Updates 2023
Check out Ecwid updates to learn about new features in your store.
April
Instant Site: Add promo sliders to highlight brands, features, collections, and more
With a new Promo Slider section, you can add the image carousel to your Instant Site. It’s a great way to showcase particular products in detail, list the brands you sell, highlight an art portfolio, or explain why customers need to choose your brand.
You can publish up to 10 slides in one section. It can be both images and gifs combined with a short description and the Call-to-Action button.
Learn how to add sliders to your site →
Instant Site: Choose between dark and light modes
Your New-Gen Instant Site editor now has dark and light modes that you can choose from. Adjust the look of your website editor to your liking:
Learn how to add sliders to your site →
Create custom order statuses from your mobile app
In addition to the default order statuses like “Paid” or “Shipped”, you can now create up to 6 new statuses tailored to your business. Now you can do it both from desktop and from your Ecwid mobile app. Custom statuses appear in order filters and are displayed in customer accounts and email notifications.
Learn about mobile app for iOS →
Learn about mobile app for Android →
Enable the IOSS scheme to charge your EU customers VAT right at checkout
Starting July 1, 2021, all goods imported to the EU are subject to cross-border VAT. This means that either you should charge your customers at checkout, or they will be charged when receiving their order in the EU. Charging customers at checkout is allowed if the order is below €150 and you register with the Import One Stop Shop (IOSS). Now you can enable the IOSS scheme in your store to charge customers right away so they don’t need to pay anything when receiving the order.
Learn how to enable the IOSS scheme →
Improved taxes for Norway, Switzerland, and Australia
We no longer calculate sales tax on shipping based on item prices or the weight for stores in Norway, Switzerland, and Australia. When tangible products are added to the cart, we now apply a fixed standard sales tax rate to shipping costs, regardless of what sales tax rates (standard, non-standard, zero) are calculated for the order items.
Learn how to set up taxes in your store →
March
Create custom statuses for your orders
In addition to the default order statuses like “Paid” or “Shipped”, you can now create up to 6 new statuses tailored to your business. For example, “Starting sewing” or “Enrolled”. Custom statuses appear in order filters and are displayed in customer accounts and email notifications.
Learn how to create custom order statuses →
Set order quantity limits
You can now limit the quantity of products that can be ordered. For example, you want shoppers to purchase at least 3 avocados in your grocery, or at most 10 event tickets per order to avoid reselling. Order quantity limits can be applied to individual products and product variations, and set in bulk.
Learn how to set order quantity limits →
Speed up tax reporting with better US taxes calculation
Paying taxes becomes less of a headache with improved tax calculation. If your business is located in the US and you use automated tax calculation, the sales tax collected for each order is now split into state and local tax, whether its county, city, or special district tax. You will also see the percentage of state and local tax. Tax breakdown is shown on the order details page (on hovering on the total tax amount), in tax invoices, and customer emails.
Learn more about collecting sales tax in your store →
Adapt your Instant Site’s mobile view
Cover image of your Instant Site is now easier to adapt for mobile screens. You have two options how to show your cover on mobile:
- Crop the image so that your site cover takes all the screen and the title is displayed above it.
- Fit the cover to the width of the screen. In this case, the cover image remains fully visible and is displayed at the top of the screen with title placed below it.
Learn about configuring design of your Instant Site →
Instant Site: add JavaScript code to the body section of the site
From now on, you can add JavaScript code to the body section of your Instant Site instead of the site header. With that improvement, you can show any custom content on your website page or integrate chat widgets, date pickers, live video feeds, trust marks, or any other third-party service anywhere on the Instant Site home page. Codes added to the body section don’t affect the loading speed of your site.
To add the code, go to Website → Overview → Custom JavaScript code and click Add code.
Learn more on how to add the code →
India: Automatic tax calculation is here
Exciting news for Indian merchants: you don’t have to manually set up tax rates anymore—your store now automatically calculates a precise tax rate on each order depending on the customer and store locations. Also, you can set non-standard tax rates (classes) for different products in your catalog. Available tax classes are: Increased rate (28%), Standard rate (18%), Reduced rate (12%), Reduced rate (5%), Zero rate (0%). The standard tax rate is applied by default unless a tax class is selected for a product.
