Intro Storeya
Have you ever Wondered if you’re using the ideal ecommerce platform for sale online? Can you occasionally stumble upon a new service that’s more functional and cheaper than what you’re using today? Starting a small business is all about keeping your costs low, and finding an ecommerce platform that will help you with that is half the battle. Unfortunately, when you operate a small company site it frequently becomes tricky once you would like to attract on a brand new ecommerce platform or perhaps just modify your website at all. Read our Ecwid review to discover more about this solution. Storeya
Click Here to register up to Ecwid now!
Many solutions Purposefully make a closed system, which is tedious to move away from once you begin. However, with a platform named Ecwid, you no longer need to worry about this. In fact, the entire aim of the business, which started in 2009, would be to quickly and quickly create an online store system on your present websites.
You do not have To create a whole new website. Just apply Ecwid on any platform, CMS or social networking (in five minutes) and you are good to go.
This increased my Attention, because I understand the struggles that come along with attempting to migrate sites, particularly when it comes to ecommerce. So, I needed to put together a comprehensive review of the Ecwid system to find out whether it’s worth the time.
How Many People Use Ecwid?
It is quite Remarkable what Ecwid has achieved since 2009, with over 1 million retailers getting signed up. What’s even more cool is that the Ecwid retailers span over 175 different countries, demonstrating that this isn’t only a platform for most people in the united states or Europe. Even companies in developing countries have a opportunity to find an internet store going, and you don’t even have to squander your prior website if you have one.
The usership Continues to grow, especially considering Ecwid is now PCI DSS Level 1 certified. If you are not sure what this is, it’s pretty much the gold standard for security in the ecommerce world. You can rest easy knowing you and your clients’ information is safe and secure.
In addition to The total merchant count, over 20,000 active users are using the Ecwid Shopping Cart for WordPress. The difference between that 20,000 along with the 1 million is the simple fact that you don’t require a WordPress site in order to implement Ecwid. So, the 20,000 simply refers to WordPress users using the plugin.
What is 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 build a new website with e-commerce performance, Ecwid is targeted more towards people who currently have a site and just wish to add an online store for this.
Much like other E-commerce programs, Ecwid allows you to install’catalogs’ of all goods, and add photos, pricing, weight etc. . each. You can specify shipping rates, accept credit card payments etc — all of the crucial things that you would expect to be able to do with an e-commerce alternative.
However it differs Apart from competing products such as Shopify, Volusion, Squarespace and Bigcommerce since it is not actually designed to let you create a fully-featured, standalone e-commerce website; 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, known as’Starter Site’, that will let you create a one-page standalone offering. We are going to talk via this in more depth later on in the inspection.) Storeya
Click Here to register up to Ecwid today!
The Product operates by giving you a widget which gets placed on other websites — hence the title Ecwid: it’s short for’E-commerce Widget’. You get a couple lines of HTML code (the widget) to add to an existing site or social networking profile, and your store is displayed wherever you’ve added this code.
Features
Ecwid makes Strides in the market by catering to businesses that don’t need to begin a brand-new site. The main attribute is that you can choose your old site and quickly integrate the Ecwid system within a couple of minutes.
You can also Mirror the system on various other websites if you plan on selling elsewhere on the web. Manage all of these sites from one place instead of switching between multiple dashboards.
Another nice Feature is the syncing between multiple devices. Sell on-the-go together with your smartphone. This means you could visit a tradeshow to make a few sales and all these earnings are represented on the back part of your website.
The system is Also designed to integrate nicely with social networks, and that means you may sell your things on Facebook if needed. One part of Ecwid that we particularly enjoy is the shipping facet. With real time transport integrations you always know what’s happening with your requests and at which they are being sent to.
What other cool Items are included with Ecwid?
It runs on a super fast frame
It comes with an address book to get customers and customers
The machine has over 43 translations for selling round the planet
You get lots of promotional tools like coupons, discounts, bulk pricing and much more
Create your personalized email alerts
Use the automatic tax alternative (automatic tax rates at checkout, tax reporting and filing)
Point-of-sale performance
Thank you Into Ecwid’s point-of-sale (POS) performance, you can use your Ecwid shop to market not just online but in bodily locations too — in stores, market stalls, in theatres and so on.
