WiX Ecommerce Review

We know that Wix is a very Popular website builder. It boasts of millions of users and its drag and drop website editor is one of the best around. I feel Wix is the best website builder for beginners. But what if you want to build an online store? Thankfully Wix offers a native Shopping cart feature and in this post, I will be covering various aspects of Wix Ecommerce

Wix started its life as a website builder and Shopping cart functionality was added after its user started demanding a native e-commerce functionality. Wix is a website Builder First and an E-commerce Platform second.

Since Wix has its roots in website building, it provides amazing control over the overall store layout and present. While Wix may not be the most powerful Ecommerce system on the market, it certainly one of the most affordable one. It is not fair to compare Wix Stores to more specialized platforms like Shopify and Bigcommerce.

Having said that, Wix does offer decently powerful e-commerce system. It lets you sell physical products as well as digital goods. It offers product management, order management, shipping zone setup and a nice collection of themes and templates. If you are a young business looking for an affordable E-commerce system, then Wix can be the right choice.

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As I mentioned before, Wix offers a decently powerful E-commerce store builder. It has a good collection of feature and the platform is being enhanced on a regular basis. Here is a list of features which I will cover in this post.

1. Product Management
2. Order Management
3. Marketing Tools
4. App Marketplace
5. Shipping
6. Payment Processing and Fees
7. Wix Theme and Templates

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The Product creation interface is intuitive and organized logically. You can add title, images, price, inventory and variants on the editing screen. You may add an unlimited number of options. So for example, if you are selling a shirt, you can add options like Color, Size, Material, Brand etc. You can enter the inventory value of each variant from the product creation interface. Each variant can have a different SKU number assigned to it. You may also add product videos and info sections to answer most common questions.

Wix product also support capture of product customization info, so if you sell mugs then you can ask the customer to enter the text which want printed on the mug. It is also possible to bulk import product by uploading a CSV file.

1. Product Collections

Wix supports creation of collections. You can organize products into collections, however you will have to do it manually. There is no way to create collection conditionally.

For example, if you want to create a collection of products which are priced under $10, then you will have to add the products to that collection manually. If you increase price of a particular product then you will need to manually remove it from the collection.

This is something which can be a bottle neck if you have a large number of products. Creating and managing collections can quickly go out of hand if you run a shop with large number of products.

2. Product Inventory Management

Wix has a decent Inventory manager. You can assign inventories to product variants with ease. If the product runs out of inventory, it will display as Out of Stock on store front end.

It is also possible to select between Track Inventory and Do not track inventory. The second option can be used when you sell a digital product. It is also possible to bulk export and import products

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The order Management screen is intuitive and gives you access to important functions like updating tracking number, adding comments, editing customer address, etc. The order list screen will let you filter order on the basis of different order status. One big shortcoming is that you cannot create an order as an administrator. If you want to create an order then the only option you have is to go through the front end checkout interface. This can be a bottleneck for shops which take orders over the phone.

It is possible to create refunds and returns from the order detail screen. The amount refunded is reflected in the order detail screen. Wix also supports returns, however it does not update the inventory automatically when you return a product. Instead it displays a message to manually update the inventory.

Merchant can fulfill the order by marking order status as fulfilled and entering a tracking info. It also sends the customer a shipping confirmation mail at the time of order fulfillment.

Wix natively supports invoice creation for orders. You can create invoice for an order at click of a button. The invoice can be emailed to the customer right from the order detail screen.

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Wix Offers a variety of marketing tools for your E commerce Store. Here is a list of tools offered by Wix.

• Ascend – Email Marketing, form building, and video making
• Coupons
• SEO
• Social Posting

1. Ascend – Email Marketing

The Ascend email marketing tool is surprisingly powerful. It lets you design and send email newsletters with ease. So you send product promotions, collections promotions, special deals newsletters and more. Ascend gives you a collection of beautifully designed, responsive email templates. In addition to email marketing, Ascend also offers form building and website chat solutions.

Think of Ascend as a hub for all of your customer communication. It also offers additional marketing tools like Video Maker. It lets you create videos for sharing on social media websites.

Ascend free plan lets you send 3 campaigns and up-to 500 Email per month. Premium plans offer you various perks like additional email campaigns, additional emails, team members, lead capture forms and email automation. Ascend premium plans start from $10/month to $49/month.

2. Coupons

Wix has an impressive coupon feature. It lets you create and manage coupons for various product and collections on your store. It lets you create different type of coupons such as Price Discount, Percentage Discount, Free Shipping, Coupons on minimum order value, etc. You can also limit the coupon usage per customer. The coupon feature is under active development and is being enhanced all the time.

3. Social Posting and Logo Maker

Wix lets you post updates to social networks right from the dashboard. However I find this feature very limiting. There is no way to schedule the posts so you have to do it manually. If you are into social media marketing, then its better to use a tool like Buffer of Meetedgar.

