Ecwid 101. A Guide for New Users

What is Ecwid?

Ecwid (pronounced as “eck-wid”, short for “e-commerce widgets”), is a revolutionary shopping cart that seamlessly integrates with your existing website. It can also be added to your page on social media networks, such as Facebook or Tumblr.

Although it’s packed with high-value features, Ecwid is absolutely FREE! You’ll pay no setup charges and no transaction fees, making it a no-cost, high-return solution for today’s e-commerce businesses.

Ecwid store looks perfect on any smartphone and automatically adapts to your customer’s screen size — laptops, tablets, smart TVs or smart watches

How Does it Work?

It couldn’t be simpler-just insert a few lines of code to any page of your website or profile page, and your online store immediately appears. Customers will enjoy the convenience of checking out securely right from your site, without being redirected elsewhere. Behind the scenes, the Ecwid engine completes all transactions leveraging the power and security of Amazon EC2 servers.

Ecwid boasts a robust feature set you simply won’t find on other free shopping carts.

Add shopping cart to your existing website absolutely FREE

Adding Ecwid to Your Site: 3 Easy Steps

  1. To begin, you’ll need to create a free Ecwid account. You can either enter a new username/password or log in using your information from another account, such as Facebook or Google.
  2. Log into your Ecwid control panel. Open the Dashboard page, select the integration code, and hit Ctrl-C or right-click and select “Copy”.
  3. Back in the source code of your site, paste in the copied code and refresh the page. Your full-featured store will appear immediately.

If you use a major Content Management System, such as WordPress, Joomla or Drupal, the installation is even easier with our ready modules.

If you don’t have a site yet and would like to consolidate tasks, you can use one of the following platforms to create your site: 1and1, Adobe Muse, Blogger, Edicy, MODX, Squarespace, Tumblr, Webydo, or Weebly.

With Ecwid you can sell everywhere: on social networks, marketplaces and your own website

Adding Products & Categories

Begin by logging into your Ecwid control panel and clicking on the Catalog page. There, you will see some demo products and categories. Feel free to remove them and add your own.

If your products have many images, use the “Gallery” feature for easy browsing. You can also specify additional product options, such as size and color.

Setting Up Your Store

Now that you’ve added the functionality and the products/categories, go to the System Setting page of your store’s control panel. Set your store’s currency and name at System settings → General Store → Profile and System settings → General Store → Formats & Units pages.
Next, you’ll need to set up shipping rates, taxes, and payment options.

Customize Your Store’s Look

By default, Ecwid is designed to display optimally in most website browsers and versions. However, you can easily change the appearance of your online store using CSS (cascading style sheets).

Simply open the Ecwid control panel and proceed to: System Settings → Design → CSS Themes. There, you can choose from several pre-defined templates or create your own custom version.

For more information on customizing Ecwid elements, visit our CSS FAQ and knowledge base. Not familiar with CSS? Get the basics on the W3School site or contact our design team for assistance.

Adding Ecwid to Social Networks

Because of its unique and versatile architecture, Ecwid can be easily replicated on many different websites, such as your Facebook page. See our easy instructions for adding a seamless shopping cart to Facebook.

Win more buyers by adding Ecwid to your Facebook page. It will take 5 minutes

Still Have Questions?

Start by visiting our forums, FAQ, and knowledge base, where you can browse or search extensive information to resolve your question or issue. If you don’t find an answer, create a new thread on our forums and our support team will assist you. If your question is not suitable for the forums, please use our contact us form to send it directly to our staff.

If you think you have found a problem with the software, please report it to our bug-tracker.

We Value Your Feedback

If you have a suggestion for improving Ecwid, we want to hear it. Please add your idea to our idea tracker, where other users can vote for it. If your idea gets enough votes from our community, we’ll implement it in a future release. (Please note that you will need to create a separate log-in to vote in our idea tracker).

Stay in Touch

We look forward to boosting your business with the web’s most flexible, functional, and budget-friendly shopping cart software!

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