After Testing It, We Share Our Insights In This Weebly Ecommerce Review

Weebly is one of the better drag-and-drop ecommerce website builders on the market today.

Not only are there plenty of options available, Weebly eCommerce is also one of the easiest platforms to use for building your own online store.

We’ve researched and tested Weebly eCommerce. So we’re now in a great position to tell you exactly what it’s capable of and whether its worth the investment.

We’ll go into some of the online store features that Weebly offers, and how they can help you grow your business if you are selling products online.

Weebly has four pricing plans and each of them are slightly different when it comes to ecommerce offerings. We’ll go over these plans to help you assess what you get in return for each plan.

Overall, what you’ll find is that outside of pure online store builders such as Shopify or BigCommerce (which are both dedicated purely to helping people build online stores), Weebly’s eCommerce platform is one of the better ones available amongst drag and drop website builders.

What we set out to do is empower smaller merchants to have the same checkout experience as Amazon. Let’s give them the tools to effectively compete. – David Rusenko, Weebly CEO & Co-Founder

People use ecommerce website builders because they want to be in control of their own online store. It’s also a cheaper alternative to having it designed for you and means you can update the site whenever you want.

It’s vital, then, that you invest in an ecommerce website builder that’s easy to use. But how can you really tell how easy it’ll be? Well, fear not! We’ve gone out and tested Weebly with everyday people to find out exactly how easy you found it.

Overall, Weebly eCommerce came in as one of the easiest to use online store builders. People particularly liked its drag-and-drop editor, and well structured product inventory.

Here are just a few of their thoughts:

“I liked how easy it was being able to drag elements on to the page and being able to easily identify what options it has on offer, its navigation bar is super clear.”

“Adding products was simple, literally type in the item’s name, add a price and product description. When adding a color variant, say I added blue, a little blue box would come up which was so satisfying.”

A) Product Pages

One of the key things that make Weebly eCommerce stand out is their ability to allow you to create standalone, dedicated Product Pages for each of your products.

(i) Product Images

On these Product Pages, you can insert multiple images, with the main image and “sub-images” below the main image in a gallery where your shoppers can click on to see.

When you hover your mouse cursor over the main image, it will show you a zoomed-in version of the image, allowing your prospective customers to see your product in detail. The overall experience of this feature is very smooth and functions very well.

(ii) Multiple Product Variations

Weebly allows you to have full control over product variations to give your customers the ability to choose from various variations of the same product.  You can customize this in Weebly Editor and add multiple product options for your customers to select.

For instance, a common example is the ability for someone to purchase a large, green, collared shirt.  Weebly gives you full control to display variations (size, color, type) of your products, which is a very powerful and flexible feature in our view.

The example that we’ve provided above (color and size) is only an example.  You can setup whatever product variations you want to suit your needs.

After you’ve configured your own product options, they will show up on your Product Page so your customers can select whichever variation they want to purchase from you.

This Weebly eCommerce feature gives you a lot of flexibility to run your online store.

(iii) Sales Option, Product Description, and Social Sharing

Weebly gives you a sales option, which displays the discounted price next to the crossed-out regular price. This is a very effective tactic to draw on people’s love for sales, and Weebly gives you this display option.

You can also add your own custom product description in your Product Page, and you have the ability to do some basic styling such as bold, underline, italicize, and insert numerical or bullet points.  Crafting an attractive product description can really help you sell more products.

Weebly has also enabled social sharing buttons for each Product Page, making it very painless and easy for your shoppers to share your products with their friends and family through their social network accounts.  They just have to click on one of the buttons and your product will be shared. This is a very powerful way to broaden your product reach, and this feature is free with Weebly eCommerce.

(iv) Drag and Drop Zones

Directly below the main image and the product variation controls, you have a full drag and drop zone where you can insert various Weebly elements into this area, such as more text description, slideshows, image gallery, maps, videos, contact forms, etc.

This enables you to add more details to your products, or even display product videos which are very powerful ways to engage your shoppers in convincing them to purchase.

B) Storefront Page

One of the nice options from Weebly is that you can insert a Storefront Page where you can pick and choose what products you want to display on this Page.

