WixStores Review

Given Wix’s expertise and experience in the website building realm, it is only natural that one of the world’s most popular website builders would expand its platform, enabling store owners to build their own beautifully designed eCommerce website.

Mixing the flexibility and ease of Wix’s drag-and-drop website editor (no coding skills required!) with advanced eCommerce capabilities such as product galleries, order tracking and shipping management, Wix’s online store builder – WixStores- is one of the most user-friendly and customizable eCommerce platforms on the market.

Note there are three ways to build an online store with Wix:

1. Build a regular site, then add their WixStores app to include a page for transactions on your site. This is suited to small businesses offering 1-2 products for sale. To read more about this option, visit our Wix Review.
2. Build a website with Wix’s ADI (Artifical Design Technology) and add an ‘OnlineStore’ page to your site. This is also suited to small businesses offering 1-2 products for sale.
3. Build a powerful, dedicated eCommerce site with WixStores. The following review refers to this feature-packed option.

Templates

Wix offers over 60 dedicated, professionally designed eCommerce templates. Each online store template has been uniquely designed to capture it’s verticals’ target audience, ranging from bright and colorful, image-rich templates to sleek, clutter-free designs.

The online store template library is split into 12 categories:

The thought and care that has been invested into creating each template is evident just by comparing two categories, such as Sports & Outdoors, vs Kids & Babies and noting the difference in template colors, fonts and layouts between the two verticals.

All of Wix’s templates are automatically optimized for mobile and include product galleries to showcase your products.

Editor

Wix’s website editor is a powerful tool for customizing your site, allowing you endless designs, features, elements and more. To learn more about Wix’s all-encompassing website editor, see our official Wix Review. The following section will cover the WixStores management center, which enables you to manage and edit your store’s products, promotions, shipping details and more.

Products Catalog

Wix’s Products Catalog is split into 2 sections: Products and Collections. In the products section, you can access the full library of your product inventory. Add either a digital file (such as an eBook or digital album) or a physical product, then edit its information.

The physical product elements that can be edited include:

• Images & videos
• Product Info: Name, price, description, sale (yes/no), ribbon (eg. New Arrival)
• Inventory & Shipping: enable tracking of inventory, set status (eg. In stock), SKU, weight
• Additional Info: Extra product information, return & refund policy, shipping information, customized additional info
• Custom Text: Allow your customers to personalize the product with a custom text field
• Product Options: add options such as size, color and material.

The digital product elements that can be edited include:

• Upload file
• Product Info: Name, price, description, sale (yes/no), ribbon (eg. New Arrival)
• Images & Videos
• Inventory & Shipping: enable tracking of inventory, set status (eg. In stock), SKU
• Additional info: Include information such as file format and file license

The product editor also includes a ‘Promote’ section, where you can implement product-specific SEO setting such as title tag, meta description and URL, create coupons, share the product on social media or create an email campaign.

Collections allow you to group related products together. An online clothing store for example could create a collection for tops, another for pants and a third for dresses. Collections can be used to filter products within a page or can also have a stand-alone page. Once you have created a new collection, you can edit its name, image and add products to it (you can also add products to a collection from the product editor).

Orders

When a customer places an order and the transaction has been processed, their product order will be displayed in this section.

Promote Store

You can promote your products from the WixStores manager in two ways- via coupons and email marketing.

Coupons can be easily created to offer your customers discounts (in dollar or percentage figures), free shipping, sale prices and ‘Buy X Get Y Free’ deals. You will need to create a unique code that customers can enter to redeem the offer. In addition, you can set limits to the products the coupon can be redeemed for, the time frame in which the coupon can be used and the number of times it can be redeemed.

Email marketing campaigns can be created through Wix’s dedicated email newsletter platform ‘ShoutOut’. Use Wix ShoutOut to send your customers coupons, offer free shipping or promote your latest products. You can also use the ShoutOut dashboard to track results of your email campaigns, manage your subscribers and create additional newsletters.

Business Setup – Business Information

In this section, you are required to enter your business name, logo, industry and contact information.

Business Setup – Payments

Here, you can select your preferred payment methods, such as credit/debit cards, PayPal or manual (such as cash or check). The options available will depend on where your business is located. For example, US store owners can also accept credit card payments in person by connecting a Square card reader with their Wix App and have all transactions recorded in Wix’s Business Manager.

Business Setup – Shipping & Tax

Set shipping and tax details for both domestic and international orders. Choose from shipping methods such as free shipping, flat rate, rate by weight, rate by order price or store-pickup. The shipping methods are set per-region (domestic or international) and it would appear that only one shipping method can be selected for each region (except for in-store pickup which can be added as a second option).

