Google Sites Ecommerce: How to Sell Online With Google Sites and Ecwid

Posted 3 years ago by Max Komonov

In your quest to selling online with Google Sites, perhaps the easiest way to proceed is by adding Ecwid Ecommerce extension to your Google Sites website. To do this, you do not need to be fluent in a programming language, or have an abundance of tech savvy.

By adding an online store to your Google Sites website with Ecwid, you can quickly and easily start attracting more visitors, ensuring a higher level of engagement, and therefore converting these visitors into customers.

All you have to do to enable Google Site ecommerce is to copy and paste a few lines of code. Ecwid give you several ways to add an online store to your Google Sites website. Each of them has pros and cons. Choose the one that works for your business mode.

3 Way To Add an Online Store to Google Sites

Although you can add Ecwid shopping cart to your Google Sites website in several ways, some of them might not match your expectations and can influence your customers’ shopping experience. It happens due to the way Google Sites work with embeddable code (iframe).

1. Embedding a store as code INTO A PAGE (not yet the best way)

You already know that you can add almost any code to your website using the Embed code tool. But what you didn’t know is that Google Sites block some important functionality of the Ecwid store, which results in a poor shopping experience. Plus, your store will be locked and limited with container borders. If you don’t stretch it enough, the frame will have its own scroll.

All the above will result in several disadvantages:

surfing the store, the URLs don’t change. So the store will keep working inside the frame while you will stay on the same page.
customer account issues. Your customers will face the inability to log in to their customer account.
the cart reset. The cart may forget what a customer put into it while browsing the store in different tabs.
blank pages. Sometimes, your customers may see blank pages popping up in a new tab.
not enough space. Your store will be displayed in a frame. The frame has its borders. Although Ecwid will do its best to resize to fit into the frame, sometimes it won’t be possible. You will need to scroll down or sidewise inside the widget to see the full picture.

It’s important to understand that this behavior does not mean that Ecwid or Google are bad solutions. This is just an embedment limitation that Google and Ecwid are working on together.

2. Embedding a store AS A SEPARATE PAGE (almost the best way)

Google Sites let you embed the code as a full-size page. It’s still iframe, but it’s not has page-size borders. So it always displays the whole content of your store.

Adding your store to Google Sites as a page solves some issues from the previous part, but some of them remain.

the URLs won’t change. If you don’t care about SERP visibility of your product pages and totally rely on content pages created with Google Sites, it’s not a problem for you.
customer account issues. Your customers will face the inability to log in to their customer account. Make sure you need to provide your customers with accounts.
the cart reset. The cart may forget what a customer put into it while browsing the store in different tabs. However, you can forward customers straight to the checkout instead adding products to the cart. Is this OK for you?

Aside from these issues, your store will work as expected and your customers won’t feel uncomfortable browsing and purchasing your products.

3. Instant Site and SUBDOMAIN (the best way!)

What would you do if you met a brick wall? Correct, you’d walk around. And that’s exactly what you can do to marry beautiful solutions like Ecwid and Google on your domain.

Link to Instant Site

All Ecwid stores have free storefronts (Instant Site) accessible from the web. In addition, they have indexable URLs and are fully functional.

And this is a place where you can send your Google Sites visitors right from the main menu. Create a free Ecwid store and add a link to it to your Google Sites website main menu with the word Store and offer your visitors to shop in a dedicated section.

Linking the store that doesn’t belong to the same domain as a website is common for many businesses. People see that your official website is sending them there and treat it as a legitimate place to make a purchase.

Place Ecwid Instant Site on a subdomain

But if you believe that your customers need another reason to feel safe with you, placing Ecwid Instant Site on a subdomain is definitely a way to consider.

Perhaps, this is the most widely used way the big brands use to run e-commerce along with the main website. The web address store.brand.com won’t scare away cautious customers and will gather your entire business assets under one roof—your domain.

Although both (adding as code and as page) ways to add a shopping cart to Google Sites have pros and cons, we recommend the second variant. And there’s a handful of reasons for that:

best shopping experience. You’ll avoid unexpected errors and limitations.
you’ll control the layout. Instant Site looks amazing and can be redesigned to match your business needs.
SEO boost. Instead of working in a frame, your store will have its own navigation. All your products and categories will have their pages accessible from the web and indexable by Google.

But you may ask, Why would I need Google Sites if Ecwid’s Instant Site is so good? But don’t hurry.

Your Google site can win you lots of traffic if you continue creating limitless pages linking back to your storefront. They can be a part of the main navigation and can be hidden as well. In fact, you can create a universe of landing pages with Google Sites and generate free traffic for your store.

But yes, Ecwid is awesome and you can use it alone without Google Sites.

The best way to add an online store your existing Google Sites website. A step-by-step guide.

Benefits of Selling Online with Google Sites and Ecwid

When you integrate Ecwid with your Google Sites website, it preserves your existing web design without any fundamental programming knowledge. Then, you can add your store to different sites and manage it from a single platform. You will also be able to see the changes you make across the sites.

In addition, Google Sites ecommerce allows you to sell everywhere- on websites, social media, mobile phones, and on marketplaces like Amazon and Google Shopping. Even more interesting is how you can also extend the integration of your Google Site with Ecwid to social networks such as Facebook and Instagram. Altogether, this will give your store a perfect look and help it maintain an adaptive design.

You will be able to add the feature-rich shopping store to your Google Site in a matter of minutes. Ecwid makes it happen quickly and effortlessly. Its Google ecommerce gadget offers an incredibly comprehensive and glitch-free solution for your business.

This will make shopping easier. It will also ensure effortless management. Within the shopping cart, the AJAX interface and drag-and-drop feature foster smooth operation and enable easy inventory management as a business owner.

Conclusion

Google Sites allows adding ecommerce widgets like Ecwid to your existing website. However, this integration has limitations, yet free.

In order to provide the best shopping experience it’s better to add an online store to your Google Sites as a subdomain. It’s safe and convenient for shoppers.

About The Author

Max has been working in the ecommerce industry for the last six years helping brands to establish and level-up content marketing and SEO. Despite that, he has experience with entrepreneurship. He is a fiction writer in his free time.