This allows you to highlight selected products to showcase to your shoppers which are particularly helpful in highlighting your best sellers, seasonal items or promotional sales. Your shoppers can click on any one of them to get to the product pages. A very effective way to direct your shoppers to relevant product pages.

C) Category Pages

Weebly also allows you to categorize your products into different categories so your shoppers can start narrowing their search to get to what they want to see.

You can create multiple categories, and pick and choose which product to insert into each category.

When you turn on your ecommerce function in Weebly, a shopping cart menu item will show up on the menu bar, and indicates to your shoppers how many product items they have inserted into the shopping cart.

When they go through the checkout process, your shoppers will remain in your store as they fill in their information, while having their Order Summary displayed on the same page to remind them what they are about to purchase.

If you upgrade to Weebly’s Personal, Professional, or Performance plans (more details about pricing below), the entire process will be under your custom domain name.  If you stay on the free plan the checkout process, while still styled in the same way as the rest of your website (to make sure you shoppers have a consistent experience), will be using a Weebly sub-domain.

For example, if you are using the Personal, Professional, or Performance plans, on the checkout page, the URL will read (example):

www.yourdomain.com/checkout (“yourdomain.com” will just be your own custom domain)

If you use the free plan, the checkout page URL will be:

youraccount.checkout.weebly.com (“youraccount” is just your Weebly account name)

So if you subscribe to Weebly’s premium plans, your shoppers will not know that your website is powered by Weebly and you retain full control over the branding and checkout experience – your shoppers will be comforted by the fact that they are still on your website and not redirected somewhere else.

This is an important factor to consider, as when your shoppers are ready to purchase, you want to minimize any uncertainty they may have if they are redirected to an unfamiliar URL such as youraccount.checkout.weebly.com

Typically, if you have an online store and you want to conduct financial transactions (selling products) under your own domain name, you will need to purchase an SSL Certificate (which secures your shopping cart – this is the difference between just seeing “HTTP” in front of a domain name (unsecured) versus “HTTPS” (secured))

An SSL Certificate typically costs $70 and above per year (source: GoDaddy.com).  Weebly includes a free SSL Certificate as standard on all of its plans, both free and premium.

Since Weebly is owned by the payment processor, Square, this is something it specializes in. Weebly’s setup process is all in-built, so getting started just takes a few clicks.

Weebly allows you to choose from 3 different leading payment processors:

1. PayPal
2. Stripe
3. Square

(i) PayPal (Requires Weebly Performance plan – see more information below)

PayPal goes without saying, is probably the most well-known payment processor.  Using them conveys a sense of trust to your shoppers due to PayPal’s brand. This is a basic option that all website builders provide.

One downside of PayPal (for some people) is that upon final confirmation of purchase, your shoppers will actually have to leave your Weebly site to make the payment.

(ii) Stripe (Can be used with all Weebly plans)

Stripe is a fast growing payment processor which allows you to deposit money directly into your bank account. The application process for a Stripe account is fast and painless, so you can get up and running in a day.

The entire check out process, from beginning to the end, your shoppers remains on your site the entire time and the check out cart is branded as your own shopping cart. This helps preserve branding and redirecting your shoppers to another site.

It takes 7 days to transfer money directly into your bank account, mainly due to Stripe  needing to hold a reserve just in case if your customers have any complaints or chargebacks. Similarly, if you were to withdraw money from PayPal to your bank account, it will take 5 – 7 business days for processing as well.

However, at the time of this review article, Stripe is not available to all countries around the world.  They are available to merchants in the US, Canada, Australia, some countries in Europe, and some countries in Asia .

They are expanding geographically, but at this point, merchants outside of these countries will have to use PayPal or Authorize.net (limited – see below). Click here to see updates on where Stripe is available.

Just to be clear, you can still sell to international customers, you just have to be based in the mentioned countries to be able to use Stripe for your store.

(iii) Square (Can be used with all Weebly plans)

Square is a very fast growing payment processor who own Weebly. You probably know of them as the credit card processor that plugs into a smartphone so people can make payments with their mobile phones (so you can accept payments in person).

Your funds are deposited into your bank account in 1 – 2 business days which is much faster than Stripe.

Just like Stripe, your customers’ entire checkout process from the beginning to the end will remain on your website and is branded as your own shopping cart.

