CMS is one of the first issues faced by online sellers opening their store.To help you understand how this software works and to understand the influence of the pandemic on the activity of solution providers, we spoke with Ksenia Pinkova, who works at Ecwid.
Ecwid is a solution offered by the publisher Lightspeed. This turnkey solution allows you to quickly offer your online store and make it public. Lightspeed, in particular, offers a variety of software to help you develop your omnichannel strategy.
Can you introduce yourself and your background?
My name is Ksenia Pinkova, I’m Marketing Manager at Ecwid by Lightspeed in EMEA. I’ve been a part of the Ecwid by Lightspeed team for 6 years now.
Can you introduce Ecwid by Lightspeed and its activity?
Ecwid by Lightspeed, short for “E-commerce WIDgets”, creates and unites powerful online selling tools for small businesses. Any person regardless of their technical experience can create an online store in minutes and start selling on websites, social media, marketplaces and mobile apps. We help our merchants sell everywhere online at once and manage it all from a single dashboard.
Ecwid by Lightspeed was acquired by Lightspeed in October 2021 to build a complete E-commerce ecosystem that will help merchants reach their customers wherever they are, all over the globe.
Has the pandemic influenced the number of requests to create online stores on your tool?
The pandemic surely boosted E-commerce all over the world. As many physical store locations were closing during lockdowns, it became critical for business owners to adapt to the new reality and move their businesses online. Thanks to Ecwid by Lightspeed’s ease of use, non-techy business owners who have never sold online before could have launched online sales fast enough to keep and grow their businesses in the new reality.
How do you attract online sellers to your platform? On which channels?
To start using Ecwid by Lightspeed, you need to create a free account at www.ecwid.com. From where you’ll see helpful hints to add your first product online, connect a way to get paid for orders, add shipping terms and here you go, ready to accept your first online orders. It’s so easy that even my mom can do it on her own.
You may have seen our ads on search engines or social media, or read one of our blog articles about selling online and promoting an online store. We’re also sharing educational videos on YouTube and have recently started the Ecwid by Lightspeed Academy, an educational platform for business owners.
Have you ever had any particular customer requests? Specific features, …
Great product ideas often come from our merchants. For example, when the pandemic hit, we saw many businesses start collecting donations to keep their businesses afloat during the lockdowns. So we added the donations feature to Ecwid by Lightspeed and let our merchants start collecting donations in a couple of clicks.
Another example. We’re committed to building the best ecom solution for European merchants. Europe has its own everything: data laws, taxation rules, all the various languages, ways to pay online and ship within a single trade zone – and beyond. We want to make Ecwid by Lightspeed super easy to use for European sellers, be it automated tax reporting, multilingual storefront to sell across the EU, or the compliance with local laws like GDPR in a couple of clicks. A lot of these features were inspired by our European merchants, too.
