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Have you ever Wondered if you are using the ideal ecommerce platform for sale on the internet? Can you sometimes stumble upon a new service that’s more practical and more economical than what you’re using now? 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 often becomes tricky once you want to attract on a brand new ecommerce platform or even just modify your site at all. Read our Ecwid review to discover more about this solution. Freeauthnet
Click Here to sign up to Ecwid now!
Many solutions Intentionally create a closed system, which is tedious to move away from as soon as you get started. But with a platform called Ecwid, you do not have to worry about it. Actually, the whole goal of the business, which began in 2009, is to quickly and quickly create an online store system in your present websites.
You don’t have To create a completely different site. Just implement Ecwid on any stage, CMS or social networking (in five minutes) and you are good to go.
That increased my Attention, since I understand the struggles that come along with attempting to migrate sites, particularly in regards to ecommerce. So, I needed to gather an in-depth review of the Ecwid system to see whether it is worth the time.
How Many Men and Women Use Ecwid?
It is rather 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 merchants span over 175 different countries, showing that this is not only a platform for most people in the united states or Europe. Even companies in developing nations have a opportunity to find an online store going, and you don’t even have to trash your previous website in case you have one.
The usership Continues to grow, particularly considering Ecwid is currently PCI DSS Level 1 accredited. If you are not certain what this is, it is 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 overall 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 simple fact that you don’t need a WordPress site in order to implement Ecwid. So, the 20,000 only identifies WordPress users with the plugin.
What’s Ecwid, and how does this 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 new site with e-commerce functionality, Ecwid is targeted more towards people who already have a website and just want to add an internet store to it.
Much like other E-commerce platforms, Ecwid allows you to install’catalogs’ of all products, and include photographs, pricing, weight etc. for each. You can define shipping prices, accept credit card payments etc — all of the key things that you’d expect to be able to do using an e-commerce solution.
However it differs Significantly from competing products such as Shopify, Volusion, Squarespace and Bigcommerce since it is not really designed to let you create 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, 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 review.) Freeauthnet
Click Here to sign up to Ecwid now!
The Product operates by giving you a widget that gets put on other websites — hence the title Ecwid: it’s short for’E-commerce Widget’. You get a few lines of HTML code (the widget) to add to an present site or societal networking profile, and your store is displayed wherever you have inserted this code.
Characteristics
Ecwid makes Strides in the market by catering to businesses that don’t want to start a brand new website. The primary attribute is that you can take your old website and quickly integrate the Ecwid system inside a couple of minutes.
You can also Mirror the machine on various other sites if you plan on selling elsewhere on the web. Manage all these websites from one location instead of switching between multiple dashboards.
Another nice Feature is that the syncing between multiple devices. Sell on-the-go with your smartphone. This usually means you could visit a tradeshow to make a number of sales and each one of these earnings are represented onto the back part of your website.
The system is Also made to integrate well with social networks, so that you can sell your things on Facebook if needed. One part of Ecwid we particularly enjoy is the delivery aspect. With real-time shipping integrations you constantly know what’s going on with your requests 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 clients
The machine has over 43 translations for selling around the planet
You receive a Lot of promotional tools like vouchers, discounts, bulk pricing and more
Create your personalized email notifications
Utilize the automated tax alternative (automatic taxation charges at checkout, tax reporting and filing)
Point-of-sale functionality
Thanks Into Ecwid’s point-of-sale (POS) functionality, you can use your Ecwid shop to sell not only online but in bodily locations too — in stores, market stalls, in theatres and so on.
Together with Ecwid’s POS Performance, irrespective of whether or not a customer buys a product in store, online, on their telephone or via Facebook, everything remains in sync – i.e., the retailer’s catalogue, inventory and customer / transaction info.
There’s a few ways that you can take advantage of this feature: the easiest is probably to use’Paypal Here.’ This involves downloading the Ecwid iOS program from the Apple’s App shop, linking it to the Paypal Here service, and then taking payments utilizing a cell card reader (pictured above).
You have two choices when it comes to POS Hardware and Paypal This: you can either buy a processor and swipe reader (for $24.99) or a processor and also tap reader (for $79.99). Both can be ordered straight from Ecwid.