Together with Ecwid’s POS Functionality, regardless of if or not a customer buys a product in store, online, in their telephone or through Facebook, everything stays in sync – i.e., the merchant’s catalog, inventory and client / transaction info.
There is a couple of ways that you can take advantage of this attribute: the simplest is likely to use’Paypal Here.’ This entails downloading the Ecwid iOS program from the Apple’s App shop, connecting it to the Paypal Here support, then taking payments utilizing a mobile 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 chip and tap reader (for $79.99). Both may be ordered direct from Ecwid.
There’s a few Things worth noting about the Paypal Here integration: first, it’s only available to retailers in america and UK. Second, it’s not yet available on Android apparatus. (On their site, Ecwid state it will be available shortly — but they have been saying that for quite a while now). Storeya
If you’re located outside The US / UK, or want to utilize another mobile device type, the good thing is that Ecwid also functions together with all the Vend, Clover, NCR Silver and Square POS systems. These all facilitate utilizing a wider range of hardware in a physical retail location (full-sized card readers, receipt printers, cash drawers tablet stands etc.) and are usable in more nations.
Although you can avail Of the Paypal Here POS option on most of paid-for plans, you will want to be to the priciest’Unlimited’ program 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 computers and mobile. In an era where smartphone web surfing is eclipsing desktop surfing, this is vital.
Free plan
Unlike many similar Goods, Ecwid provides a completely free plan.
Granted, it’s a pretty Standard plan, where features like discount coupons and service aren’t available, and it merely allows you to sell up to ten products in two categories — but this may actually be adequate for some users, and using it is a good way to try the system out.
However, A vital point to note about the free program is the fact that it is not good from an search engine optimization standpoint — you have to be on a paid program to make certain that your product pages speak to hunt engines accurately (more on SEO below).
Speech detection
Ecwid is ahead of the Pack because its storefronts can be automatically translated into nearly 50 distinct languages — customers can see your shop in their own language, without you having to worry about creating alternate versions of it. Ecwid provides this functionality by detecting visitors’ language mechanically according to their browser settings / IP address.
Competing products such as Shopify And Bigcommerce are nevertheless to provide this sort of performance — that they force you to rely on third party apps, the production of numerous shops or Google Translate to provide different language versions of your store, which is less than perfect. Therefore a definite win for Ecwid here.
Ecwid and search engine optimization
Search engine Optimisation (search engine optimization ) in Ecwid is a pretty straightforward affair. You can edit the title of your page and its own meta description; the applicable fields are pre-populated for you automatically, but you can tweak them to match your search engine optimization objectives.
As far as I could tell However, you can not manually change the URL of a product — you have to make do with the one which Ecwid generates for you. This isn’t ideal because keywords in URLs are used by some search engines to categorise content during indexing.
But, The URLs which are automatically generated by Ecwid include the name you’ve given to your own product – so if you include some keywords on your product name (not a bad idea anyhow ) your URL will comprise them also. This serves as something of a workaround, but I’d prefer full control over URLs. Storeya
1 area where Ecwid doesn’t perform quite so Well on the search engine optimization front entails AMP — accelerated mobile pages. As its name suggests, AMP pages load quicker on cellular devices. This motivates people to stay longer on your webpage, thus increasing’live time’ –something that’s considered by many search engine optimization experts believe to be rewarded by Google with preferential treatment in search results. Additionally, Google occasionally highlights AMP pages in carousels in search results, giving AMP articles an extra little boost.
Regrettably However — and unlike rival products like Bigcommerce or even Shopify, you can not create AMP variations of your goods using Ecwid.
Importing and exporting information
Like many competing Products Ecwid allows you to import and export your data in CSV format.
The Export option permits you to export product data, orders and clients (again, in CSV format) and means that should you ever feel the need to migrate your shop to a different e-commerce platform, you should not have any significant difficulties doing so.
Utilizing Ecwid with other platforms
Ecwid and Twitter
WordPress does not Supplied any e-commerce performance from this box, so anyone wanting to sell on the platform will need a third-party solution like Ecwid. There’s an Ecwid plugin available, 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 attributes, but the number of payment gateway options is quite limited — you have to use Stripe or Paypal. (And with Stripe only works if you are selling products from particular countries). The other main issue with the built-in Squarespace selling tools is that they don’t facilitate dropshipping, and full export of merchandise isn’t currently possible.
