In the event you’ve been in search of an inexpensive ecommerce platform with the entire wanted options packed in, EKM would possibly simply be the system you need. On this EKM assessment, we’ll define how the UK-based growth and assist group makes it moderately advantageous for some on-line shops. We’ll additionally discuss EKM’s options that make it stand out.
Not solely is EKM inexpensive, nevertheless it has an in-house assist group, a concentrate on built-in options (versus apps,) and an attention-grabbing service that scans your web site for outdated data.
EKM Critiques: The Options
One of many issues that EKM has going for it’s the truth that the customers are given tons of ecommerce options after a easy setup. An the floor, you achieve entry to instruments for constructing your web site, designing sure components of the location, and advertising to your prospects. Importing merchandise takes only a few minutes, and changing your guests is completed with advertising options and funnels.
The funds are safe and included with EKM, and all order administration is dealt with throughout the EKM dashboard. One other factor to contemplate is internet hosting. The web site internet hosting is included with all EKM pricing plans, so that you just’re getting a safe and quick server. Together with nice buyer assist, you possibly can’t go flawed with the options within EKM.
Let’s check out a few of our favorites:
EKM’s Evolution Mode
One of many tougher elements about operating a web-based retailer is guaranteeing that the entire content material is up-to-date. Are your promotional banners previous? Is a few of your stock out of inventory? Do you’ve got damaged hyperlinks?
All of those conditions trigger your prospects to take pleasure in your interface much less. That is why EKM has a unique program the place it scans your web site for outdated data. That is all finished by the staff at EKM, so you possibly can sit again and chill out, understanding that you’re going to get notifications when one thing appears off.
Lovely Designs with Strong Constructing Instruments
EKM has dozens of themes so that you can get your design began. They’re all categorized in numerous industries, similar to furnishings shops or clothes outlets. A few of the foremost classes embody Enjoyable, Fashionable, Company, Creative, and Minimal. The themes are straightforward to work with and you do not have to pay for them as an EKM subscriber.
The entire EKM outlets are optimized for cellular screens. It’s also possible to rapidly customise on your personal model and arrange objects like product filters and galleries.
EKM’s Constructed-in Banner Maker
In my expertise constructing on-line shops, I’ve discovered that designing promotional banners takes a shocking period of time out of your day.
I sometimes work in Photoshop, however EKM supplies an superior built-in banner builder with none extra price. You are in a position to make completely sized and optimized banners with customizable textual content on each. It means that you can add your personal pictures or select from the numerous inventory pictures in EKM. That is positive to avoid wasting many ecommerce professionals time in the long term.
EKM’s Electronic mail Advertising and marketing and Loyalty Factors
For essentially the most half, EKM cuts out the necessity for third-party advertising instruments. For example, as an alternative of utilizing Mailchimp or Marketing campaign Monitor, you possibly can make the most of EKM’s e mail advertising instrument. It syncs along with your retailer for fast product insertion, and you may ship emails with new weblog posts or unique gives.
The loyalty factors system can also be included inside EKM. This manner, your organization awards factors to prospects every time they purchase objects, all with out the necessity for a third-party instrument.
EKM’s Stay Chatting and Deserted Cart Saver
There are a number of instruments to transform your guests into paying prospects. One in all them is a dwell chat that pops up on your prospects and exhibits you the objects being checked out by these prospects. This manner, you possibly can information them alongside their approach and reply any questions they could have.
One other conversion function includes decreasing deserted carts. EKM routinely retargets the shoppers which have left their carts with some objects in there. That is finished with easy emails displaying the patrons that they’ll nonetheless try later.
Lastly, back-in-stock notifications might be despatched out to your prospects that will have missed out on an merchandise since you ran out of stock.
EKM Critiques: The Pricing
The EKM pricing is simply proven in British Kilos. You may make your month-to-month funds in different currencies, however you may should verify Google to grasp the present alternate fee for that foreign money.
As well as, every EKM plan comes with a 14-day free trial. This offers you the liberty to mess around with the options and perceive if it is the precise answer on your on-line retailer.
One other factor to bear in mind is that EKM does not take a minimize of your gross sales–it sticks to the month-to-month funds for utilizing the system. As well as, there isn’t any contract, so you possibly can cease paying for EKM everytime you need. The one extra charges it’s a must to fear about contain your fee gateway.
Fortunately, EKM has a web-based checkout system included–however you do have the choice to attach your personal fee gateway (simply ensure you know all the pieces in regards to the charges concerned).
As for the pricing plans, this is what you possibly can select from:
- EKM Primary Plan – For £32.49 + VAT monthly, you obtain the entire major options (most of that are outlined within the earlier part,) assist for as much as 500 merchandise, a site title, SSL certificates, primary account supervisor, UK-based assist, store well being analytics, and a single person account. This plan is really useful for outlets with as much as £50,000 in gross sales per 12 months.