There’s a couple of Things worth noting about the Paypal Here integration: first, it’s only available to merchants in america and UK. Secondly, it’s not yet available on Android devices. (On their site, Ecwid say it will be available soon — but they have been saying that for quite some time now). Freeauthnet
If you’re based outside That the US / UK, or need to utilize another mobile device type, the good news is that Ecwid also functions together with all the Vend, Clover, NCR Silver and Square POS systems. These all ease utilizing a wider 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 this Paypal Here POS option on most of paid-for programs, you will want to be to the priciest’Unlimited’ program if you would like to avail of a Vend, Clover, NCR Silver or Square admin.
Reactive storefronts
Ecwid Storefronts are responsive, meaning they will display correctly across apparatus — desktop, tablet computers and cellular. In a age where smartphone internet surfing is eclipsing desktop browsing, this is important.
Free program
Unlike many similar Products, Ecwid offers a completely free program.
Granted, it is a fairly Basic plan, in which attributes such as discount vouchers and support aren’t available, and it merely allows you to sell up to 10 products in 2 classes — but this may actually be sufficient for some customers, and using it’s a fantastic way to try out the system.
However, A vital point to note about the free program is that it is not good from an SEO standpoint — you need to be on a paid plan to make certain that your product pages talk to hunt engines accurately (more on SEO below).
Speech detection
Ecwid is forward of the Pack because its storefronts could be mechanically translated into nearly 50 distinct languages — clients can see your store in their own language, without you having to worry about producing 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 nevertheless to supply this sort of functionality — that they force you to rely on third party programs, the creation of numerous stores or Google Translate to provide different language variations of your store, which is less than ideal. Therefore a definite win for Ecwid here.
Ecwid and search engine optimisation
Search engine Optimization (search engine optimization ) in Ecwid is a pretty straightforward affair. You are able to edit the name of your webpage and its own meta description; the relevant fields are pre-populated for you automatically, however you can tweak them to match your SEO objectives.
As far as I could tell However, you can’t manually change the URL of a product — you have to make do with the one that Ecwid generates for you. This isn’t ideal because keywords in URLs are used by some search engines to categorise content through indexing.
However, The URLs that are automatically generated by Ecwid comprise the title you’ve given to your own product – so if you include some keywords on your product name (not a bad idea anyway) your URL will comprise them too. This functions as something of a workaround, but I’d prefer whole control over URLs. Freeauthnet
1 place where Ecwid does not perform so Well on the search engine optimization front entails AMP — accelerated cellular pages. As its name implies, AMP pages load faster on mobile devices. This encourages people to stay longer on your webpage, thus increasing’dwell time’ –something that’s believed by many SEO experts consider to be rewarded with Google with preferential treatment in search results. Furthermore, Google sometimes highlights AMP webpages 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 not create AMP variations of your goods 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 product information, orders and customers (in CSV format) and ensures that if you feel the need to migrate your store to a different e-commerce platform, then you should not have some significant difficulties doing so.
Utilizing Ecwid with other platforms
Ecwid and Twitter
WordPress doesn’t Supplied any e-commerce performance out of this box, so anyone wishing to market on the platform will require a third-party solution like Ecwid. There’s an Ecwid plugin accessible, therefore adding an Ecwid store to your WordPress site is quite simple — you can get up and running with a few clicks.
You simply sign up for an Ecwid accounts and then install the free plugin.
Ecwid and Squarespace
Squarespace includes Increasingly good e-commerce attributes, but the number of payment gateway options is quite limited — you have to utilize Stripe or Paypal. (And with Stripe only functions if you are selling products from particular countries). Another principal issue with the built-in Squarespace selling tools is 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 very easy: it’s a simple matter of including a code block to a webpage and pasting some HTML to it.
Ecwid and Wix
As With Squarespace, there is currently no dropshipping choice for Wix users, so again Ecwid can provide a good workaround. A committed app is offered by Ecwid to enable you incorporate the item onto a Wix store easily.
Apps and plugins
Ecwid provides a fairly Limited number integrations with other well-known apps. Integrations do exist together with services Mailchimp, Xero and Freshbooks; but to be honest the range of integrations could be more extensive — competing goods such as Shopify provide a much broader assortment of apps. Notable omissions from the Ecwid store include Quickbooks and Zendesk, for example (that said, a Quickbooks integration is coming shortly ).
