10 New Ecwid Tools to Up Your Revenue, Shipping, Payment, Reach, and More

Posted 3 years ago by Qetzal, Head of Product

Ecwid is the hardest working ecommerce solution on the planet. Why? To make selling online easier for you, of course!

Our team has been hard at work (of course!) to bring you a roundup of recent Ecwid updates. So here’s the latest on Ecwid’s powerful tools for growing your revenue, saving on shipping, improving your checkout process, and more. Dig in, enable new settings in your store, and make selling happen for your ecommerce business.

Sell Subscriptions to Grow Recurring Revenue

One of the most prominent new tools from the last few months allows you to provide an ongoing subscription of products or services on a regular basis. That’s right, you can sell subscriptions with your Ecwid store!

A subscription-based model is a must if you sell:

food
cosmetics
a subscription box — it is one of the most popular products sold on a recurring basis! Check out ideas for subscription boxes.
access to memberships
replenishment items/items in need of frequent repurchasing.

Food is perfect for a subscription-based model

If you didn’t launch your store as a subscription service, that doesn’t mean you can’t incorporate it into your business model now! Almost any product or service that needs to be restocked or renewed regularly can be sold as a subscription. This keeps your customers engaged and provides you with reliable recurring revenue.

With Ecwid, you can charge customers daily, weekly, biweekly, monthly, quarterly, or annually. You can even collect recurring donations with this tool—a great option for nonprofits, or way of allowing loyal customers to support your business on a regular basis.

Customers can subscribe to regular donations just like to products

One of the coolest things about this feature is that you can enable recurring subscriptions along with one-time purchases in your store. This way, you provide more options for your customers. Because more options = more sales!

Customers can choose from making a one-time purchase and subscribing to a product

Want to set up subscriptions right away? Check out our instructions in the Help Center.

If you’re already selling subscription products with Ecwid, feel free to share your feedback in the comments. We’re happy to tweak it if that helps you!

Buy Discounted Labels to Save On International Shipments

If you’re based in the US, you may already be a fan of buying shipping labels for USPS domestic shipments right from your Control Panel. But now you can buy USPS labels for international shipments too!

Here’s how it works:

You buy a shipping label for the order you want to ship internationally, from your Control Panel.
You print the label and stick it on the parcel.
You drop the parcel at the nearest USPS office (skip the lines!) or at your front door for your postal worker to grab on their regular route.

When shipping internationally via USPS, all customs duties are paid by the receiver. So you don’t have to pay any customs charges, but you will need to fill in the Customs Declaration when you purchase your label.

Filling in the Customs Declaration is pretty straightforward

The beauty of buying shipping labels through Ecwid is that it allows you to save both time and money:

The USPS labels you buy in the Control Panel are discounted, so you save on shipping costs. That’s a huge plus for international sellers, as international shipping costs can be quite high. Not anymore!
When you print labels yourself, you don’t need to waste time at the post office waiting in lines and filling out labels.
You can buy international labels from your Ecwid mobile app on iPhone or Android so you’re covered no matter where you are. Now you can buy a bunch of labels on your way to your brick-and-mortar store or warehouse to save time on preparing orders for shipment.

If you’ve been thinking about taking your store international, but were scared off by high shipping costs, now’s your chance to finally open up your online store to global shoppers and keep international shipping costs as low as possible.

Learn more about the benefits of buying discounted shipping labels with Ecwid.

Ready to take the plunge on international shipping labels? Our Help Center instructions will definitely come in handy.

Reach New Audiences on Walmart

You know what’s great about connecting your store to marketplaces? They already generate tons of visitors each month (which means less $$ spent on marketing for you) who are actively looking to buy. These shoppers come to marketplaces with an intent to shop, which makes it easier to turn them into customers.

Maybe you’ve already grown your product visibility and reach on marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, and Google Shopping. So now it’s time to add Walmart to the mix! With the help of the Codisto app, you can list your products on Walmart right from your Ecwid store.

The Codisto app is no longer available in the Ecwid App Market. Instead, you can connect your Ecwid store to Walmart using the Channable app.