Currently, you have to be a merchant based in the US, UK, Canada, Australia or Japan in order to use Square.  But you can still sell to international customers, but you just have to be based in the countries mentioned.

There are other practical and flexible ecommerce tools from Weebly:

(i) Mobile Ready (available to all plans)

Weebly built in a mobile shopping cart for all their websites that shows up on mobile devices, so that your shoppers can also purchase from their phones or tablets if they choose to. The checkout process is also secure (as mentioned above). So it’s nice that Weebly has catered to this as mobile shopping is a massive growing trend – over half of global web traffic comes from mobile!

Weebly also has iPhone or Android mobile apps so that you can monitor and update your online store at all times while you are on the go.  You can add new products, photos, descriptions, product variations / options and update prices while you are away from your computer.  You can also get instant notifications to your phone whenever someone purchases something from you!

(ii) Filtered Product Search (available to Weebly Professional and Performance plan users)

Weebly’s filtered product search allows your shoppers to find the most relevant products quickly.  You can search by filtering products by attributes like price, color, or whatever product variation you have set up (see our detailed discussion on product variation above).

The faster you can help your customers get to the product they want, the higher probability they will purchase from you.  This Weebly feature, if used properly, can help you grow your sales.

(iii) Flexible Shipping Options (available to Personal, Professional, and Performance plan users)

If you subscribe to Weebly’s premium plans, you unlock its shipping calculator. This gives you the option to fine tune your shipping rates based on price, weight and also define shipping carriers (e.g. UPS, USPS, Fedex) and delivery time frame (ground, 3-day, overnight).

You can adjust the shipping rates based on geographical locations, and dig into sub-regions such as by state or province.

You can even offer free shipping on select orders.

(iv) Detailed Tax Control (available to all users)

Don’t forget taxes!  Weebly provides and maintain the current city, state and province level tax rates for the US and Canada for you.

If you are located in the US, it even has an Automatic Tax Calculator that will do all the heavy lifting for you. You just have to insert a US address and the relevant taxes will all be calculated for you. That’s pretty handy!

If you are outside of the US or Canada, you have the flexibility to manually define your own tax rates.

(v) Inventory Tracking & Management (available to all users)

You can display and track your level of inventory for each of your product. But showing how many units per product is left available, you can let your shoppers know if you still have plenty of product in stock, or if you are temporarily out of stock.

(vi) Sell Digital Products (available to all users)

If you are selling digital products (e-books, music, software, or other non-physical products), Weebly eCommerce allows you to do this.

Your digital product files are delivered via email with a secure link, so your customers can download their purchases that way.

(vii) Importing Products from Etsy, Shopify or from CSV File (available to all plans)

Weebly has made it easy if you want to import products externally (either from Etsy, Shopify or from a CSV file).

Just select the one you want to import from and upload the files.  Etsy and Shopify allow you to export your product details into a CSV file (think of it like an Excel spreadsheet), so you don’t have to manually recreate a lot of the information.

If you are not using Etsy or Shopify, most other online store builders can export your product details into a CSV file, so you can upload it into Weebly.

This makes switching from other platforms to Weebly eCommerce much easier and faster process.

(viii) Coupon Builder (available to all users)

Weebly has a Coupon Builder that allows you to create and manage a couponing system directly in your Weebly store dashboard. You can create coupons by code, date, and quantity.  The coupons can be dollar-based or can be a percentage of the sale.

You can also restrict the coupons to be only used for specific products, for orders over a certain dollar amount and only for certain product categories.  You can even set up coupons to grant your customers free shipping!

In our view, this is a very comprehensive coupon building engine that gives you a lot more flexibility in terms of coupon set up, compared to some other ecommerce online store builders.

(xi)  Square Gift Cards (available to all users)

You can set-up gift cards so your customers can purchase a certain denomination and the digital gift cards are emailed to whoever they want to gift this card to.

The recipients can then visit your online store and redeem the gift cards for your products. These cards don’t incur additional fees and they never expire!

A customer can just select the dollar amount they want to gift, insert their name, insert the recipient’s name and email, and insert a gift message (optional).  Once that is done, just add the card to the shopping cart and checkout as usual.

Once the purchase is complete, Weebly’s ecommerce platform will automatically email the recipient the gift card with a redemption code and they can apply the code to purchases of your products.  The recipient of the gift card can use the card multiple times, as long as there is still balance on the card.