The Picture is better in regards to CMS plugins: these are offered for WordPress, Wix and Joomla, allowing for you to install Ecwid on these platforms very easily. Freeauthnet
Interface and ease of use
Ecwid’s Interface is rather easy to use. Like many similar online shop builders, you get a vertical menu on the left which lets you access key functionality, and the area on the right is used to edit or display associated products, website reports and content.
As with any e-commerce tool, you will have to Spend a fair amount of time getting your head about producing catalogues and product variants, establishing transport rates etc…but there is nothing here that should represent also much of a learning curve.
Matters are helped by an ‘onboarding checklist’ that is supplied to you once you log in for the first time.
If You’re stuck nonetheless, you can always get in contact with Ecwid’s support team — more on that later — or, if you are on a’Business’ or’Unlimited’, you can make the most of the included customization support (you get 2 hours and 12 hours customization time from Ecwidon these programs ).
Ecwid and GDPR
I’m not a Attorney, so please note 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 major GDPR issues facing Ecwid consumers under.
With the introduction of That the EU’s new GDPR laws, there are many legal measures that site owners now should take to ensure that they are adequately protecting EU clients’ and visitors’ privacy. There are severe financial penalties for doing so (to the point where it’s usually a great idea to consult an attorney about what to do); and even if your company is not based in the EU, then you still will need to comply with the regulations where any site visits from the EU are worried.
Based on my Understanding of the crucial GDPR principles, the principal priorities for prospective Ecwid store owners are to:
· Provide adequate privacy and cookie notices
· Process and store information safely
· Get explicit permission from those registering to mailing lists that it is okay to send them e-newsletters
· Provide a way to opt in or revoke permission to use of non-essential biscuits onto a website (and to log that consent).
There doesn’t seem to be Anything that stops you meeting the first few requirements easily enough with Ecwid, though you will need to spend time and potentially money creating adequate notices and crafting data capture forms so they are GDPR compliant.
Where things get Complex with Ecwid is your fourth requirement — cookie cutter approval. To ensure GDPR compliance, you need to display a cookie cutter banner to your visitors which
· Allows them to select which cookies they want to run BEFORE those biscuits are run (i.e., to give’prior consent’)
· Logs their approval to run biscuits Freeauthnet
· Enables them to revoke approval at a later stage
So for example, if you Use a Facebook Ads 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.
Now, out of the box at There isn’t a way to take care of the cookie approval issue with Ecwid. Nor is there a decent app available from the Ecwid app store (the only alternative on front I can find, the’EU cookie banner’, does not appear to provide the essential functionality — despite costing $1.99 a month to utilize ).
It Appears to me that the only option available to Ecwid consumers would be to use a professional product such as CookiePro, which will supply all the necessary functionality to generate cookie consent fully GDPR compliant. Despite being a strong product however, Cookiepro does require quite a lot of configuration and you’ll want to set quite a lot of time apart to set it up.
Setup and Layout
I Truly like The simple fact which you can run a web site without paying anything. This makes the setup process that much simpler, because you simply need to punch in your email and create a password to go right to the backend port.
The system has Wizards for each platform that you would like to place your store on. In case you’ve got a WordPress site, just 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, because it walks you through each website creation and integration step with some nice text and photos. As soon as you obtain your store implemented on a website or societal page it appears fairly slick.
The layout Depends somewhat on the subject you have on your site, 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 can be outstanding and easy to locate for customers when they wish to market.
Though many Websites will be cellular friendly, it;s fine understanding that Ecwid includes a native shopping application for both iOS and Android. Merchants now get a native shopping program for iOS and Android.
This means you Can mange your shop and sell on the go, 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 instrument. Since conducting an online store generally requires you to reach out to people from all over the world, you are bound to stumble upon a few customers who’d like to read product pages and other content in their native language. Ecwid supports 45 languages, so if a user would like to translate from English into Spanish, that is no problem at all.
The Ecwid Program Market
Having the Chance to install applications is a sure fire way to scaling up your ecommerce site in a fair way. Ecwid includes a place called the Ecwid App Market. It provides 65 software, helping retailers extend their shop performance readily. Freeauthnet
Some of the apps Will help you out with reviews and rating, rewards programs, automated advertising tools, analytics, custom layout topics and much more.
SEO and Marketing
Ecwid is a Third-party remedy to your current website, so you would typically have to implement additional SEO and marketing tools to really get the word out. That said, Ecwid provides quality SEO qualities to help retailers increase their visibility in Google searches.