Tax rates can be set for an entire region or can be altered per country/state. If you are selling a digital product, you can also choose not to tax purchases.

Business Setup – Store Settings

The store settings section allows you to set a language for your store, select the currency of your products, confirm pricing and measurement formats (such as using decimals to present prices and presenting metric or imperial measurements for your products).

In this section, you can also set your online store’s policies such as Terms & Conditions and Refund/Cancellation policy. And not to be missed in this section- confirmation emails. There are four types of confirmation emails that can be sent to customers following their purchase from your site:

1. Order Placed
2. Digital Product Order
3. Order Shipped
4. Order Ready For Pickup

These emails are pretty standard looking to begin with but can be customized with your store logo and name as well as colors and layouts (explained in more detail in the Wix App Market section).

Mobile Editor

One of the unique benefits of Wix’s editor is the capability to individually edit the mobile version of your online store. When you enter the mobile editor, you will see a preview of how your site will be displayed on a mobile device (using your exact desktop design and content, but with a mobile-friendly layout). The beauty of the mobile editor, is that whilst your site will automatically be responsive, Wix gives you the added opportunity to customize your website and store just for mobile.

The mobile customizations available in Wix’s mobile editor include:

• Background: Change the background image or colors of your mobile site.
• Mobile: Here you have a further 2 options for optimizing your mobile site.
  • Quick Action Bar: adds a ‘toolbar’ at the footer of the user’s mobile screen with buttons to call your business, see your email or visit your Facebook page. Additional buttons can be added such as address, contact form and links to other social profiles.
  • Back to Top Button: Places a small button on your mobile site that allows users to scroll back to the top of the page in one click.
• Hidden Elements: Select any individual element on your mobile website- such as a specific product, or video- and hide it from users on mobile devices. This setting will not hide the element from desktop users.
• Page Layout Optimizer: Wix’s tool that makes changes to your mobile site to optimize its layout. You can accept or reject these changes.

Mobile App

Wix’s comprehensive mobile app allows you to manage a range of elements in your online store, all whilst on the go, including:

• Manage orders: get notified for every new sale, track payments and receive updates when your products have sold out.
• Add Products: create a new product page and manage pricing and discounts.
• Live Chat: This is the real highlight of Wix’s app- get real time notifications when visitors are on your site so you can guide them or offer help. You can respond to their message through the app- increasing your sales and happy customers!
• Manage your blog: create new posts, add photos and even share your content on social media.

For more information on Wix’s mobile app, watch the following video.

Wix App Market

The Wix App Market offers you endless options to further customize your website, with over 250 in-house and third-party web apps, designed to boost your website with added features and enhanced capabilities. The majority of apps are free, optimized for mobile devices, customizable and can be added to your site with a few quick clicks. Covering everything from social media to professional photo galleries, commenting capabilities to live chat functionalities and business tools to SEO, Wix’s App Market has a lot to offer, and we recommend spending the time to find the best apps for your website.

The App Market is accessible from the left-hand menu within the editor, as well as your website’s dashboard (where you will find a number of pre-installed eCommerce apps such as WixStores and Invoices). There are over 50 eCommerce-specific apps, offering integrations such as PayPal and eBay as well as features to boost your website with reviews, live chat, comparison tables and more. We briefly cover some of Wix’s core eCommerce apps below.

Invoices

Review, create and send invoices directly from the Invoices App, accessible from your website’s dashboard. Upon entering the app, you will see a summary of payments, such as payments received, sent and overdue.

You can also create a list of products or services that are regularly charged, enabling you to create new invoices for those products with just one click. The app also offers billing summaries for taxes as well as revenue and allows you to connect three payment methods (credit/debit cards, PayPal or offline).

Contacts

The Contacts App offers one central place to manage all of your website’s leads, subscribers, customers and site members. You can import contacts from a Gmail account or by uploading a CSV file. View your previous customers and send them tailored offers such as discount coupons via a marketing campaign, encouraging them to return to your store and purchase again.

If you have pages on your website that are viewable to members only (requiring them to create an account on your website), you can also manage those users and nurture their relationships with your business with, for example, members-only offers. The app also presents a list of your site users who have contacted you through an online form as well as those that have signed up for your newsletter.

Automated Emails

Wix’s Automated Emails App offers a range of templates for emails that can be sent when a user takes a specific action on your site, or hasn’t visited for a set amount of time. You can customize the template (through Wix’s ShoutOut email marketing platform) and configure the timing of when the emails will be sent to those users.