For American sellers, it’s definitely worth expanding your reach on Walmart by connecting an Ecwid store to the platform. Some reasons why:

US consumers love shopping at Walmart: did you know that 90% of Americans live within 10 miles of a Walmart store?
Walmart has over 410 million monthly online visitors, which makes this marketplace one of the largest in the US.

Read more about the pros (and cons) of selling on Walmart.

If you’re ready to tap into one of the largest marketplaces in the US, connect your store to Walmart right away.

Dropship Ready-to-Sell Products from Alibaba

Quick, name a product! No matter what comes into your mind, we bet it’s sold on Alibaba.

Alibaba is one of the world’s biggest online commerce companies, supplying hundreds of millions of products in over 40 product categories. It connects international online sellers with manufacturers and suppliers, making it the perfect destination for any dropshipper.

Dropshipping works best for people who are just getting started in ecommerce because it doesn’t require too much time and upfront investment. If you’re interested in starting an ecommerce business but don’t have your own inventory, dropshipping is an easy way to get started with an online store.

You can access thousands of ready-to-sell products on Alibaba, import them to your store, and sell them under your own brand. Want to rename products and set your own prices? It’s a piece of cake! So is managing your orders.

Learn more about connecting your Ecwid store to Alibaba via the Syncee app in the Help Center.

Offer More Payment Options to Customers

One of the main things that prevent shoppers from placing an order in online stores is the lack of convenient, reliable, and established payment methods. So if you want more customers clicking that Pay button, ensure they have the right payment options to choose from.

Get paid with Google Pay

The fewer steps in your checkout, the more likely customers are to complete their purchases. However, re-typing credit card details and shipping info on mobile devices is far from a frictionless checkout experience. The solution? Allow customers to pay for their orders with Google Pay, and forget about all that inconvenience!

Google Pay lets your customers complete their entire checkout process in just a few clicks. It takes literally seconds to pay for orders this way—which is crucial for retaining customers on mobile.

Set up Google Pay with Stripe and customers who use the Chrome browser on Android mobile devices or on desktop will be able to complete their checkout in seconds.

Customers can pay in a click with Google Pay

That keeps my customers with Android devices happy…but what about Apple users? You may be wondering. Fair point! With Ecwid, you can accept Apple Pay too. Here’s how to connect both Google Pay and Apple Pay in your online store.

Check out all available payment methods in Ecwid.

Lightspeed Payments is a safe and secure payment gateway in the US. It allows you to accept payments in your online store via all major credit and debit cards, Google Pay, and Apple Pay. Lightspeed Payments has competitive fees (2.9% + $0.30 per transaction), and no hidden fees. If you run an Ecwid store, you can sign up for Lightspeed Payments right from your Ecwid control panel. There, you can manage payouts, see payment details, and set up refunds. Set up Lightspeed Payments.

Get paid with PaymentSense and Dojo

If your business is based in the UK, now you can offer your customers to pay with not one, but two of the most popular payment solutions: PaymentSense and Dojo.

Both PaymentSense and Dojo enable small businesses to accept card payments securely and efficiently—including payments in GBP, of course.

PaymentSense has some of the lowest rates among the UK payment gateways, and Dojo allows you to tailor the fees to your specific. That makes those payment solutions great for UK sellers who want to accept credit and debit cards in their online store without any huge associated fees.

If you need a card machine for your brick-and-mortar store, you can rent them through both PaymentSense and Dojo.

Here’s how to add PaymentSense or Dojo to your online store.

Get Valuable Insights with Google Analytics 4

The first step to making sales is understanding how existing and potential customers find and use your store. Without that knowledge, running a store is just plain…guesswork.

Now you can gain valuable insights into how your customers find and use your store from Google Analytics 4, a new generation of Google Analytics.

Compared to Universal Analytics, connecting your Ecwid store to Google Analytics 4 allows you to track twice as many events (information about how customers are using your store, like views of product categories or adding products to favourites). This allows you to understand your audience better and act on the insights you get accordingly.

