Intro Embeddable Shopping Cart

Have you ever Wondered if you’re using the ideal ecommerce platform for sale on the internet? Can you occasionally stumble upon a new service that’s more functional and cheaper than what you’re using now? Starting a small business is all about keeping your costs low, and finding an ecommerce platform that will help you with half the battle. Unfortunately, when you run a small company website it often becomes tricky when you would like to attract on a brand new ecommerce platform or even just modify your site whatsoever. Read our Ecwid review to discover more about this option. Embeddable Shopping Cart

Click Here to sign up to Ecwid today!

Many solutions Purposefully create a closed system, which can be tedious to maneuver away from as soon as you get started. However, with a stage named Ecwid, you no longer need to be concerned about this. In fact, the entire goal of the business, which began in 2009, is to quickly and inexpensively make an online store system on your existing websites.

You do not have To make a completely different site. Just apply Ecwid on any stage, CMS or social network (in five minutes) and you are good to go.

This raised my Attention, because I understand the struggles that come along with trying to migrate websites, especially when it comes to ecommerce. So, I needed to put together a comprehensive review of this Ecwid system to find out if it’s worth the time.

How Many People 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 different countries, demonstrating that this isn’t only a platform for people in the US or Europe. Even businesses in developing countries have a opportunity to find an internet store heading, and you don’t even have to trash your previous website if you have one.

The usership Continues to grow, especially considering Ecwid is currently PCI DSS Level 1 accredited. 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 customers’ information is safe and secure.

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

What is Ecwid, and how can it work?

Ecwid is a hosted Alternative for building an internet store. 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 site and simply wish to add an online store for this.

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

However it differs Apart from competing products like Shopify, Volusion, Squarespace and Bigcommerce in that it isn’t really designed to let you create a fully-featured, standalone e-commerce website; instead, 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’, that does allow you create a one-page standalone offering. We’ll talk via this in more detail later on in the review.) Embeddable Shopping Cart

Click Here to sign up to Ecwid today!

The Product works by providing you a widget that gets put 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 to an existing website or societal media profile, and your shop is displayed wherever you have inserted this code.

Characteristics

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

You can also Mirror the machine onto various different sites if you anticipate selling elsewhere on the web. Manage all these sites from one place rather than switching between multiple dashboards.

Another pleasant Attribute is the syncing between multiple devices. Sell on-the-go together with your smartphone. This usually means you could visit a tradeshow to generate a number of sales and each one these earnings are represented onto the back part of your website.

The system is Also made to integrate nicely with social networks, and that means you may sell your items on Facebook if needed. One part of Ecwid that we especially enjoy is the shipping aspect. With real time shipping integrations you always know what is happening with your orders and at which they are being shipped to.

What other cool Items are included with Ecwid?

It runs on a super fast framework

It comes with an address book for customers and clients

The machine has over 43 translations for sale around the world

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

Produce your personalized email alerts

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

Point-of-sale performance

Thank you Into Ecwid’s point-of-sale (POS) performance, you may use your Ecwid shop to sell not just online but in physical locations too — in shops, market stalls, in theatres and so forth.

Together with Ecwid’s POS Functionality, irrespective of if or not a customer purchases a product in shop, online, on their phone or via Facebook, everything remains 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 simplest is likely to use’Paypal Here.’ This entails downloading the Ecwid iOS program from the Apple’s App store, connecting it to the Paypal Here support, 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 tap reader (for $79.99). Both can be arranged straight from Ecwid.

There’s a couple of Things worth noting about the Paypal Here integration: first, it’s only available to retailers in america and UK. Secondly, it’s not yet available on Android devices. (On their site, Ecwid state it will be available shortly — but they’ve been saying that for quite a while now). Embeddable Shopping Cart

If you are based outside The US / UK, or need to utilize another mobile device kind, the fantastic thing is that Ecwid also works together with the Vend, Clover, NCR Silver and Square POS systems. These all facilitate using a wider selection of hardware in a physical retail location (full-sized card readers, receipt printers, cash drawers pill stands etc.) and are usable in more countries.

Although you could avail Of this Paypal Here POS option on all paid-for programs, you will need to be to the most expensive’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 — desktop, tablet computers and mobile. In an era where smartphone web surfing is eclipsing desktop browsing, this is vital.

Free plan

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

Granted, it’s a fairly Standard plan, in which features such as discount vouchers and support aren’t accessible, and it only allows you to sell up to ten products in 2 categories — but this could actually be sufficient for some customers, and using it is a fantastic way to try the system out.

However, A vital point to note about the free plan is the fact that it isn’t good from an search engine optimization standpoint — you need to be on a paid plan to ensure that your product pages speak to search engines correctly (more on SEO under ).

