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Wix.com has already established itself as the number one free website builder on the planet.  But what about WixStores? (WixStores is the Wix.com online store builder). With more than 63m users this behemoth is nowadays almost ubiquitous due to its world class product. I must admit that at the beginning I wasn’t a big fan thanks to their already gone flash templates, which have now been graciously replaced by gorgeous and friendlier SEO HTML5 ones.  In addition to that, now you can sport a great looking online store for your small business with a myriad of apps to install.
The nouvelle ecommerce CMS has a pretty smooth and well-designed user interface with a drag and drop site building that helps constructing your online store a familiar experience for previous Wix users and a stress-free one for those who are new to the platform.

Store Manager Overview – All the knobs to tune up your online store.

killer-templates
 
Your WixStore has a very intuitive backend, an administration interface called the WixStores Store Manager, which only visible by the owner. It allows you to be in control of all the perks of your eStore.
Here is a summary of what you can achieve with it:

  • Add new inventory, digital or physical products.
  • Organize your items.
  • Set up your preferred payment method
  • Set pricing
  • Specify shipping and tax fees.
  • Manage your inventory quite easy and efficiently
  • Track Your orders
  • Create discount coupons
  • Track orders

Wix Help Center– All the support you will ever need

Lots of tutorials and helpful material like FAQs at the wix help center in more than 8 languages. Plus relevant topics for the new Wixstore owners.

My Contacts & Smart Actions – Make your costumer contact list work for you.

A critical part of the success of an online store is to help you keep a close contact with your clients. In order to be able to keep them informed with the latest additions of your business, as well as offering complementary sales related services.  To achieve that wix.com counts with Smart Actions to help you send automated emails to cover the following needs:
 

  • Special Offers to help keep your store on your visitor’s mind and encourage them to come back and buy again.
  • Send Coupons for your shop.
  • Send thank you letters to customers who have bought.
  • Encourage customers to give you feedback for their experience.
  • Invite customers to revisit your eStore to check what´s new.
  • Invite new costumers to redeem a coupon.
  • Thank your site visitor for contacting you.

 

App Market – Lots of apps to help your online store grow big.

Appmarket
 
The Wix App Market  has a plethora of apps for your site, from the typical SEO ones to crafty financial apps like Wave to help you with your invoicing and accounting (that last one happens to be free J )
The marketplace consist of many different categories such as: free, social, marketing tools, business apps, ecommerce, and more. The apps offer free, premium and freemium plans. Fortunately among the free options there are a nice array of first need apps like the Wave mentioned before, Smart actions and Yandex Metic.
 

Pros

  • Drag and drop site builder. Awesome CMS, making a joy to construct a site in minutes.
  • Gorgeous HTML5 Templates. This is always a feature where these guys always come strong. Bragging their great looking collection of always up to date aesthetic templates.
  • Keep 100% of you sales. I was sold with this one from the beginning.
  • Strong App Market. Handy free to premium selection apps to envigor.
  • Smart Actions. Undoubtedly on my favorites features of WixStores.
  • Mobile Ready. Display your store across desktop and mobile devices.

 

Cons

  • Absence of ftp access. Really useful feature when you need to admin your files.

Conclusion

WixStores is definitely a marvelous extension to the already great Wix site builder service. It is all you would expect to be from a Wix product:  easy, convenient and I would say fun to work with.  On top of all it has an inventory of visually aesthetic templates to choose and an army of useful apps to install.  It might not offer ftp access, but despite of that it is my number one choice to build an online store for the medium size enterprise.