- EKM Customary Plan – For £64.99 + VAT monthly, you obtain all the pieces within the earlier plan, assist for limitless merchandise, precedence buyer assist, full analytics, and 5 person accounts. This plan is really useful for outlets with as much as £150,000 in gross sales per 12 months.
- EKM Superior Plan – For £194.99 + VAT monthly, you obtain all the pieces within the earlier plan, assist for limitless merchandise, an ecommerce marketing consultant, 24/7 emergency assist, a high-performance server, and as much as 15 person accounts. This plan is really useful for outlets with as much as £1,000,000 in gross sales per 12 months.
- EKM Professional Plan – For £541.66 + VAT monthly, you obtain all the pieces within the earlier plan, assist for limitless merchandise, a customized web site construct, unique fee charges, a strategic account supervisor, advertising account administration instruments, and enterprise degree efficiency in your web site. This plan is really useful for enterprise-level shops.
As you possibly can see, there are fairly a couple of choices relying on how massive your retailer is. You get just about all the pieces it’s essential to run your small to mid-sized retailer on the Primary plan degree, with loads of choices for upgrades as your retailer grows.
Be mindful this can be a UK-based firm, so there may be the matter of changing your funds to Kilos (if your organization is exterior of the UK,) and in addition worrying about with the ability to communicate with a assist consultant if exterior of the UK.
General, the pricing is truthful for the variety of options you obtain from EKM. Simply the truth that your retailer can have 500 merchandise, an SSL certificates, and a primary account supervisor is sufficient to justify that Primary Plan’s worth.
EKM Critiques: The Buyer Assist
As we talked about earlier within the article, the EKM buyer assist group relies within the UK. This may very well be an enormous benefit for you in case you dwell within the UK. Additionally, in my view, in-house assist groups like which are nearly all the time a lot better than outsourced groups. So, you possibly can relaxation straightforward understanding that your assist reps are well-trained and able to reply your whole questions alongside the way in which.
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I additionally like that among the plans have extra superior account managers, together with a full web site customization for these on the Enterprise plan.
By way of the web assets, EKM supplies a weblog for an e mail publication to be taught extra in regards to the options and achieve tips on ecommerce usually.
The information base is stuffed with person guides on subjects like themes, constructing your store, and organising your advertising technique.
A neighborhood discussion board is there so that you can chat with different EKM customers, and the video guides are nice for these visible learners on the market. Apart from that, you’ve got entry to a pleasant fast begin information, and you may contact the client assist group by way of e mail, cellphone, or a Fb message.
On the time of this text, EKM’s cellphone strains are open Monday by way of Friday, 8AM to 6PM and Saturday by way of Sunday, 9AM to five:30PM. As soon as once more, these are UK-based occasions.
EKM Overview: Safety
As with all ecommerce platforms, we wish to ensure that your transactions are safe. The identical might be stated about your buyer data and your total web site. How does EKM stand out when it comes to safety?
To begin, it is vital to know that EKM’s internet hosting is supplied with your package deal. Because of this you haven’t any must exit and discover your personal internet hosting supplier. It additionally signifies that you get to run your web site on extraordinarily quick and safe servers, with an nearly 100% uptime assure and server monitoring 24/7. Since EKM is your host, you do not have to fret about any upkeep, safety, or dealing with web site velocity.
You merely run your retailer and let the oldsters at EKM deal with all the pieces for you. We have additionally discovered that these servers are sometimes far safer as a result of the ecommerce platforms have a major quantity of manpower and cash invested in them. Subsequently, the server monitoring and hardened safety ought to show you how to really feel comfortable.
EKM additionally states that its ecommerce internet hosting community has top-notch firewalls and superior routers to ensure that your whole buyer information is protected always.
EKM Critiques: The Professionals
Discovering an ecommere platform is rather a lot to deal with, particularly if you typically should learn by way of prolonged articles to get the entire data you want. That is why we needed to provide you a top level view of a few of EKM’s benefits.
- EKM’s statistics are moderately spectacular, with clear analytics displaying timelines, best-selling merchandise, and worst-selling objects.
- The net retailer themes are trendy and shiny, permitting so that you can get your store up and operating very quickly–with out questioning if it appears skilled.
- You obtain some distinctive advertising instruments for issues like website positioning, loyalty packages, and running a blog. All of that is packaged into the EKM system.
- You sometimes do not have to fret about putting in additional apps, since EKM tries to incorporate the entire most vital options into the precise product.
- EKM has a dwell chat module for interacting along with your prospects at any time.
- You get an SSL certificates and are in a position to acquire funds by way of choices like Klarna and Amazon Funds.
EKM Critiques: The Cons
This EKM assessment confirmed us that the platform does a superb job of providing you with just about all the pieces it’s essential to run a web-based retailer. There are a couple of cons, however not many:
- EKM is situated within the UK, so meaning the client assist group is native to the UK and also you would possibly run into some difficulties if making an attempt to run a retailer exterior of the UK.
