Weebly was launched in 2006, by a group of Penn State University students for a college project. Needless to say the idea stuck not only with fellow classmates but eventually expanded into an international brand and later into ecommerce. Today, Weebly Ecommerce is an offshoot of Weebly that offers ecommerce software for websites as well as integrated marketing.

Weebly Ecommerce is headquartered in San Francisco and currently has over 50 million customers from around the globe. Earlier this year, it was announced that major financier Square would acquire Weebly for $365 million with the intent of its expanding its services further.

Why Weebly Ecommerce?

Weebly Ecommerce is another “drag and drop” website builder similar to Wix Ecommerce. The drag and drop feature is very easy to use and allows you customize how you want your online store to be presented after selecting from a pre-built template.

The primary goal of any leading ecommerce software provider is to take out all of the guesswork when it comes to launching an online store as well as to save a ton of money. You do not need to be familiar with HTML code or even consider yourself technologically savvy in order to navigate Weebly Ecommerce.

Weebly Ecommerce also features a really well built platform for managing sales and tracking inventory once you get established. Merchants may insert multiple images for the products they sell as well as sell non-physical items such as eBooks or mp3s. The ability to sell non-physical items is something that really separates Weebly from other web builders.

There is also numerous ways to structure and organize the items you are selling. For example, merchants have the ability to highlight select products whether they are best sellers, seasonal or designed for promotional purposes.

Website Builder

Weebly is extremely easy to use for business owners on a tight budget and who do not want to spend a ton of time and energy creating and/or managing their online presence. Weebly Ecommerce offers a fair selection of templates to select from.

After you settle on a template, it is simply a matter of dragging and dropping the features of the website into the builder. There are several options to customize the website based on how you want your goods to be displayed as well as organized.

 As previously mentioned, Weebly Ecommerce is very good at helping merchants that specialize in selling non-physical items such as downloads. Retail has really evolved in that regard over the last decade and Weebly gets it. It’s a modern solution for modern business owners.

Weebly Ecommerce walks you step by step through the website creation process. Smart marketing tools allow business owners to grow digitally with not only marketing strategies like emails and newsletters, but also helping you understand SEO optimization.

The templates transition well from conventional platforms such as computer and laptops, to mobile devices like smartphones and tablets. It is also possible to build and manage your online store from a mobile app.

Management Tools

Weebly Ecommerce features a variety of ecommerce management tools and apps. The selection of management tools vary depending on what plan you select (Weebly offers four different plans). Among the highlights:

• Sell digital downloads or other non-physical commodities
• Store Pick-Up feature allows you to sell online and then offer in-store pick up for nearby customers
• Smart Marketing tools helps you build an online presence
• Build an online reputation with customer reviews and rating service
• Control all aspects of the order from payment to processing to shipping
• Track inventory with very little effort from your end
• Secure payments through a number of quality services including PayPal and Square
• Save on shipping costs through Weebly deals
• Website analytics demonstrate number of visitors and performance metrics

Features

Altogether, Weebly Ecommerce has four different plans to select from. All of them are affordable, though the Starter and Pro plans are quite basic and have only a limited version of what Weebly Ecommerce can offer to your online store.

 The Starter and Pro plans charge additional sales fee so you will not get 100 percent of the profits from each transaction. The Business and Performance plans are more popular with merchants because the management tools are more diverse as well as include extra features like a real-time shipping rate calculator and abandoned cart (to name a couple).

Weebly Ecommerce is also not just for beginners. The ecommerce software platform enables to ability to use custom HTML, CSS as well as Javascript. With these features you can fully customize every single aspect of your website. The detailed web analytics can also measure performance, indicating what you are doing well and what your business could improve on in terms of metrics.

Weebly Ecommerce has a solid customer service experience for its merchants. The traditional options of communication through email, chat and phone are all available. While Weebly offers in no way poor customer service, they are not regarded as the very best either. It’s good, middle of the road service.

Pros

• Online store for both traditional goods as well as specializes to merchants that sell non-physical products such as mp3s or ebooks.
• Very simple to use interface both for creating a new website as well as managing day to day operations. You can really grow your online presence with Weebly Ecommerce thanks to all their helpful tools.
• If calculating and managing shipping is a concern, Weebly takes a lot of guesswork out of the equation with a semi-automatic shipping calculator (provided to clients of the higher priced plans) as well as advanced SSL-encryption on your own domain.

Cons

• eCommerce software does not feature an existing log-in for repeat customers (unlike other budget ecommerce software providers).
• Two of the four plans available through Weebly Ecommerce are very basic. It is advised you avoid them if you are truly serious about expanding your online presence.

Conclusion

Weebly Ecommerce is very fitting for small business owners or merchants that cater to selling non-traditional goods such as video, music, ebook or other downloads. You will not spend a lot creating and managing this ecommerce software.