Integrating Ecwid with Squarespace permits you to bypass these constraints, and adding it into some Squarespace website is very simple: it is 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 option for Wix users, so again Ecwid can offer a good workaround. A dedicated app is offered by Ecwid to enable you incorporate the item on a Wix store easily.
Apps and plugins
Ecwid provides a fairly 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 goods like Shopify provide a much wider range of apps. Notable omissions in the Ecwid store comprise Quickbooks and Zendesk, for example (that said, a Quickbooks integration is coming shortly ).
The Image is better in regards to CMS plugins: All these are available for WordPress, Wix and Joomla, allowing to you set up Ecwid on one of these platforms quite easily. Storeya
Interface and ease of use
Ecwid’s Interface is pretty easy to use. Like most similar online shop builders, you receive a vertical menu on the left which lets you access key functionality, and the area on the right can be used to display or edit related products, site content and reports.
As with any e-commerce tool, you will have to Spend a reasonable amount of time getting your head about creating catalogues and product variants, establishing transport prices and so on…but there isn’t anything that should represent too a lot of a learning curve.
Things are aided by an ‘onboarding checklist’ that’s provided to you when you log in for the very first time.
If You’re stuck however, you can always get in touch with Ecwid’s support staff — more on this later — or, even if you are on a’Business’ or’Unlimited’, you can make the most of the included customization support (you get two hours and 12 hours customization period from Ecwidon these plans).
Ecwid and GDPR
I am not a Attorney, so please note the below observations should not be interpreted as legal information, but I’m planning to do my best to spell out a number of the major GDPR issues facing Ecwid consumers under.
With the introduction of That the EU’s new GDPR legislation, there are many 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 is typically a good idea to speak with a lawyer about what to do); and even when your company isn’t based in the EU, you still need to obey the regulations where any site visits in the EU are worried.
Based on my Understanding of the key GDPR rules, the principal priorities for prospective Ecwid shop owners would be to:
· Provide adequate privacy and cookie cutter notices
· Process and store data securely
· Get explicit consent from those signing up 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 cookies onto a website (and also to log that approval ).
There does not Appear to be Whatever stops you fulfilling 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 the fourth requirement — cookie cutter consent. To ensure GDPR compliance, you need to display a cookie banner to your customers which
· Allows them to select which cookies they want to conduct BEFORE those cookies are conducted (i.e., to provide’prior consent’)
· Logs their approval to run biscuits Storeya
· Enables them to revoke consent at a later point
So for Instance, If you Use a Facebook Advertising cookie in combination with your Ecwid store, you will be breaking up GDPR laws unless you’ve got a banner in place which does all of the above.
Nowout of the box at Least there is not a means to take care of the cookie approval issue with Ecwid. Nor is there an adequate app accessible from the Ecwid app store (the only alternative on front I can locate, the’EU cookie banner’, doesn’t appear to provide the necessary functionality — even though costing $1.99 per month to utilize ).
It Appears to me that the only option available to Ecwid users would be to use a specialist product like CookiePro, which does supply all the necessary functionality to generate cookie consent fully GDPR compliant. Despite being a powerful product however, Cookiepro does require quite a lot of configuration and you will need to put quite a lot of time apart to set it up.
Installation and Layout
I really enjoy The fact that you can run a website 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 every platform you want to set your shop on. In case you have a WordPress site, just walk through three steps to get up and running. You can even click on choices like Facebook and Joomla, based on where you would like to market.
The backend Design is flawless, since it walks you through each website creation and integration step with a few nice photos and text. As soon as you get your store implemented on a site or social page it appears fairly slick.
The layout Depends upon the theme you’ve got on your website, however as you can see below, it displays photos well and appears clean and easy to navigate. I especially enjoy the Shopping Bag place, which can be outstanding and easy to locate for clients when they wish to checkout.
Though many Sites will be mobile friendly, it;s fine understanding that Ecwid includes a native shopping application for both iOS and Android. Merchants now receive a native shopping program for iOS and Android.
This means you Can mange your shop and market on the move, while also giving your customers an opportunity to get products from the cell interface.
