Ways to add ecommerce to your existing website

Ecwid is a flexible ecommerce tool that you can use on your existing website or blog built on any platform or sitebuilder. Depending on your goals and on the overall site purpose, you can add:

• Your entire catalog
• Specific store category
• Individual product cards
• Buy Now buttons

In this guide, we will give you an overview of the ways you can add Ecwid to a website.

Adding your entire catalog

First of all, you can always add a full-scale Ecwid store to any page on your existing website. Customers who open this webpage will see your entire storefront — with all the categories (if you have them) and featured products — and will be able to browse for products, add them to cart, and check out. For them, it will be like... entering a shop through a front door.

If you have an existing site already loaded with information about you and your company, and you simply need a store section, that’s your choice. You can create a product catalog with images, descriptions and all the rest in Ecwid admin and place your store on the main website page or on any other page.

Depending on the platform of your website, there are different ways to embed a store. It can be via a plugin (e.g., for Wix or WordPress), or via Ecwid integration code (the code can vary based on a platform). Learn more about adding Ecwid to various websites →

If you’ve just signed up to Ecwid, here are a few articles that will help you set up your new store:

• Getting started with Ecwid
• Configuring general settings for your store
• Adjusting Ecwid storefront design
• Guide to product details

Adding specific categories

If you want to sell different product categories on separate pages of your existing website, you can go for adding not a whole store, but a specific product category. This can be any root category or subcategory.

For instance, you have pages on your site that are already dedicated to some product categories that you produce (e.g., a page for Soaps and a page for Shampoos). They may even have the manufacturing technology described and photos of the work process enclosed. In this case, adding a certain product category suits your website better than adding a whole store. This way, customers can buy your soaps and shampoos in the corresponding site section.

After adding products to your category, you can additionally set it up before adding to a website. This way, the category will fit into your site design and concept better.

Ways to add a specific category to a website vary based on the platform/sitebuilder. Here’s how you can feature a category on:

• WordPress
• Wix
• Joomla
• other platform/sitebuilder or a custom site

Note that when you add a product category (and not your entire store), you still need to set up your payment and shipping/delivery methods. Once an order is placed, you will see it in the My Sales section of your Ecwid admin.

Adding individual products

Have you ever heard of Ecwid Buy Button? Using this button, you can add a single product widget to your website or blog — or to your friend's website or blog, in case you want to promote your store. The Buy button allows customers to add items to cart and check out without leaving the site page.

The Buy Button is highly customizable and has different layouts. You can go for adding it, if:

• You're selling only a few items and you don’t want to add a whole store for that.
• You want to create a landing page to sell one specific product.
• You have a blog where you write about products that you manufacture and you want to supplement posts with the option to buy the product.
• You have a page on your website dedicated to a product you sell and all you need is to make it possible for customers to add the product to cart and check out.
  Instead of adding a set of photos and a detailed description for the product in your Ecwid admin, you can add as much information as you need on your site page to present the product there the way you need and then complement this description with a Buy Now button.
• You want to dedicate an empty site page to a product, by adding a full-size product card to it (this is also a form of Ecwid Buy Button).

Adding a Buy Button is easy. To add such a button:

1. From your Ecwid admin, go to Catalog → Products.
2. Choose a product from the list or create a new one.
3. Switch to the "Buy Now" Button tab:
   

   

4. Click Embed Product.
5. Select a button layout:
   • Compact — a minimalistic layout with product’s image and title
   • Button only — just a Buy Now button, nothing more
   • Full-size (with 2 or 3 columns) — detailed product cards with gallery, description, share buttons, etc.
     

     

     Learn more about the Buy Button layouts →
6. Click Appearance to customize which elements of the product card will be displayed.
7. Click Generate Code, then click Copy Code.
8. Now log into your website backend, open the page where you want to display the Buy Button, and then add the integration code to this page.

That’s it! Now you have a Buy Button on the page of your website.

You can additionally customize Buy Buttons to make them fit into your website design better.

When a customer clicks on the Buy button, the product will be automatically added to the shopping cart. After that customers can click on the bag icon and proceed to checkout to actually buy the product. You can track your orders in the My Sales section of your Ecwid admin.

Note that before adding Buy buttons to your website, you need to set up your Ecwid account with products and payment/shipping options that you want to offer to your customers. If you haven’t set up your Ecwid account yet, learn how to get started →