Learn how to set up taxes in your store →
February
Add payment-based fees to checkout
Payment gateways charge a service fee for each transaction. To cover that or similar expenses, you can now add fees to payment methods. When a customer chooses the payment method with fees at checkout, surcharges are applied to the order total.
Learn how to add surcharges to payment methods →
Sell subscriptions with Lightspeed Payments
Subscriptions allow you to charge customers for products on a regular basis. To enable recurring subscriptions, you need to use particular payment methods in your store. From now on, subscriptions are available with Lightspeed Payments, the native Ecwid payment gateway (available for the US only).
Learn how to enable subscriptions in your store →
Sell products for subscriptions on a half-year basis
The billing cycle for subscriptions can now be set to every six months. That gives you seven billing cycles in total to choose from: daily, weekly, biweekly, monthly, quarterly, biannually, or annually. You can offer subscriptions along with the one-time purchase to improve your customers' experience and grow revenue.
Learn how to enable subscriptions in your store →
Set individual subscription pricing for product variations
Products with variations are now more flexible to adjust to sell as subscriptions. For each variation, you can set individual pricing both for a subscription and one-time purchase.
Learn how to set individual pricing for product variations →
Export the UTM parameters history for orders
UTM tags are short text codes that you add to links to track where the orders came from. When you use UTM tags, you can see the link that led to purchase and also the list of UTM parameters from different marketing campaigns that a customer interacted with. That UTM tags history is now available to download when you export your orders as a CSV file. Clearly seeing UTM tags helps you to understand which campaigns perform better.
Export order subtotal excluding shipping cost
One more parameter that you can include to your order-related info when exporting data: order subtotal excluding shipping cost. Having that parameter in a separate column speeds up calculating subtotal excluding shipping costs and helps you to prepare tax reports.
Ecwid mobile app: Filter orders by key parameters
Finding orders is now easier than ever with a bunch of new filters added to the Ecwid mobile app. In your Ecwid mobile app, you can filter orders by payment and shipping methods, carrier, fulfillment type (shipping, pickup, delivery), pickup or delivery date. Advanced filtering settings allow you to display orders with or without tracking number, with or without tips, orders with a specific discount coupon applied, and also orders with customer comments and staff notes.
Learn how to filter orders in your Ecwid app for iOS →
Learn how to filter orders in your Ecwid app for Android →
Ecwid mobile app: Save order filters as presets
To speed up orders searching, you can create a custom filter for frequently used searches. For example, bookmark local orders that should be delivered within the next 7 days.
Once you create a custom filter in your app, it appears in the preset filters list and you can tap it to see all orders matching your preferences.
Learn how to create custom filters for orders →
Ecwid mobile app: Use in-app order reminders
Adding in-app reminders about orders is a great way to make sure they are fulfilled on time, or to keep track of the upcoming deliveries. Creating a reminder for an order is pretty much similar to setting any other in-app reminder. In your Ecwid app, open an order, tap Add reminder and choose a time when you want to get a push notification about the order.
Set tax-included pricing for products for Algeria
Great news for Algerian stores! You can now choose between setting gross prices (with tax included) or net prices (without tax) for your products. With the tax-inclusive pricing, you don’t have to calculate the net price for each product and set up taxes separately.
January
Export data from custom checkout fields
Custom fields at checkout allow you to collect specific data from shoppers: tax ID, delivery notes, and so on. That information is now included in order details that you can export as a CSV file. Instead of checking each order, you can download the CSV file and open it to clearly see all important information about upcoming orders. New checkout-related columns are added as the last columns of the CSV file.
Learn how to create custom checkout fields →
Learn how to export data from your store →
Hide long product descriptions in a collapsible accordion
You can break down long product descriptions into smaller sub-sections and hide each text part in a collapsible accordion. Simply speaking, when your customers open a product page they will see a title that expands when clicked on. Collapsible accordion comes in handy when you want to highlight different product features like ingredients, health benefits, fabric care instructions, etc.
Learn how to use text editor to create product description →
Rename site sections in your Instant Site
When you use an Instant Site, you add sections to build your site. Some sections with different content may have the same name. To make it easier to navigate in the editor, you can change names displayed in the editor sidebar. Custom names help you to see your site structure more clearly and quickly locate the section you want to edit.
Learn how to design your site →