(xii) Abandoned Cart Recovery (available to Performance plan users)

Did you know that in 2020 a whopping 88% of online shopping orders were abandoned? 

Shoppers abandon shopping carts for a variety of reasons. Maybe they got distracted and left the computer. Maybe they have questions that your website didn’t answer. Maybe they couldn’t find a coupon code (everybody loves a good deal.)

For whatever reason, these shoppers had the intent to purchase but they didn’t.

The abandoned cart recovery tool allows you to automatically email them to start a conversation with them to encourage them to return to your store to complete their purchases. You can also email them a coupon code to motivate them as well.

The beauty of this tools is that studies have shown that a good portion of shoppers does come back! And this tool is engaged automatically without you having to do anything.

Weebly’s ecommerce platform automatically detects abandonment and fire off  “recovery emails” to them. You can style and customize your email messages as you please.

How does the system know whom to email?

Well, when your shopper populates his/her email during the checkout process, Weebly “remembers” the email and so when the purchase wasn’t complete, Weebly knows to email them to nudge them to return.

This tool could literally help you recover a lot of sales that would have fallen through the cracks. It’s well worth the investment in our view, even if you just get a hand full of shoppers to return to complete their purchases.

Now that we can see that Weebly’s eCommerce functions have a lot of tools to effectively help you power your online store, are they missing anything really important?

Here are just a couple of thoughts:

A) Multi-Channel Integration

Having the ability to sell away from your website is more important than ever. Selling on marketplaces, like Amazon and eBay, or social media like on Facebook and Instagram, opens you up to a massive audience.

Currently, Weebly does not allow you to sell directly on marketplaces or social media. This has always been seen as an ecommerce tool only ‘pure’ online store builders (like Shopify and BigCommerce) have.

Now, though, Squarespace allows you to integrate your products on Instagram, meaning social media browsers can purchase your products directly on the Instagram. And even smaller builders like Zyro offer mutli-channel integration on their more advanced plans. We’re sure this is something Weebly will look to introduce, but at the moment, it’s a gap in its ecommerce offerings.

B) Extensive Checkout Options

While you may not want or need to customize your checkout page, it’s nice to add in your company logo. Or at least something to make it more branded.

At the moment customizing your checkout page’s aesthetic is not possible. Again, perhaps we’re being a little harsh as this level of control only usually comes with ecommerce-specific builders.

One other flaw is that there is no guest checkout option. A lot of first-time buyers from your store may not want to go through the hassle of creating account. The fact you can’t bypass this on Weebly may have an impact on your sales.

You can use some of Weebly’s eCommerce features on every plan, even the free plan. However, if you upgrade to the Professional or Performance plans, you get substantially more powerful features than on the free or Personal plans.

As mentioned in various sections above, upgrading to Weebly’s premium plans gives you:

• Sell digital goods
• Full shipping configuration options
• Shipping calculator
• Custom domain
• Accept payments through PayPal (only available to Performance Plan users)
• Abandoned cart recovery (only available to Performance Plan users)
• Item reviews (only available to Performance Plan users)

Premium Plan Pricing Structure

Weebly’s premium plans fee structure are as follows:

Also note that as per Weebly’s Terms of Services, all of its paid plans come with a 30-day money back guarantee.  So if you are not satisfied with its plans, you can always cancel and request a refund.  This effectively takes all the financial risks away from you.

Weebly eCommerce Price Comparison

Weebly’s pricing per month is great value compared to other leading ecommerce website builders. Its starting price is cheaper than Wix, Squarespace, and Shopify, and it stands out for allowing you to sell via its free plan too, as not many platforms are this generous.

• Squarespace Commerce Plans – $26 per month on a 1-year plan (see our review here)
• Wix Commerce plans – $23 per month on a 1-year plan (see our review here)

If you were to benchmark Weebly’s eCommerce plan to other pure online store builders:

• Shopify Plans – $29 to 299 per month (see our review here)
• BigCommerce Plans – $29.95 – $249.95 per month (see our review here)

The higher plans for these pure online store builders are much more expensive. But obviously, their tools are much more powerful as well.

Overall, Weebly is the best value ecommerce website builder that we tested, thanks to its affordable pricing and generous features.