Ecwid helps website owners add eCommerce functionality to their sites through the use of widgets. Here, they explain why you should be interested.
Please tell me about your business
Ecwid, short for ‘e-commerce widget’ is a free online store builder. The software was created in 2009 by the team behind the world’s first commercial PHP shopping cart engine, X-Cart, to yet again revolutionise the way of building online shops.
Designed to make it as easy as possible for anyone to monetise a website regardless of their level of technical expertise, Ecwid is now used by over 180,000 merchants in more than 170 countries. Ecwid can be added to any website or Facebook fan page.
Who is the product aimed at?
Ecwid is aimed at anyone who wants to sell things online; whether they are a professional enterprise looking to add e-commerce functionality to their company website, or a private individual looking to sell things over their blog, Facebook page, or personal website.
What are the benefits of using it to an eCommerce businesses?
Ecwid is extremely quick and easy to set-up. Ecwid stores can be accessed from any device, and a single store can be added to multiple sites, including websites, blog pages and even Facebook pages with Ecwid’s free Facebook application.
How much does it cost?
Ecwid is completely free for those who are selling up to 100 products. The more advanced version of Ecwid costs $17 per month, for which the product cap is raised to 20,000 and users receive more advanced functionality, such as the ability to offer special offers, in addition to receiving support from Ecwid.
How does it work?
Ecwid operates as Software as a Service (SaaS), running through Amazon’s EC2 cloud servers. This means that Ecwid stores and the transactions completed through them are hosted on Amazon’s powerful and secure servers, so there is no need for any installation or extra processing demand placed on the store owner’s IT infrastructure. Ecwid store is an AJAX widget, meaning that it can be added to any website by simply copying and pasting a few lines of code.
Take me step-by-step through how I buy and install it
First, you need to go to www.ecwid.com and create a free account. Once signed-up, you need to copy the integration code displayed in the text box of your Ecwid Dashboard and paste it into the source code of your website, where your fully functioning Ecwid store will appear immediately.
Ecwid also has ready modules for many popular CMS sites, such as WordPress and Joomla, which allow an Ecwid storefront to be added to the site without the need to copy and paste any coding.
If you want to add your Ecwid store to a Facebook page, the process is even simpler. Just enter ‘Ecwid’ into the search bar on your Facebook page to find the application and run it. On the next page, enter your Ecwid store ID; which can be found in the Account Summary section on your account, and hit ‘save’.
You’ll then need to return to click the link to ‘Add Ecwid to your Facebook page’, then click ‘add Ecwid shopping cart’ and it will appear on your page as a fully functioning store.
What do I need to do once it is set up?
Once your store is set up, you’ll probably want to remove the example products, customers and sales that come preconfigured and add some of your own. You can also personalise your store by clicking on ‘System Settings’ and updating the details from their defaults.
You should also set the currency and exchange rates. You’ll need to configure the payment to be taken by your preferred system, choosing from options such as PayPal and Google Checkout. Once this is done, you just need to add your products and start selling.
Is there anything else I should know?
We’ve seen a significantly positive impact on those stores that are hosted on Facebook in addition to another e-commerce website, with 22.1 per cent of their overall revenue coming through Facebook in the second quarter of 2012. This figure has increased from the 17.7 per cent we noticed during the first quarter of 2012, so it would seem that F-commerce is on the up.
