How to turn your Ecwid store into a catalog

Ecwid is an E-commerce platform that allows you to sell online, anywhere. But what if you don’t want to accept payments online and only need to showcase your items on the web? Say you have a seasonal business, and sometimes you freeze sales, or you want customers to come and buy your items in-store.

Good news, you can still use Ecwid! No matter whether you’re already selling with us or your account is brand-new, you can turn your online store into a catalog with just a few simple steps. After that, checkout will no longer be available, and you’ll be able to showcase your products or services online without accepting payments online.

If you’re using one of Ecwid’s paid plans and currently need to stop selling for a while without closing your store to visitors, you can switch to a special Suspension plan with disabled checkout. On this plan, customers can browse your products but cannot add them to cart, so the store automatically turns into a catalog. Another option is to use the We’re Open app from Ecwid App Market that offers a variety of tools to open and close your store automatically.

Introducing the catalog mode

By default, an Ecwid store has all the E-commerce features required to sell online, including:

Buy Now & Add to Cart buttons that appear in product listings and on the product details pages and allow customers to add products to cart.
The cart page itself as well as customer accounts with various information on orders.
Product prices both in product listings and on product pages.
Quantity fields on product pages that let customers add several items to cart at a time.
Payment methods as well as shipping, delivery, or pickup options.

If you want to turn your store into a catalog, you will need to disable these features. Disabling takes a few minutes, just follow our step-by-step instruction.

After you turn your store into a catalog, the maximum number of products that you can have on different Ecwid plans remains the same: 5 products on Free, 100 products on Venture, 2500 products on Business, and unlimited products on the Unlimited plan.

Before you start

If you don’t have an Ecwid account yet, sign up! It’s totally free. You can sign up right here with just your name and email.

After you sign up, add products that you want to showcase and configure some of the general settings like store name, language, and web address.

You can use your catalog on practically any website, and if you don’t have a website of your own, every Ecwid account comes with an Instant Site that already has the store added to it.

If you need to promote products from another website, you can add affiliate links to product descriptions.

Disabling online store features

To turn your Ecwid store into a catalog, you’ll need to apply several modifications to disable E-commerce features. You can always enable them back later if you need.

To disable online store features:

Go to the Design page in your Ecwid admin.
Scroll down to Product Card details and layout.
Choose the Do not show option for Product price and Buy Now button so that they are no longer displayed in the product listings:

You can keep prices enabled if you want to share them with your customers right away.
Then scroll down to Sidebar and untick Price and Product quantity so that they are no longer displayed on the product pages:
Next, scroll down to Storefront navigation & colors.
Choose the Do not show option for Footer menu (it’s where "shopping bag" and "sign in" buttons are displayed) and for “Sign in” link:
Next, click Create Theme (or Edit Theme) and add the following CSS code to your store to hide the Add to Bag buttons:
```
.details-product-purchase__controls {
display: none;
}
```
Learn how to add CSS codes to your store →
Then go to the Payment page in your Ecwid admin and make sure you disable any payment methods that you have previously added to your store. For that, switch the toggle next to the payment method:
Go to the Shipping & Pickup page in your Ecwid admin and disable or remove any shipping, pickup, or local delivery options that you have in your store.
If you have the additional shopping bag installed, remove it.
In case you’re using Ecwid’s New-gen Instant Site, the additional shopping bag icon is present by default. You can disable it in the Site Editor, Website → Edit Site → Header → Design → Menu & icons → switch the toggle next to Cart.

What’s next?

Congrats! You have turned your Ecwid store into a catalog with no checkout available. Now you can showcase your items online without accepting payments for them online.

Make sure you provide the most accurate contact information so that customers can get in touch with you, implement additional design changes if you need them and share the link to your brand-new online catalog with your customers.

Alternative strategy: Limited checkout

Instead of totally disabling checkout in your Ecwid store, you can limit it. For example, if you want to be automatically notified when someone is interested in your products to then discuss the details, or you need special payments by invoices that will take time to prepare&process.

In this case, you can choose a different strategy:

Enable an offline payment method in your store. For example, you can add a payment method called “Pay by cash at the store”, “Pay by invoice” or simply “Place order” with your payment instructions. Customers will follow these instructions to send you the money outside the Ecwid interface.
Make sure all the online payment methods remain disabled on the Payment page in your Ecwid admin.
Remove all the shipping/delivery/pickup options that exist in your store: Go to the Shipping & Pickup page and click Actions → Delete. This way, no shipping method will be applied at checkout.
In case you need customers to provide their address at checkout for you to ship the orders later, you can use custom checkout fields.
Keep the store features like Add to Bag and Buy Now buttons but name them differently. You can edit texts on buttons into those that fit better using our Store Label Editor.
Edit notifications according to your needs (e.g., turn “Order Confirmation” into an “Inquiry Confirmation” so that your customers get notifications with the right texts or disable notifications at all).

That’s it! Now your customers can place orders or inquiries without paying for them online.

Learn more about how to use your store as a catalog with offline payment options →

If you want to hide prices with Add to Bag/Buy Now buttons for the general public only and keep them visible for a customer group like wholesalers, try hiding prices, Add to Bag and Buy Now buttons from customers who are not logged in.

Bonus: Creating a catalog in PDF

You can use the Wholesale & Retail Catalog Maker app to download your Ecwid store as a catalog of products that can be used for web and print. The app has a free trial and also allows you to print barcodes & inventory tags with QR codes, transform your existing PDFs into digital flipbooks, and more.

Ecwid App Market is available on Venture, Business, and Unlimited plans.

Upgrade

To create a catalog with Wholesale & Retail Catalog Maker app:

Install the Wholesale & Retail Catalog Maker app.
Add products you want to create a catalog for into your Ecwid store.
Import your Ecwid products into the catalog builder interface.
Choose layout.
Upload your images and branding.
Organize the pages of your catalog.
Add a wholesale contract and order forms.
Download the catalog as a printable PDF or share it on social networks.

That’s it! Your catalog is ready. After you distribute it to your customers, they can click on each product in the catalog and will be automatically directed to the product page in your Ecwid store.