’, you are able to take advantage of this included customization support (you get two hours and 12 hours personalization period from Ecwidon these plans).
Ecwid and GDPR
I am not a Lawyer, so please be aware the below observations shouldn’t be interpreted as legal advice, but I’m going to do my best to spell out some of the key GDPR problems facing Ecwid users under.
With the introduction of That the EU’s new GDPR legislation, there are several legal measures that website owners now need to take to ensure they are adequately protecting EU clients’ and visitors’ privacy. There are serious financial penalties for doing this (to the point where it is usually a great idea to consult an attorney on what to do); and even if your business is not located in the EU, you still will need to comply with the regulations where any website visits in the EU are concerned.
Based on my Understanding of the crucial GDPR principles, the principal priorities for potential Ecwid shop owners would be to:
· Provide adequate privacy and cookie notices
· Process and store data securely
· Get explicit permission from those signing up 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 cookies onto a website (and also to log that approval ).
There doesn’t Appear to be Anything that stops you fulfilling the first three requirements easily enough with Ecwid, though you will have to devote time and possibly money creating adequate notices and crafting data capture forms so they are GDPR compliant.
Where things get Complicated with Ecwid is your fourth requirement — cookie approval. To ensure GDPR compliance, you need to display a cookie banner to your visitors which
· Allows them to select which cookies they want to conduct BEFORE those biscuits are run (i.e., to give’prior consent’)
· Logs their approval to run cookies Ecwid Review 2018
· Enables them to revoke consent at a later point
So for Instance, If you Utilize a Facebook Ads cookie in combination with your Ecwid shop, you’ll be breaking up GDPR legislation unless you have a banner set up which does all of the above.
Nowout of the box at There isn’t a means to deal with the cookie consent issue with Ecwid. Nor is there a decent program available from the Ecwid app shop (the only alternative on this front that I can locate, the’EU cookie banner’, does not appear to provide the necessary performance — despite costing $1.99 a month to utilize ).
It Seems to me that the only alternative available to Ecwid users would be to use a specialist product like CookiePro, which will provide all the necessary functionality to generate cookie consent fully GDPR compliant. Despite being a powerful product however, Cookiepro does need quite a great deal of configuration and you’ll need to set quite a great deal of time aside to set this up.
Installation and Design
I really enjoy The fact which you’re able to run a website without paying for anything. This makes the setup process that much simpler, since you just need to punch in your email and make a password to go straight to the backend interface.
The system has Wizards for every platform that you want to place 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 where you would like to sell.
The backend Design is flawless, since it walks you through every website creation and integration measure with some nice text and photos. Once you get your store implemented on a site or social page it appears fairly sleek.
The layout Depends somewhat on the subject you’ve got on your site, but as you can see below, it displays photos well and looks clean and easy to navigate. I especially enjoy the Shopping Bag area, which is outstanding and easy to locate for customers when they wish to market.
Though many Websites will be mobile friendly, its nice knowing that Ecwid involves 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 store and market on the move, while also giving your clients a chance to buy products from the cell interface.
The closing Design thing that makes sense to mention is your language tool. Since running an online store generally requires you to attain out to people from all over the world, you are bound to stumble upon some customers who would like to read product pages and other content in their native language. Ecwid supports 45 languages, so when a user wants to translate from English to Spanish, that is no problem in any respect.
The Ecwid Program Economy
Possessing the Chance to install software is a sure fire way to scaling your ecommerce website in a reasonable manner. Ecwid has a place known as the Ecwid App Market. It offers 65 applications, helping merchants extend their store functionality easily. Ecwid Review 2018
A Few of the programs Will give you a hand with rating and reviews, rewards programs, automated advertising tools, analytics, custom design topics and more.
SEO and Marketing
Ecwid is a Third party remedy to your present site, so you’d typically have to employ additional SEO and marketing tools to really get out the word. Nevertheless, Ecwid provides quality SEO qualities 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 excess work. It gets even better with WordPress sites, since you acquire access to additional SEO plugins as well as the default search engine performance on the dashboard.
Managing Your Inventory
The Ecwid Inventory system is as simple as they come, because it doesn’t seem to include any of those unnecessary bells and whistles you may find on other ecommerce platforms.
Each measure is Clear and concise, so you can just go in there and type in a product name, price and image then save the product for afterwards. Obviously you could always open the Powerful Options, but they separate these for when you are all set to get started ramping up your own store.
As an example of the stock Rich direction toolset, you obtain access to things like out of stock merchandise monitoring, mobile device inventory management, barcode scanning and more.
Customer Care
Ecwid offers A Chat With Sales feature which is one of my favorite ways to talk with companies. Simply send them a query and you can work on something else until they respond.
The Business 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 support and email support, maintaining the response time short and support quality .
In my mind, the Platform has everything you could want concerning support.
Payments and Security
It’s not necessarily Easy to locate an ecommerce platform which does not charge fees, but that’s just what you get with Ecwid. They never control any kind of trade fee with any of those programs they offer, making it desirable for any shop that is hoping to keep costs down and to improve margins.
Remember that Ecwid isn’t a payment processor, which means you have to set up something such as PayPal or Stripe to process all of the trades that come through your site. It’s pretty easy to employ these systems, since Ecwid integrates with over 40 international payment options. However, each of these processors have their own transaction fees so that you have to get ready for these.
It’s quite Evident that Ecwid takes safety seriously, because the provider is a PCI DSS Level 1 certified service provider. The company also states that every transaction that includes sensitive data is transferred through a secure HTTPS channel. Ecwid Review 2018
Imagine if you Would love to collect 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 offline and online system.
Advantages and cons of using Ecwid
Advantages
· Ecwid represents a very simple way to add e-commerce to some existing website.
· Point-of-sale functionality can be obtained, and there are quite a few ways to apply it.
· The item is cheap by comparison to other alternatives.
· It supports multi-language variations of your store.
· The store layouts are responsive.
· Plugins / apps are available for major platforms (like WordPress, Drupal and Wix).
· It allows users of site building products which don’t facilitate dropshipping to begin doing so (i.e., Squarespace, Jimdo, Wix etc.. )
· The’starter site’ option is a good stopgap measure for retailers who need a store 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 support, and is fairly generous concerning features.
Cons
· The Paypal Here POS system is Limited to the US and UK.
· The Paypal This POS system is limited to iOS users.
· Telephone support is only available on the more expensive programs.
· There’s a restricted number of apps / integrations offered in the Ecwid App shop.
· You can not alter product URLs, which is slightly annoying from an SEO point of view.
· You can not create AMP versions of product pages using Ecwid.
· Making Ecwid GDPR-compliant (with regard to obtaining 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 promote the free plan like mad, and mention that many other platforms drag you into a free trial, where you may eventually have to pay.
This is where Ecwid stands outside, and you’ll be able to see the other payment programs are fairly reasonably priced.
The Free program Lets you sell 10 products, whereas the Venture program ups that depend to 100 products and you get things like an iPhone direction program. The Business plan goes up to 2500 products for a superb price and you get live chat service. Priority support comes along with the Unlimited plan and you can also sell an unlimited amount of merchandise.
Ecwid is one of The cheapest solutions on the marketplace. You can see that it is actually more affordable than a lot of the other platforms we’ve reviewed in the past, so if you’re searching for value, this could be the right plugin for you.
Conclusion
In short, I’m Starting to think that Ecwid is one of the greatest ways to market online, as long as you implement the best ways to improve your earnings online too. Ecwid is a slick system, with super simple implementation steps, making it perfect for your small business crowd. Ecwid Review 2018
Click Here to register up to Ecwid today!