If you’ve been using Universal Analytics in your store, you can switch to Google Analytics 4 at any time.

Learn how to enable Google Analytics 4 for your Ecwid store and what information you can track with it in our Help Center.

Connect Payments with Shipping Methods

You already know that the more payment and shipping options you can offer to your customers, the better their shopping experience will be. However, sometimes you need to go that extra mile to make your payment and shipping process the best it can be.

Say you deliver locally and ship nationwide. You’d like your local customers to pay in cash so you can save on online payment fees. At the same time, you don’t want to show the Pay in cash method for nationwide online shoppers in their checkout.

The solution is simple! Now you can connect payment options with specific shipping methods. This way, customers will see only the payment options you choose for the particular shipping or delivery method. For the example above, you can connect the Pay in cash option with pickup or local delivery.

If a customer chooses local delivery, they’ll be able to pay in cash only

Ready to level up your payment and shipping process? Follow these easy instructions from the Help Center.

Stay in Line with EU VAT Rules

Dealing with taxes can be a huge pain in the neck. That’s why we try to take as much of the stress out of it as possible by keeping your store up to date with current VAT regulations.

If you sell in the EU, you might already know that starting from July 1, 2021, you need to charge VAT according to the rates of your buyer’s country. And if you check your inbox regularly, you are aware that Ecwid was prepared for those changes well in advance.

If you were on summer vacation and missed out on the intel, now’s the time double check tax settings in your store:

If you use automated tax calculations, you don’t have to make any changes. We took care of everything for you (*pats ourselves on the back*)
If you set up your taxes manually, make sure you’ve updated the settings under Settings → Taxes.

To learn more about EU VAT taxes in your Ecwid store, check out our article on the matter in our Help Center.

Boost Sales with More Discount Coupons in Automated Emails

Automated marketing emails is one of the most popular tools among Ecwid merchants for a reason. Just enable a toggle, and tailored sales emails will be sent to your customers when they complete certain actions in your store. For example, when they add a new product to their favorites, or complete a purchase.

Automated emails can reach the right person at the right time to encourage customers to buy from you—especially if you include a discount coupon. Talk about an incentive that works!

Previously, you could add discount coupons to automated emails only if they could be applied to all products and weren’t limited by the number of users. But what if you don’t want your customers to use the same coupon over and over again?

Now you can add almost any type of discount coupons to automated emails—even the ones with time or quantity limits! The only exception is the single-use coupons.

This new feature can help you to run promotions more efficiently. For example, you can add a 50% off coupon that expires in a week to your automated emails, and customers won’t be able to use this coupon when the sale is over.

Learn all about adding discount coupons to your automated marketing emails and how to keep those sales coming.

Edit Invoices Effortlessly

As an online seller, you work with invoices on a daily basis. You send them to customers, use them as packing lists, or print them to include in shipments.

Invoices are helpful, but personalised invoices are even better. They help to reflect your brand even in the smallest details and allow you to include additional information that’s relevant for your customers.

To make customizing invoices easier for you, we launched the new invoice editor. Now you can edit invoices effortlessly while enjoying our improved invoice interface. It’s now also possible to add additional business details or a footer message. Best of all, there’s no coding or additional technical know-how needed to make use of this awesome new feature!

Find out how to edit invoices in the Help Center.

Adding business details or a footer message is a piece of cake

If you’d like to customize your invoices even more, you can even edit your invoice template.

Stay Up to Date

The last couple of months sure have been fruitful—we’ve produced a bounty of cool new features and tools. And of course, there are more awesome updates to come! Make sure you stay in the know with all things Ecwid. Here’s how:

Find a full timeline of updates, big and small, in the Ecwid Help Center.
Check the What’s New tab in your Control Panel to enable tools that require manual activation.
Subscribe to the blog newsletter to be the first to know about new features.
Check out the Ecwid Updates section of the Ecwid blog.

About The Author

Qetzal is Head of Product at Ecwid. He loves to create new things to make people's lives easier.