4. SEO

Wix has a decent collection of On Page SEO features. It supports features like adding page titles, alt text for images, 301 redirects, a custom title for product pages etc. If you are new to SEO, then Wix has a detailed guide which teaches you basics of SEO. It can be beneficial for a business owner who is just starting with the SEO. In the early days, Wix has bad reputation in SEO community, but since then WIX has worked hard on improving its platform. And I must say they have been quite successful in improving their SEO functionality

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Wix has an evergrowing collection of own and thrids party apps which it offers via its App Marketplace. Currently, there is a limited collection of apps which target Wix Ecommerce. Having said that there are apps like Instant Search, Currency Converter, Tickets selling which enhance the e-commerce functionality.

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Wix has a decently powerful Shipping feature. It lets you create multiple Shipping Zone and each shipping zone in turn can have different shipping rates. Wix offers various shipping methods like Free Shipping, Shipping Calculation based on weight, prices and a flat rate. It also offer a store pickup options. You can also setup tax rules for your products.

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Wix supports all popular payment gateways like Paypal, Stripe, 2checkout and Square. As of writing of this article Wix support 17 Payments gateways in total. The on boarding process is smooth and simple. If you payment gateway of choice in not supported then you can request integration. Wix adds new payment gateways on a regular basis.

Wix also offers manual payment method. One thing to note is that Wix does not charge any transaction fee. The only payment processing fee which you will pay is that of payment gateway.

Security is a major factor of E-commerce store. Wix deploys SSL certificates on all of its plans, so Wix has that part covered.

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Wix started is life as a Website Builder, so it is quite natural that it shines in the are template design and template quality. Wix has a VERY good collection of eCommerce templates. Out of 500 odd designs, Wix currently has 75 templates dedicated to the eCommerce category. The templates are further divided into subcategories like Fashion Store, Jewelry Store, Home and Decor store extra.

Wix Templates are Clean , Modern and Beautiful

1. Design Customization

Even though, Wix has a wide variety of templates, you will definitely want to make customizations so that the overall layout and design matches your brand. Here also Wix shines, thanks to its very powerful drag and drop website editor. It lest you quickly customize and place any element on the website canvas.

Wix lets you insert beautiful looking product galleries on any page. You can select from different style of product galleries. Wix also lets you add basic filters based on price and product options.

Wix also lets you display single product neatly. It lets you customize product presentation with features like Zoom, Sale Ribbons, Product Faq section. You can also choose between various layouts for displaying a single product.

All in All Wix has a great collection of beautiful template which are easy to use and easy to edit.

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Wix Pricing Plans can be broken down into 2 categories : Website Plans and Ecommerce Plans.

Ecommerce Plans offer Business Basic, Business Unlimited and Business VIP. All Ecommerce plans support selling products and services online. Wix does not charge commissions on any of their Ecommerce plans. Also there are no limits on the number of products or service which you can sell on your store

The Ecommerce Plans start at $20 / month and go upto $35/ month. Here is a list of Ecommerce Plans. The price mentioned is Annual.

The Ecommerce plans come with various perks provided you go for an Annual Payment. Perks include things like Free Domain for a Year, Ads Voucher, Access to premium apps. Here is a detailed break down of Wix Pricing Plans

1. Value for Money

Wix Ecommerce plans range from $20/month to $35/month. Lets compare Wix pricing to that of its competitors.

• SquareSpace : $26 to $40 / month
• Shopify: $29 to $299 / month
• BigCommerce: $29.95 to $249 / month

Wix might not be the most powerful ecommerce platforms around, but it is certainly one of the most affordable. If you are a young business with a tight budget then it makes sense for you to go with WIX.

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While Wix is a decent platform for store building, it does have some shortcomings. Here are a few features lacking from its platform. its a good platform there are certain shortcomings

As of now, there is no easy to add upsell and cross-sell sections to your product pages. Wix has recently introduced Corvid, their development platform. It is possible to add related products section using Corvid but it requires a nontrivial amount of technical knowledge.

If you want to start a dropshipping business the Wix is not the right platform. There is no way to start a drop store on Wix. I recommend using Shopify to start a dropshipping business.

Currently, it is not possible to integrate your Wix store with e-commerce channels like Amazon, Etsy or Ebay.

Apart from the above three features, there are other areas where Wix is lacking a bit. For example, there is no integration with Google Shopping feed, it is not possible to send abandoned cart recovery emails, also it’s not possible to use FBA on Wix.

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Wix is a great choice if you are looking for an affordable store builder and plan to run a store with small number of products.

While it may not be as robust as Shopify, I think the comparison is a bit unfair. The strength of Wix platform lies in its affordability, ease of use and an ever-growing collection of feature which should suffice for most of the small stores.

Have you used Wix Ecommerce? Let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.

• Checkout this post about Wix Review
• Checkout this post covering Wix Pricing Plans in detail