The types of email templates Wix offers include:

• Thank-you for contacting
• Thank-you for purchasing
• Encourage customers to send feedback
• Invite past customers to redeem a coupon in your online store
• Send a file to your site members
• And more.

eBay eCommerce App

This third-party app offers easy integration of your eBay store within your Wix eCommerce site. The app enables customers to browse your eBay store products, without any of the typical eBay distractions. Integration is quite simple, once you have added the app to your Wix store, you need to enter your eBay username and the app will take care of the rest. The app includes the following features as standard:

• Brand your integrated eBay store to match the design of your Wix site
• Full mobile optimization
• Customers can bid and purchase products through your Wix site
• Includes live countdown & shipping cost calculator
• All updates to your eBay store are auto-updated on your Wix site

The app is priced at $9.99/month and includes a free 30-day trial. For more details, see features below:

Amazon App

The Amazon App- designed by Wix’s in-house developers- allows you to showcase your products on your Wix site or connect an affiliate account to earn commissions on your sales. The free app allows you to display up to 30 products from your Amazon store and customize its colors, text style and more. Integration is currently available for Amazon stores in Canada, Mexico, Brazil, UK, US, Spain, Italy, France, Germany or Japan.

Etsy Shop

The Etsy Shop app was also created by Wix’s team, allowing you to integrate your Etsy shop within your Wix site. The app enables you to accept credit card or paypal transactions for your Etsy products and can be customized to match your Wix store. The app is free (but note that Etsy charges 0.20 cents for each product listing added to your store).

Support

One of the great things about Wix’s platform is the many forms of support available both whilst editing your site and once live. From the moment you enter the editor (after selecting your template), you are met with a welcome video that briefly explains how to start editing your site.

The video is quite long (but recommended for first-time users), so if you are too eager to start editing your online store and wish to skip it, don’t worry, help is not hard to find from within the editor. In-editor help options include:

• Editor Help Center: opens a popup with a list of help categories, or start typing your question and related answers will show up. You can also keep the popup open whilst you edit your site.

• Keyboard Shortcuts for the Editor: pops up similar to the editor help center. Lists common keyboard shortcuts such as (Ctrl + V = Paste), as well as Editor specific shortcuts (Shift + f = hide/show editor controls or such as Ctrl + J = Switch between mobile/desktop views) which are sure to save time.
• Step-by-Step Videos: Short videos explaining how to add or edit a range of features on your Wix website.

• Connect a Domain: covers all the topics related to connecting a custom domain to your website, including purchasing a new domain name from Wix or connecting your pre-purchased domain name.
• Getting Found Online (SEO): watch the video or read about the website elements you can optimize through WIX to enhance your SEO.

Whilst support can be received from Wix’s call center (Open Monday- Thursday, 6am- 5pm PST), the platform really does try to solve your problems online to save you the waiting time of speaking with a customer service representative.

Wix Help Centre

Wix’s help centre, accessible from both the Wix website before you create your site as well as your site dashboard once you create an account, is essentially a knowledge hub for all things Wix related. Find information on every stage of the website creation process, from getting started with the editor, to connecting your domain, performing SEO optimizations, creating a blog and more. There is also a dedicated help section for WixStores (covering topics such as how to set up your store, manage products, create coupons, sell at a point-of-sale (POS) and more) and another for Payments (covering topics related to payment gateways, currencies and more).

Contact Page

In order to get in touch with Wix via the contact page, you must first answer a number of questions, in the hope that your issue can still be solved online. If you proceed through the questionnaire and your issue is still not solved, you are presented with two options to contact Wix. You can submit a ticket and receive a solution via email or request a callback from a Wix customer service representative.

Premium Plan owners will have their support ticket or request for a callback promoted to a ‘premium’ queue and support requests from VIP users from the US or Canada are handled by Wix’s VIP center.

Hosting & Domain

Domain

If you don’t connect a unique domain before editing your new online store, you will notice your site is automatically given a Wix branded URL, such as username.wixsite.com/sitename/page-url. This is the common URL provided to users building a site on a trial/free plan. When your site is ready to go live, you can either purchase a unique domain from Wix or connect/transfer a pre-purchased domain by following simple instructions.

If you wish to purchase your website’s domain name directly from Wix, .com/ .net / .org domains will cost you approximately $15 a year but can be pre-paid for up to three years at a discounted price. No matter the eCommerce plan you choose, .com / .net / .org / .info / .biz / .co.uk domains are included for free for one year.

Specialised domain extensions appear to be more expensive. For example:

.company approx $23 /year

.online approx $36 /year

.design approx $45 /year

Wix domains can later be transferred to an external site (away from Wix). The process can be done after 60 days from the domain purchase date and usually takes 7 days.