Speech detection

Ecwid is ahead of the Pack because its storefronts can be mechanically translated into nearly 50 different languages — customers can see your shop in their own language, without you needing to worry about creating alternate versions of it. Ecwid provides this functionality by discovering visitors’ language mechanically based on their browser preferences / IP address.

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

Ecwid and search engine optimisation

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

As far as I can tell But you can’t manually change the URL of a product — you have to make do with the one which Ecwid creates for you. This isn’t ideal because key words in URLs are used by some search engines to categorise content during indexing.

But, The URLs that are automatically generated by Ecwid include the title you’ve given to your own product – so if you include some keywords in your product name (maybe not a bad idea anyhow ) that your URL will include them too. This serves as something of a workaround, but I would prefer whole control over URLs. Embeddable Shopping Cart

1 area where Ecwid does not perform so Well on the search engine optimization front involves AMP — accelerated mobile pages. As the name implies, AMP pages load quicker on cellular devices. This encourages people to remain longer on your page, thus increasing’live time’ –something that’s considered by many SEO experts consider to be rewarded with 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 most competing products like Bigcommerce or even Shopify, you can’t produce AMP versions of your goods using Ecwid.

Importing and exporting data

Like most competing Goods Ecwid permits you to import and export your data in CSV format.

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

Utilizing 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 platform will require a third-party solution like Ecwid. There is an Ecwid plugin available, therefore adding an Ecwid store to your WordPress site is quite straightforward — you can get up and running with a couple clicks.

You simply sign up to get an Ecwid accounts and install the free plugin.

Ecwid and Squarespace

Squarespace comes with Increasingly excellent e-commerce attributes, but the number of payment gateway options is quite limited — you have to use Stripe or Paypal. (And with Stripe only functions if you are selling products from certain countries). The other principal problem with the built-in Squarespace marketing software is that they don’t facilitate dropshipping, and complete export of merchandise is not currently possible.

Integrating Ecwid with Squarespace permits you to bypass these constraints, and adding it into a Squarespace website is quite simple: it is a simple matter of including a code block to a page 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 provide a fantastic workaround. A committed program is provided by Ecwid to enable you incorporate the product on a Wix shop easily.

Apps and plugins

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

The Picture is better when it comes to CMS plugins: All these are offered for WordPress, Wix and Joomla, enabling for you to set up Ecwid on one of these platforms quite easily. Embeddable Shopping Cart

Interface and ease of use

Ecwid’s Interface is pretty user friendly. Like many similar online shop 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 edit or display related products, website content and reports.

As with any e-commerce tool, you will have to Spend a fair amount of time getting your head around creating catalogues and product variations, setting up shipping rates and so on…but there isn’t anything here that should represent also much of a learning curve.

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

If You’re stuck however, you can always get in contact with Ecwid’s support team — more on this later — or, even if you are on a’Business’ or’Unlimited’, you can take advantage of the included customization support (you get 2 hours and 12 hours personalization time from Ecwidon these plans).

Ecwid and GDPR

I am not a Attorney, so please be aware the below observations should not be interpreted as legal advice, but I’m going to do my very 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 site owners now should take to ensure they are adequately protecting EU customers’ and visitors’ privacy. There are serious financial penalties for not doing this (to the point where it’s usually a great idea to consult a lawyer on what to do); and even if your business isn’t based in the EU, you still will need to obey the regulations where any site 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 cutter notices

· Process and store data safely

· Get explicit consent from those signing up to mailing lists that it is fine to send them e-newsletters

· Provide a means to opt in or revoke permission to use of non-essential cookies onto a website (and to log that approval ).

There doesn’t seem to be Whatever stops you meeting the first few requirements readily enough with Ecwid, although you will have to devote time and potentially money creating adequate notices and crafting information capture forms so they are GDPR compliant.

Where things get Complicated with Ecwid is your fourth requirement — cookie approval. To ensure GDPR compliance, You Have to display a cookie banner to your customers which

· Allows them to choose which cookies they want to conduct BEFORE those cookies are conducted (i.e., to give’prior permission’)

· Logs their consent to run cookies Embeddable Shopping Cart

· Enables them to revoke consent at a later stage

So for Instance, If you Utilize a Facebook Ads cookie in conjunction with your Ecwid shop, you will be breaking GDPR laws unless you’ve got a banner in place which does all of the above.

Nowout of the box at There is not a way to take care of the cookie consent issue with Ecwid. Nor is there an adequate program accessible from the Ecwid app shop (the only alternative on front that I can locate, the’EU cookie banner’, doesn’t appear to supply the essential functionality — even though costing $1.99 a month to use).