- Though the themes are nice, I wish to see some extra drag-and-drop enhancements within the web site builder.
- Different ecommerce platforms have extra integrations with fee gateways.
EKM Overview: Fee Processing
We acknowledged the variety of fee gateways as a con within the part above. Having stated that, EKM nonetheless gives over 20 choices so that you can select from. This is not precisely all that limiting.
A few of the choices embody Klarna, PayPal by Braintree, Sage Pay, and Amazon Pay. You may discover that among the fee gateways are glorious for UK companies and worldwide corporations that won’t be capable of use one thing like Stripe.
The entire funds that undergo your gateways are PCI compliant. You may additionally take pleasure in a free SSL certificates and fraud detection always.
What’s additionally nice is that funds are already configured in your EKM retailer. There’s technically no must set something up your self.
Lastly, you’ve got the choice to promote to prospects all around the world by providing a number of foreign money choices.
How Does EKM Evaluate?
EKM is a superb answer for these desirous about promoting internationally and domestically. We particularly prefer it for these residing within the UK, since buyer assist is situated there.
However how does it examine to among the high ecommerce platforms available on the market? In spite of everything, these are the methods that we see all around the web–so does EKM put up a very good struggle with the large canine?
EKM vs Shopify
EKM has some instruments which are moderately much like Shopify (learn our full Shopify assessment). For one, Shopify has a brand builder, whereas EKM supplies brand and banner makers. Shopify appears to have a greater designer and a bigger assortment of themes, however I nonetheless suppose EKM beats out Shopify when it comes to its high quality of designs.
Shopify additionally has higher buyer assist, with 24/7 world assist and an enormous assortment of paperwork on-line. EKM isn’t any slouch within the buyer assist division, however chances are you’ll discover the UK hours a bit limiting.
One space the place EKM shines is with its built-in options. A mainstay of Shopify is how the platform depends closely on its App Retailer. The essential platform is stable, however you typically should combine with a variety of different apps. This might begin getting costly, otherwise you would possibly merely muddle your dashboard with too many apps. EKM, however, supplies the vast majority of mandatory options as built-in instruments.
Lastly, EKM’s pricing is larger than that of Shopify’s, not less than for the primary two smaller plans from Shopify. EKM additionally solely appears to promote these plans in British Kilos. That stated, one would possibly argue that EKM has way more built-in options to justify the value.
EKM vs Wix
Wix (learn our full Wix assessment) has all the time been a low-cost chief within the web site constructing world, so even its third-tier Enterprise VIP plan is cheaper than EKM’s lowest possibility. So, in case you’re in search of the most cost effective deal, Wix is your alternative.
Nonetheless, EKM wins on nearly all different fronts. For example, the themes are higher, and it is really a whole ecommerce platform–whereas Wix accepts funds, however you typically should piece collectively apps to make it a full on-line retailer.
Wix technical assist does not provide the best recommendation in my expertise, nevertheless it does have tons of documentation and a group that is not solely targeted within the UK. Nonetheless, the EKM group is way extra educated about its product.
EKM vs BigCommerce
This comparability is attention-grabbing as a result of BigCommerce and EKM each attempt to construct as many options as potential into the platforms. They each even have among the most stunning web site themes available on the market. I would argue that BigCommerce and EKM are essentially the most comparable on this record of comparisons.
BigCommerce (learn our full BigCommerce assessment) has extra expansive buyer assist, however EKM supplies some area of interest instruments for issues like advertising and designing graphics.
Though BigCommerce is barely cheaper, it is not by a lot.
EKM vs WooCommerce
WooCommerce (learn our full WooCommerce assessment) is nice for many who need full management of their on-line retailer. This implies it’s a must to discover your personal internet hosting, get a theme, design the web site, and deal with duties like web site administration and safety. It is for barely extra skilled site owners, however you may doubtlessly lower your expenses since there isn’t any month-to-month price. Nonetheless, growth and internet hosting charges can construct up in case you’re not cautious.
EKM supplies all the pieces you want in a pleasant package deal–all for a month-to-month price. Subsequently, you possibly can focus extra on your enterprise and never internet hosting and upkeep.
Apart from that, EKM has extra built-in options, whereas WooCommerce leans on plugins and extensions. The themes for each are fairly good.
Who Ought to Think about EKM for an On-line Retailer?
Very first thing’s first: UK-based corporations ought to instantly think about EKM as one in every of your high choices for an ecommerce platform. The native, devoted assist is among the finest within the enterprise, and you’ve got the chance to obtain all of the options you want for a retailer.
I additionally like EKM for corporations all around the world in search of a system and not using a bunch of third-party apps. Managing all of these apps is tedious, so it is good to have your whole options included.
EKM Critiques: Our Conclusion
When you have any questions on this EKM assessment, share your ideas within the feedback under! And do not forget to take a look at our EMK tutorial in case you want to create a retailer utilizing this platform.
