It was a big year for Ecwid E-commerce…
From new integrated ways to sell online and incredible partner acquisitions, to a new office for enhanced customer support and a completely revamped storefront, the last 365 days have been huge for the Ecwid community.
Whether you’re an Ecwid veteran or new to the crew, we’re glad you joined us. In the spirit of e-commerce friendship, let’s take a look back at some of our biggest milestones of 2018 and find out what’s to come in this new year.
Mobile-Ready Native Facebook and Instagram Stores
With two billion active users on Facebook and another billion on Instagram, social selling is quickly becoming the next big thing in e-commerce. And 2019 is primed to be a huge year for these growing channels. For the last year, our goal here at Ecwid has been to get you ready to ride that wave.
With an Ecwid account, you can automatically upload (and sync) your product catalog to the mobile-friendly "Shop" section on your Facebook business page or connect it right to your Instagram business profile to tag products in your posts and drive sales with dynamic advertising.
Our tools make it easy to convert Facebook and Instagram followers into paying customers by enabling users to purchase your products directly from their favorite platforms.
Read more about these releases:
- Sell on Facebook With Ecwid’s New Social Selling Tools
- Sell on Instagram: How Ecwid Merchants Can Reach 1 Billion Shoppers
Marketing Automation Tools for Small Business
Like many small business owners, it’s easy to feel intimidated by the sheer breadth of digital marketing tools and techniques at your disposal. Here at Ecwid, we work hard to make digital advertising approachable for our merchants — from e-commerce experts to Ecwid beginners. In your Ecwid Control panel’s Marketing section, you’ll find a variety of tools and tips to help you secure your first sale.
In 2018, we implemented new marketing automation integrations for two of the largest PPC advertising platforms on the planet — Google and Facebook. In just a few short clicks, you’ll have tailored ads appearing in Google search results as well as feeds across Instagram and Facebook. Just decide which products you want to advertise and how much you want to spend, and our automated tools will do the rest. Find these and more available from the comfort of your cozy Ecwid Control panel.
One big fear for new advertisers is the possibility of wasting money on ads that won’t perform. With Ecwid marketing automation, our artificial intelligence keeps an eye on your ad performance 24/7, carefully placing bids to ensure only the most effective ads are displayed — so you always get the most bang for your buck.
And be sure to check out other Ecwid automated marketing features like Abandoned Carts Recovery Emails to recapture shoppers who failed to complete a purchase. Ecwid users who send follow-up email reminders see an average of 15% more completed orders. Switch to our one-page Ecwid Checkout and collect even more emails for cart recovery.
Selling on Marketplaces: Amazon and eBay
Amazon accounts for roughly 50% of all e-commerce in the US, and now you can take advantage of Amazon’s massive market share and unparalleled customer loyalty right from your Ecwid control panel. Export your Ecwid products to Amazon, customize prices and descriptions to optimize for Amazon’s audience and sync your entire inventory automatically from your Ecwid store.
The same goes for eBay: integrate your product catalog directly to the granddaddy of marketplaces and make your products available to eBay’s millions of active buyers. Automatically publish new products, update inventory and sync sales with eBay acting as an additional storefront seamlessly integrating with your online shop.
Listing Ecwid products on Amazon
Learn more about selling on marketplaces with Ecwid and manage all your marketplace integrations in Sales Channels → Marketplaces in your Ecwid Control panel.
A Reinforced Ecwid E-commerce Starter Site
Ecwid is the only online e-commerce platform to offer a free website to sell your products on from day one (Starter Site). For the small business owner, that means you can launch your first online shop with almost zero investment! More than that, Ecwid Starter Sites offer essential e-commerce features that make it a perfect home on the web for a business of any age.
Here’s what 2018 brought to Ecwid Starter Sites:
- Improved SEO for Google: faster and more accurate indexation helps businesses appear on Google search results for relevant keywords, resulting in improved organic traffic.
- Mobile-friendly editor: making changes to a Starter Site’s content is simple and comfortable on any device, from the web or in the Ecwid Mobile app.
- Storefront design blended into the Starter Site editor: play with rich store design options on a single Control Panel page with a live preview.
- Anti-DDoS protection and dramatically improved performance: Starter Sites have additional protection from DDoS attacks and traffic spikes.
Ecwid Starter Site editor
Every Starter Site comes fully outfitted with the e-commerce features you need to be successful online, but that doesn’t mean you have to stop there. With Ecwid plugin integration, you’re also empowered to sell through your Ecwid store on any other website or even multiple websites at once.
Next-Gen Ecwid Storefront
The look and feel of an online store influences the shopping experience, which ultimately influences the purchase decision. That’s why we’ve completely redesigned Ecwid’s appearance to look and perform better for your customers, from essential functions (like our new product grid) to the finishing touches (like storefront notifications).
Four major storefront improvements include:
- Flexible product grid design options: align Ecwid to your brand and elevate your products by changing the storefront grid layout, the size and ratio of your images and the way your product info appears on the page.
- Product page layout options: control what’s displayed on your product pages and format the information displayed to better communicate product details to your audience.
- Customizable shopping bag icon: provide your customers with easy access to their carts from any store page and add customization for improved visibility and better coordination with your website design.