The final Design item which makes sense to mention is the language instrument. Since conducting an online store generally requires you to attain out to people from throughout the world, you’re bound to stumble upon some customers who would like to read product pages and other content in their native tongue. Ecwid supports 45 languages, so when a user would like to translate from English into Spanish, that’s no problem in any respect.
The Ecwid Program Market
Possessing the Chance to install software is a sure fire way to scaling up your ecommerce site in a fair manner. Ecwid includes a place known as the Ecwid App Market. It offers 65 applications, helping retailers extend their store performance readily. Storeya
Some of the programs Can help you out with rating and reviews, rewards programs, automatic advertising tools, analytics, customized design themes and much more.
SEO and Marketing
Ecwid is a Third party solution to your current site, so you would normally need to implement additional SEO and advertising tools to truly get the word out. Nevertheless, Ecwid provides quality SEO features 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 work. It gets better with WordPress sites, since you acquire access to additional search engine optimization plugins and 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 seem to incorporate any of the unnecessary bells and whistles you might find on other e commerce platforms.
Each measure is Clear and concise, so that you can just go in there and type in a product name, price and image then save the merchandise for later. Of course you could always open up the Powerful Options, but they different these for when you are ready to get started ramping up your store.
As an example of the inventory Rich management toolset, you gain access to items like from stock merchandise monitoring, mobile device stock management, barcode scanning and more.
Customer Care
Ecwid offers A Chat With Earnings feature which is always one of my favourite ways to converse to companies. Only send them a query and you are able to 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 service, online chat service and email support, maintaining the response time brief and support quality .
In my eyes, the Platform has everything you could want in terms of support.
Payments and Safety
It’s not necessarily Simple to find an ecommerce platform that does not charge fees, but that is just what you get with Ecwid. They never control any kind of trade fee with any of the plans they offer, making it desirable for any shop that is trying to keep costs down and to improve margins.
Keep in mind that Ecwid is not a payment processor, so you’ve got to setup something such as PayPal or Stripe to process all of the trades that come through your site. It’s pretty easy to employ one of these systems, because Ecwid integrates with over 40 global payment options. However, each of these processors have their particular transaction fees so that you need to prepare for these.
It’s rather Clear that Ecwid takes safety seriously, since the company is a PCI DSS Grade 1 certified supplier. The business also states that every transaction that includes sensitive information is transferred via a secure HTTPS channel. Storeya
Imagine if you Would love to collect both offline and online payments? Perhaps you’d like a point of sale integration?
Ecwid Integrates together with Square, Clover, Vend POS, iZettle and PayPal card readers, allowing Ecwid to turn your operation into both an online and offline system.
Advantages and cons of using Ecwid
Advantages
· Ecwid signifies a very simple way to add e-commerce to any present website.
· Point-of-sale performance 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 designs 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 site’ option is a fantastic stopgap measure for retailers who want a store quickly, but have yet to create a full website in order to bring the Ecwid widget to.
· The free Ecwid program is not time-limited, includes service, and is rather generous concerning features.
Cons
· The Paypal Here 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’s a limited number of apps / integrations available from the Ecwid Program shop.
· You can not alter merchandise URLs, which is slightly annoying in the SEO point of view.
· You can not create AMP variations of product pages using Ecwid.
· Creating Ecwid GDPR-compliant (with regard to obtaining cookie consent) seems hard.
· The free version will not let you get any of the SEO tools.
Pricing
Ecwid comes With four strategies, one of which is totally free. They market the free program like crazy, and mention that a number of other platforms drag you into a free trial, where you will eventually have to pay.
This is where Ecwid stands outside, and you’ll be able to see that the other payment programs are rather reasonably priced.
The Free program Allows you to sell 10 products, while the Venture plan ups that count to 100 goods and you get things like an iPhone direction app. The company program goes up to 2500 products for a superb price and you also get live chat service. Priority support comes along with the Unlimited plan and you might also sell an unlimited amount of products.
Ecwid is one of The cheapest solutions available on the market. You may see that it’s actually more affordable than a lot of the other platforms we have reviewed previously, so if you’re searching for value, this could be the right plugin for you.
Conclusion
In short, I am Starting to think that Ecwid is one of the best ways to market online, as long as you employ the best ways to improve your sales online too. Ecwid is a sleek system, with super easy implementation measures, making it ideal for your small business audience. Storeya
Click Here to register up to Ecwid now!