It Appears to me that the only alternative available to Ecwid consumers would be to use a professional product such as CookiePro, which does provide all the necessary functionality to make cookie consent fully GDPR compliant. Despite being a powerful product however, Cookiepro does need quite a lot of configuration and you will need to put quite a lot of time apart to set it up.

Setup and Layout

I really like The fact that you’re able to run a web site without paying for anything. This makes the setup process that much easier, because you simply 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 want to set your shop on. In case you have a WordPress site, simply walk through three steps to get up and running. You could even click on options like Facebook and Joomla, depending on where you would like to sell.

The backend Design is perfect, since it walks you through each site creation and integration measure with some nice photos and text. Once you get your shop implemented on a website or social page it looks fairly sleek.

The design Depends upon the theme you’ve got on your site, however as you can see below, it displays photos well and appears clean and simple to navigate. I especially enjoy the Shopping Bag place, which is outstanding and easy to find for clients when they want to market.

Although many Sites are going to be cellular friendly, it;s nice 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 go, while also providing your clients a chance to get products from the cell interface.

The final Design item that makes sense to mention is the language tool. Since running an online store generally requires you to reach out to individuals from throughout the world, you’re bound to stumble upon a few customers who would 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 Opportunity to install applications is a sure fire way to scaling up your ecommerce website in a reasonable way. Ecwid has a place known as the Ecwid App Market. It offers 65 software, helping merchants extend their shop functionality easily. Embeddable Shopping Cart

Some of the programs Can help you out with reviews and rating, rewards programs, automated advertising tools, analytics, customized layout themes and more.

SEO and Marketing

Ecwid is a Third-party remedy to your present website, so you’d normally need to employ additional SEO and advertising tools to truly get the word out. Nevertheless, Ecwid provides 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 work. It gets better with WordPress sites, since you gain access to additional search engine optimization plugins as well as also the default search engine functionality on the dashboard.

Managing Your Inventory

The Ecwid Inventory process is as simple as they come, since it doesn’t appear to incorporate any of the unnecessary bells and whistles you might find on other ecommerce platforms.

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

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

Customer Care

Ecwid offers A Chat With Earnings feature that is always one of my favorite ways to converse to companies. Simply send them a query and you can work on something else until they respond.

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

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

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

Payments and Safety

It’s not necessarily Easy to locate an ecommerce platform that doesn’t charge fees, but that is exactly what you get with Ecwid. They never charge any kind of trade fee with any of the programs they offer, which makes it desirable for any store that’s hoping to keep down costs and to improve margins.

Keep in mind that Ecwid isn’t a payment processor, which means you’ve got to setup something such as PayPal or Stripe to process all the transactions that come through your website. It is rather simple to implement these systems, since Ecwid incorporates with over 40 international payment choices. However, each of those processors have their own trade fees so that you have to prepare for these.

It’s rather Evident that Ecwid takes safety seriously, since the provider is a PCI DSS Grade 1 accredited service provider. The business also states that each transaction that includes sensitive data is transferred via a secure HTTPS channel. Embeddable Shopping Cart

What if you Would like to accumulate 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, enabling Ecwid to turn your performance into both an offline and online system.

Benefits and disadvantages of utilizing Ecwid

Benefits

· Ecwid signifies a really simple way to add e-commerce to some present website.

· Point-of-sale performance can be obtained, and there are a number of ways to apply it.

· The item is cheap by comparison to other solutions.

· It supports multi-language variations of your store.

· The shop designs 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 site’ option is a good stopgap measure for merchants who need a shop quickly, 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 fairly generous in terms of features.

Cons

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

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

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

· There is a restricted number of apps / integrations available from the Ecwid Program shop.

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

· You can’t create AMP versions of product pages utilizing Ecwid.

· Creating Ecwid GDPR-compliant (with respect to getting cookie approval ) seems hard.

· The free version will not allow you to access any of the search engine optimization tools.

Pricing

Ecwid comes With four plans, one of which is completely free. They market the free plan like mad, and mention that many different platforms drag you into a free trial, where you may eventually need to pay.

This is where Ecwid stands outside, and you’ll be able to see the other payment programs are rather affordable.

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

Ecwid is one of The most economical solutions on the marketplace. You can see that it’s actually more affordable than a lot of the other programs we have reviewed in the past, so if you’re searching for value, this might be the right plugin for you.

Conclusion

In short, I’m Starting to believe that Ecwid is among the greatest ways to sell online, provided that you employ the best methods to enhance your sales online too. Ecwid is a slick system, with super easy implementation steps, making it ideal for your small business audience. Embeddable Shopping Cart

Click Here to sign up to Ecwid today!