- One-page checkout: close more sales with a completely reimagined Ecwid checkout page. New autofill options and an improved user experience make navigating checkout steps and filling out forms faster and simpler than ever before.
Each of these features has been automatically enabled for new Ecwid stores. If you’ve been with us for a while and don’t see these changes in your store, please manually switch to "New and Improved Shopping Cart and Checkout Pages," "Next-gen look and feel of the product list on the storefront," and "Next-gen look and feel of the product pages on the storefront" in Settings → What’s New.
Control Panel Updates
If your store’s active, you probably log in to the Control Panel quite a bit. So of course, it’s important to us to make that experience as enjoyable as possible. And we’re happy to say that 2018 did not disappoint.
Some of the Control panel improvements:
- Mobile-friendly catalog, orders, shipping, payments, edit Starter Site, Google Shopping and other sections allow you to set up your store conveniently on the go, whenever you need it and from any device.
- Improved order filters: use our refreshed filters or create your own custom sets.
- Bulk image upload: upload product images in bulk, fast and easy.
- Dashboard: the info on your Dashboard has been sorted more conveniently, from urgent to-dos to less frequently used info.
- The "All Sales Channels" page: Never miss an opportunity to grow your business with all your sales channels on a single page.
Better Payments
We’ve partnered with new reliable and secure payment providers while also enhancing some of our already popular existing integrations, to ensure your Ecwid store offers the transaction options you need:
- Improved integration with Square, including Square POS for restaurants.
- Integration with Paypal Smart Buttons: dynamically present the appropriate payment options (ex. PayPal Credit, Venmo and others) to give your customers options to pay based on your specific configuration and a buyer’s location and cookies.
- Over 10 new payment integrations for a total of 70+ supported payment options.
Ecwid Mobile
Sixty-six percent of the world’s population are now on mobile devices, so it’s important we make Ecwid easy to manage on the go. Now you can fully create, set up and run your store from the Ecwid Mobile Store Management app for iOS and Android. Both apps have been revamped to more effectively support your everyday business needs:
On Android, you can upload and edit e-goods, add and edit product options, upload product images in bulk, duplicate products and more.
The iOS app offers the same rich features you’ll find on Android, but it’s also been modified according to the Apple Mobility Program to support modern iOS features like Accessibility Options for people with disabilities.
Compatibility With Website Builders
Our shopping cart can be embedded in almost any website regardless of the platform you’re using: check out the full list of supported site builders and note that you can also add Ecwid to a custom built website by copy-pasting a few lines of code.
We’ve updated our popular plugins and apps so that you can use it seamlessly with your site builder.
On WordPress: Ecwid dashboard menu is now a part of the WordPress admin menu which makes managing your e-commerce website easier. Your Ecwid store is compatible with popular WordPress Editors including the Gutenberg editor that will soon be the new default. Learn about other improvements and make sure you use the latest version of the plugin to benefit from them.
Ecwid stores on Wix got new modern app interface, rich store design options that can be set up right inside Wix, better SEO and dramatically improved performance — up to 10x faster load speed.
New Heights in Customer Support
Small businesses may face various struggles on their way to success, so Customer Care has always been our top priority. We love helping you and seeing your stores grow, and continuously improve our service.
You might have noticed a completely redesigned Knowledge Base where we’ve added and updated 400 articles and developed a new search box to make it easy for you to discover them.
If you prefer to learn in the video format, enjoy 34 updated Ecwid training videos to get from introduction to the product to more in-depth setup guides. After watching this course, you can be confident you’re setting up your store so that it gives shoppers the best experience.
Yet, sometimes you may still need a real conversation with our support team — and we are happy that so many of you tell us you love it! That’s why we’ve launched a new office in Vladivostok to enable fully in-house support and ensure you get the most competent advice, 24/7, whenever you need us. That change and other improvements in the support team let us process 85% more chats in 2018. The numbers are impressive: last year, our ninjas helped in 78,000 chats!
And we’re not gonna stop there.
150+ Free E-commerce Resources and Inspiration
There are 585 articles in the Ecwid blog right now, and in 2018, our blog team wrote almost a hundred new e-commerce guides explaining proven tactics of selling online and the use of freshest Ecwid features.
In our e-commerce library, you can find comprehensive downloadable e-books, checklists and how-tos to get answers to the most tricky questions you might have.
We’ve also launched an e-commerce podcast where we interview Ecwid merchants and industry experts to share their unique perspective and experience on the world of e-commerce. 25 episodes are already waiting for you to tune in. How about starting with the most popular one?
The Team
Ecwid E-commerce is global, and we are global too — speaking dozens of languages, coming from different countries, working from anywhere in the world. In 2018 we welcomed aboard many awesome people and grown the team by 40% to be able to release even more updates and support over 2 million Ecwid stores.
Ecwid in Vladivostok
With all that being said, here’s our resolution for 2019: we strive to become the best e-commerce platform for small business. With Ecwid E-commerce, your store is in safe hands, as your success is the only thing that defines ours. There’s so much more to do and we’re excited about our plans for the next year.
Happy selling in 2019!