At the start of September, we replaced our old Amazon powered webstore with one based on the Ecwid platform. We are delighted to report that this switch has resulted in an increase in total sales by over 250% in the last quarter. This result was all the more impressive given that the period September to December is out of season for most of our organic garden products.
As I see it, the Ecwid system has a number of key advantages that have helped improve our e-commerce set-up.
With no background in web development, we found the quick and easy integration of the Ecwid store to be a breath of fresh air. You simply build your product catalogue and stipulate payment methods and shipping zones in the back end. Then you copy chunks of HTML code into your website wherever you want products, carts and categories to appear - or make use of the special Joomla and Wordpress extensions. It was that simple. Compared to other e-commerce software we've used, this was a doddle, allowing us to get up and running in just a few hours.
Being able to plug our Ecwid store into The Shropshire Seaweed Company Facebook Page also gives us another string to our bow. We are increasingly trying to engage with our customers on the social web; and having a functioning shop within Facebook itself makes the whole experience more complete.
Our old Amazon platform never gave us the capacity to closely integrate our website and store, meaning that customers had to be diverted to a special Amazon site in order to buy products. We felt this was the single biggest barrier to our e-commerce development, putting potential customers off carrying on with their transactions and generally looking unprofessional. Thankfully we have now been able to overcome this problem: the Ecwid system allows a close integration between our e-commerce widgets and the main body of our website right the way through the checkout process.
Quick to Set-up
With no background in web development, we found the quick and easy integration of the Ecwid store to be a breath of fresh air. You simply build your product catalogue and stipulate payment methods and shipping zones in the back end. Then you copy chunks of HTML code into your website wherever you want products, carts and categories to appear - or make use of the special Joomla and Wordpress extensions. It was that simple. Compared to other e-commerce software we've used, this was a doddle, allowing us to get up and running in just a few hours.
Facebook Integration
Being able to plug our Ecwid store into The Shropshire Seaweed Company Facebook Page also gives us another string to our bow. We are increasingly trying to engage with our customers on the social web; and having a functioning shop within Facebook itself makes the whole experience more complete.
Clear Checkout Process
Our old Amazon platform never gave us the capacity to closely integrate our website and store, meaning that customers had to be diverted to a special Amazon site in order to buy products. We felt this was the single biggest barrier to our e-commerce development, putting potential customers off carrying on with their transactions and generally looking unprofessional. Thankfully we have now been able to overcome this problem: the Ecwid system allows a close integration between our e-commerce widgets and the main body of our website right the way through the checkout process.
Multiple Channels
One other great advantage Ecwid has for us is the ability to offer our products on a range of different websites. This is important because The Shropshire Seaweed Company is a subsidiary of Sea-Chem Limited, which also has its own, quite different, product lines. Furthermore, we have just launched a third website devoted entirely to our septic tank treatment products. We wanted a solution that would allow us to sell a range of diverse products across different specialist websites, but retain just one back-end order manager and payment system. For us, this is what makes Ecwid so great: we have one store, customised for three different websites (plus Facebook), all controlled and administered from one place.
Based on our experiences, we would definitely recommend Ecwid to start-up businesses looking to get themselves selling online quickly and who also require flexibility in the way they sell. What's more, the best thing about the system is that it is completely free (although there are premium service plans available).
Coupled with The Seaweed Store on eBay and The Seaweed Store on Amazon.co.uk, we are hoping our new Ecwid platform will allow us to expand our e-commerce activities rapidly in the coming months.
If you have any questions about our experience of using Ecwid, please leave them below.
David Ross,
Business Development, The Shropshire Seaweed Company
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