Hosting

Free hosting with unlimited bandwidth is included with all Wix online store plans. The amount of storage offered differs per plan, starting at 20GB storage for the Basic Store ($16.17/month) plan and topping out at 75GB with the Super Store ($39.92/month) plan. See the Plans and Pricing section below for further details about storage & bandwidth options.

* Whilst some other platforms do allow you to export your website, it is important to note that Wix does not offer this capability.

SEO

Wix’s online store builder offers a plethora of SEO options designed to optimize your website both for users and search engines (Google, Bing etc.). The following breakdown shares the different options for managing your eCommerce store’s SEO:

1. Getting Found Online. Help > Getting Found Online (SEO): The pop-up functions in a similar manner to the in-editor help center, allowing you to ask SEO related questions, watch a video guide and learn how to edit your site for optimal SEO.
2. Site Manager. Site > Site Manager > SEO: Wix’s Site Manager is a type of ‘control panel’ for your website, where you can manage basic site settings such as your domain, language & region, social and SEO. The SEO section allows you to control whether your website will be shown in Google’s search results (we recommend keeping this option on), add html tags for Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools verification as well as create and manage 301 redirects for your site.
3. Page SEO. Pages > select individual page (click the round button with 3 dots) > Page SEO: Clicking on the round button next to each page name will open the page settings, enabling you to manage page info, layouts, permissions and SEO. In this case the SEO options are are designed specifically for optimizing your online store for Google. Create a title tag and description (for your site’s search results in Google), set the page URL (note that if you change this once the site is live, you should use the Site Manager to  implement a 301 redirect from the old URL to the new URL) and preview how your store will appear in Google’s search results.
4. Product SEO. WixStores Store Manager > Products Catalog > Products > Edit SEO Settings: Click the ‘Edit SEO Settings’ link under the ‘Promote’ sidebar when you view any product to manage the product page’s SEO title, description and page URL. The product SEO settings editor is essentially the same as the Page SEO settings editor, also offering a preview of the product’s search result for Google. Alt text can also be added to product images. Click the settings button (round button with 3 dots) in the Images & Videos section of the product editor, then click “Edit Alt Text for Images”. You can then set unique alt texts for all of your images.

5. SEO Wiz. My Account Dashboard > Get Found On Google (SEO Wiz): The SEO wiz opens with a short video explaining the options for optimizing your website for search engines. Once you have entered your business name and the top keywords for your store, the Wiz creates a SEO checklist, showing you all the elements you still need to optimize on your website. The Wiz also links to a dedicated SEO guide, a unique knowledge hub containing a library of SEO 101 information for your Wix site.

Users should note that Wix uses a flat URL structure. Meaning all category and product pages sit straight under the root domain’s URL (for example: mysite.com/product) rather than using a URL hierarchy that places the products under their respective categories (for example: mysite.com/dresses/purple-stripe-dress or mysite.com/shoes/lace-up-sneakers).

Pricing and Plans

Wix offers three Business & eCommerce plans, ranging from $16.17/month for the Basic Store plan, to $39.92/month for the Super Store plan (for annual subscriptions). No matter the eCommerce plan you select, you have full capability to accept payments and you don’t have to pay any commission on your transactions to Wix. The eCommerce plans also include premium support services from Wix’s support team.

The most popular plan at $27/month (on an annual subscription) – Business Unlimited – includes a free domain for 1 year, 35GB storage space, premium eCommerce apps, email campaigns, and a lot more. For more details and to compare other plans, see the image below (prices are per month when an annual subscription is purchased).

The price and some plans could be different depending on your location.

Plans can also be paid for on a month-to-month basis, but this does raise the price per month (and you don’t receive the free 1-year domain, premium apps or ad vouchers when paying by the month). Two-year subscriptions are also available and reduce the price by a couple of dollars each month. All plans include a 14 day money back guarantee and can be paid for by Visa, MasterCard, American Express or Discover Network credit cards. See below for the full breakdown (prices are in USD and per month):

Integrations

Future Considerations

With so many features, 3rd-party integrations, apps and technological capabilities, Wix’s eCommerce builder is truly a platform your online business can grow with. Especially given Wix’s constant investment in adding more and more functions to all of these lists. There are however, two drawbacks of building your website with Wix, in the case that you may wish to change your design or move to another platform down the line.

Once you have selected your template and started editing, you can not change to another template. It is therefore crucial to check all the potential options before creating your site. Additionally, if you wish to move your website to another eCommerce builder platform, you will not be able to transfer your website’s contents away from Wix. Any move will have to be done 100% manually.