How To Add an Online Store to Your Existing Website

10 min read

More often than not, people create a website before setting up their online store. This is understandable, considering the website is the card of any business, and adding an online store can be an afterthought. However, it doesn’t have to be an afterthought any longer — Ecwid’s revolutionary technology enables anyone to integrate a shopping cart into their existing website in minutes.

Ecwid has built special plug-ins and extensions for WordPress, Joomla, Drupal and other content management systems (CMS) as well as popular site builders like WIX, Squarespace, and Weebly.

What is the Difference Between CMS and a Site Builder?

Web Content Management Systems (CMS) provide site authoring, collaboration and administration tools to help non-technical users create and manage website content. The cost of managing a CMS, as well as other incremental needs such as domain registration and hosting makes it challenging for beginners. WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal are examples of popular Content Management Systems.

“All in one” site builders, on the other hand, make it easy to create a website with a domain name, while bypassing the administrative and technical challenges of a CMS. Most web designers do not need the customization capabilities provided by CMS, and would rather focus on what they do best — building beautiful websites with powerful e-commerce.

Regardless of whether you choose a CMS or an “All-in-one” site builder, the process of adding an online store is a three-step process:

Install the CMS plugin or Sitebuilder App.
Link it to your Ecwid account.
Launch your online store on your website.

The remainder of this blog post will help you choose a CMS or sitebuilder that suits your needs and explain how to integrate a shopping cart into an existing website. Creating an online store is fun. So go for it!

CMS

WordPress

WordPress was created to create and manage blogs, but soon gained popularity among small business websites.

WordPress is available in two versions: WordPress.org — downloadable software that you can install on your own web server — and WordPress.com — a cloud-based version hosted by WordPress.

This e-commerce website is built on WordPress and Ecwid

If you want to add a store to WordPress.org website, you can install the Ecwid plugin from within the WordPress Control Panel:

Log into your WordPress account and go to “Plugins» → ‘Add’.
Type ‘Ecwid’ in the search bar.
Choose ‘Ecwid Shopping Cart’ from the list of plugins and click ‘Install’.
When the installation is complete, launch the plugin by clicking on ‘Activate plugin’.
Navigate to ‘Shop Ecwid’ → ‘Console’ and follow the instructions.

We’re constantly improving our e-commerce plugin for WordPress with new features, so don’t forget to use the latest version and install all the updates to use the full power of your website shop.

If your goal is adding a shopping cart to the website built with WordPress.com, take these steps:

Sign in to your WordPress profile.
Select ‘Plugins’ from the side menu.
Use the search icon at the top right to type in ‘Ecwid Ecommerce Shopping Cart’.
Click the ‘Install’ button and follow the further steps.
Check the ‘Store’ page to view your newly created website shop.

Installing third-party plugins to a WordPress.com website is available on the WordPress.com Business plan.

Joomla

Joomla is another popular CMS that lets you create and manage your website without any programming expertise. Log in to your Joomla account to discover Ecwid’s online store extension for Joomla:

Navigate to ‘Extensions’ → ‘Extensions Manager’ within the Joomla Control Panel Go to the ‘Upload Package File’ tab to select Ecwid and click ‘Download and install’. Go to ‘Components’ → ‘Ecwid’ → “General Settings” and enter your Ecwid Store ID.
Go to “Menu” → “Menu Manager” and choose the page for your online store and click on “Start menu”
Click “Select” next to the “Type menu item” and select Ecwid → Product Browser
Enter a title for your online store page and save changes.

Poochini online store

That’s all! You can start selling on your Joomla site.

Drupal

Drupal is a popular content management system that allows you to create and manage websites. You can easily add your Ecwid store to a Drupal site using a special Ecwid module, that optimizes product pages for SEO.

Drupal based online store

If your site is built using Drupal version 6.x and 7.x, please use our official module to install your Ecwid online store. The instructions for installing the module can be found in our Knowledge Base.

Website Builders

There are many different options for site builders, but we’re going to focus on some of the more popular platforms that we see websites and stores being built with on a regular basis.

Some of the commonly used site builders that integrate with Ecwid are Wix, Weebly, WordPress, Adobe Muse, Squarespace.

Wix

Wix is one of the most popular site builders in the market and caters to a wide range of users. You do not need programming skills to create a site on Wix provides a wide variety of templates to customize your website.

Wix store for kids

It’s easy to add Ecwid to your Wix site. Install our “Online Store” App from the Wix App Market and start selling online:

Follow the link to the Wix App Store and click “Add” to install the application.
Log in to the Wix site editor. Switch to edit mode, click on “Add to the site”, followed by “OK, add”. Your Wix site now has website page with an Ecwid demo store.
Navigate to settings, “Online Store” and complete the “Create a new account Ecwid” form to link your Ecwid online store to your to Wix account.

Integrating Wix with Ecwid is as simple as adding the app from the Wix App Market to your site.

Weebly

Weebly boasts more than 40 million users and is a site builder beloved for it’s no frills approach to website design. In minutes, you can create a mobile-responsive site from the templates they have available, and you can study your progress with their back-end metrics.

Weebly based online store

Adding an Ecwid store to a Weebly website is simple. The storefront will inherit website colors and fonts, so it will look like a seamless part of the website. Install our “Online Store” app to your Weebly Website and start selling:

Log in to your Weebly editor, find the Ecwid App on App Center and click the Add button.
In the pop-up, select the website where you want to add the store and click Connect.
Log into your Weebly account, open the page where you want to add the Ecwid store, drag and drop the Ecwid icon from the list of the installed apps in the left menu of the Weebly editor to the page. Done!

For detailed instructions on how to add Ecwid store to Weebly, visit our knowledge base.

Squarespace

Squarespace is another easy to use tool with many different templates that allow you to build and launch a customized online store and website in minutes.

Squarespace plant store

If you’re looking for a site builder that’s ultra-easy and prides itself on design, this option might be ideal for you.

You can tie together your Squarespace website and Ecwid accounts with a piece of html code.

Ecwid has created simple plug-ins and extensions for the most popular CMSs and site builders in the market to help you start selling quickly and successfully. Feel free to contact us if you have any questions.

Do you already have an Ecwid store? Share your success story below!

Want to learn more about adding ecommerce to your existing website?

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Preparing to Launch

Dec 9, 2020

About the author

Jesse is the Marketing Manager at Ecwid and has been in e-commerce and internet marketing since 2006. He has experience with PPC, SEO, conversion optimization and loves to work with entrepreneurs to make their dreams a reality.