Moreover, Google now indexes AJAX websites, so all Ecwid stores are indexed by Google without any extra effort. It gets even better with WordPress websites, as you gain access to additional search engine optimization plugins as well as also the default search engine functionality around the dashboard.
Managing Your Inventory
The Ecwid Inventory process is as straightforward as they come, because it doesn’t appear to incorporate any of the unnecessary bells and whistles you may find on other e commerce platforms.
Each step is Clear and concise, so you may just go in there and sort in a product name, price and image then save the merchandise for later. Obviously you can always open up the Powerful Options, but they separate these for when you are all set to get started ramping up your store.
As an example of the inventory Rich management toolset, you obtain access to things like out of stock merchandise tracking, mobile device stock management, barcode scanning and more.
Customer Care
Ecwid provides A Chat With Sales attribute that is one of my favorite ways to talk with companies. Only send them a query 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 telephone support, online chat service and email support, keeping the response time brief and support quality high.
In my mind, the Platform has everything you could want concerning support.
Payments and Safety
It is not necessarily Easy to find an ecommerce platform which doesn’t charge fees, but that is exactly what you get with Ecwid. They never control any kind of transaction fee with any of the plans they provide, making it desirable for any store that is hoping to keep down costs and also to improve margins.
Remember that Ecwid isn’t a payment processor, so you’ve got to set up something like PayPal or Stripe to process all the trades that come through your website. It is pretty easy to employ these systems, since Ecwid integrates with over 40 international payment choices. However, each of these processors have their particular transaction fees so you need to prepare for them.
It is quite Clear that Ecwid takes safety seriously, because the company is a PCI DSS Level 1 certified supplier. The business also states that each trade that includes sensitive information is transferred through a secure HTTPS channel. Freeauthnet
Imagine if you Would like to accumulate both online and offline payments? Maybe you’d like a point of sale integration?
Ecwid Integrates with with Square, Clover, Vend POS, iZettle and PayPal card readers, enabling Ecwid to turn your operation into both an offline and online system.
Benefits and cons of utilizing Ecwid
Benefits
· Ecwid represents a really simple way to add e-commerce to any present website.
· Point-of-sale performance can be obtained, and there are quite a few strategies to implement it.
· The product is cheap by comparison to other solutions.
· It supports multi-language variations of your store.
· The shop layouts are responsive.
· Plugins / apps are available for major platforms (like WordPress, Drupal and Wix).
· It permits users of site building products that don’t facilitate dropshipping to start doing so (i.e., Squarespace, Jimdo, Wix etc.)
· The’starter website’ option is a fantastic stopgap measure for retailers who want a store quickly, but have yet to develop a full website in order to bring the Ecwid widget to.
· The free Ecwid plan is not time-limited, includes support, and is fairly generous in terms of features.
Disadvantages
· The Paypal This POS system is limited to the US and UK.
· The Paypal Here POS process is limited to iOS users.
· Phone support is only available on the more expensive programs.
· There’s a restricted number of programs / integrations available in the Ecwid Program store.
· You can’t change product URLs, which is slightly annoying in the SEO perspective.
· You can not create AMP variations of product pages using Ecwid.
· Creating Ecwid GDPR-compliant (with respect to getting cookie approval ) sounds hard.
· The free version doesn’t let you access any of the search engine optimization tools.
Pricing
Ecwid comes With four strategies, one of which is completely free. They promote the free plan like mad, and mention that many different platforms drag you in free trial, even where you may eventually need to pay.
This is where Ecwid stands outside, and you can see that the other payment programs are rather reasonably priced.
The Free plan Lets you sell 10 products, whereas the Venture program ups that depend to 100 goods and you get items like an iPhone management app. The company plan goes up to 2500 products for a wonderful price and you get live chat support. Priority support comes alongside the Unlimited plan and you can also market an unlimited amount of products.
Ecwid is one of The cheapest solutions on the marketplace. You can see that it’s actually cheaper than many of the other programs we have reviewed previously, so if you’re searching for value, this could be the right plugin for you.
Summary
In short, I’m Starting to believe that Ecwid is one of the best ways to sell online, provided that you employ the best ways to improve your sales online as well. Ecwid is a slick system, with superb simple implementation measures, which makes it ideal for your small business audience. Freeauthnet
Click Here to sign up to Ecwid now!