Customers don’t like waiting. There are a zillion of different web stores they can go to. So don’t irritate your visitors with delays, your pages should open fast, period.

So what are the ingredients of a really fast store?

• Well optimized shopping cart
• Fast server
• Tracking of the bottlenecks

Well optimized shopping cart

Your shopping cart may be overloaded with features, but all these features could actually hurt the performance of your site when you add many products and start receiving several visitors.
Not all shopping carts are created with performance in their creators’ mind. So they work nice with 10 products, but when you add a few thousand products, the pages are generated in several seconds. With millions of different web stores out there, customers simply won’t wait 10-20 seconds for a page to load to just purchase a product. They’ll just close the browser tab and move on to another store.

So when you select a shopping cart, ask the cart’s creators if it works fast with many products in it.

Fast server

Another crucial component of a web store is your hosting provider. If you use an average PHP shopping cart, you cannot expect a good performance on cheap $2/month shared hosting plans. Another negative aspect about such hostings is that as soon as you get enough visitors, they will block your site and force you to move to a more expensive plan.

So invest into your hosting, don’t try to save on it.

If you want your store to be really fast, it’s recommended to install it on a VPS or a dedicated server. Move away from Apache web server to faster servers like Lighttpd or Nginx. Setup and optimize your server. Yeah, it requires a server administrator hiring, but the result makes it worthwhile.

Tracking of the bottlenecks

Check your web store and find the parts that are causing slowdowns and high page load times. Optimize the code, add caching, and make it fast.

So to sum it up, here’s what you need if you want to have a fast web store:

• a good server and an admin to manage it
• an optimized shopping cart and a web developer to adjust its code

Now welcome to the next generation of shopping cart software.

Ecwid and Speed

In Ecwid we’re concerned about performance; we don’t like delays – that’s why Ecwid is designed to be an extremely fast shopping cart platform.

• We use Amazon EC2 web servers optimized specially for Ecwid. You don’t need a server administrator, because we already have them. So when you use Ecwid, you already have a server administrator that checks and optimizes the server where your store is installed.
  You may have a usual hosting plan, but since Ecwid is actually located on our servers, you automatically get the speed of a professionally managed dedicated server, without any of the hassles or expensive price tags.
• You don’t need a web developer to optimize your shopping cart either. Our developers constantly check Ecwid’s code so that you don’t have to. If we see the possibility to speed things up and increase Ecwid’s performance, we do it. And Since Ecwid’s upgrades are seamless, your store becomes even faster without any changes/work from your side.
• Ecwid’s architecture differs from the other shopping carts.
  This is how usual carts work:
  - visitor makes a request
  - server receives a request and generates an HTML code
  - server sends the HTML code in response
  - visitor’s browser receives the HTML code, renders it and shows the result

  In Ecwid this process is improved. When a customer browses Ecwid pages, only the necessary information is sent and received in background AJAX requests.
  
  It’s like sending a letter using snail mail as opposed to sending it by e-mail and printing it. You get the same result, but the second way is much faster and much more efficient.

All of these components included in Ecwid allow you to have an extremely fast interface and browse all pages in your store without delays, regardless of the amount of products you may have.

We already described how to create your own Facebook shopping cart and make your store available to 350 million of active users. In this post we’ll instruct you on adding your Ecwid to MySpace — another large social network with millions of users.

No PHP knowledge or hosting expenses are required.

Follow the steps below:

1. On page http://developer.myspace.com sign in your mySpace account.

2. Click "My Apps".

3. Press the "Create New App" button.

4. "Create App" page will appear. Press the "Create On-site App" button.

5. Submit the App details.

• Application Title is your store name.
• Email and Password will be used to access your app.

Accept Terms and Conditions and press "Next".

6. A new page will appear. Press the "Skip this step" button.

7. Now you should setup your app settings. Set an application language, title, description and upload icons.

8. Select the app categories.

9. Leave all the other fields unchanged and press "Save".

10. Go to the "Edit App Source" tab.

11. Make sure that "Canvas Surface" tab is selected. You should setup the main store page in this tab with all products and categories displayed.

Set "Height" to the necessary store height (for example, 700px) and "App Type" to "HTML/JavaScript Source".
Then sign in to your Ecwid control panel and grab the integration code from "Dashboard". Insert it to the "HTML/JavaScript Source" field.

It should look like this:

12. Press the "Save Application Source" button.

13.(optional step) Go to the "Profile Surface" tab. Add an HTML code that will show on a user’s profile page when he/she adds your app to the profile.
Make sure that "Add type" is "HTML/JavaScript Source". Set app height and location.
Add an HTML code or just a text describing your store to the "HTML/JavaScript Source" field. It’d be a good idea to add description of your store there, its logo, some ads and featured products.

Press the "Save Application Source" button.

14.(optional step too) Go to the "Home Surface" tab. Add an HTML code that will be shown on a user’s home page.

Save the application source.

15. The two previous steps (#13 and #14) can be skipped and performed later.

16. The next step is to test your application. Use "Dev App" button at the page bottom. Its behaviour depends on the current tab. If you press it in the "Canvas Surface" tab it will show you the main app window.
In the"Profile Surface" and"Home Surface" tabs it will display the profile and home pages respectively.

Please note, if you want to test your app on the home and profile pages, you need to add it to your profile first. You can do it during testing of your app’s Canvas Surface.

17. Press "My App" again in the MySpace menu.

18. Your application is almost ready.
If you want to make your app available for all MySpace users, you need to publish it. Press the "Publish" button and as soon as MySpace staff reviews your app it will be approved and available for all.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask them on Ecwid forums.

This upgrade brings many highly anticipated features. Main of them are:

New modes of displaying products: grid and table

The first one is used when you want to show a part of product description on a list of products. The second one is used when the product images are not necessary and you want to show many product on one page.

The list of available currencies is greatly extended. More than 160 currencies are available now, so you can use Ecwid in any country.

Ecwid is now available as Google Gadget. It allows hosting Ecwid store on free Google Sites and easily adding it to any platform that supports gadgets, for example, iGoogle or Google Wave.

Integration with Google Analytics. Track your visitors and sales with powerful GA reports.

Support of Australia Post real-time shipping rates.

Ability to import products from CSV files in X-Cart and LiteCommerce formats. It will be helpful for merchants with existing X-Cart or LC stores.

“Duplicate” button on product details page. It allows cloning any product easily and avoiding entering the same details, e.g. product options.

Other improvements that are worth being mentioned:

• Ecwid now scrolls page when you drag-n-drop items
• “Delete all products/categories not present in import” import option is now available. So it allows updating the store inventory quickly, removing sold out items and adding new ones.
• the speed of Ecwid control panels initial loading is improved. Now it loads twice faster.
• some additional CSS classes were added to the storefront for more convenient CSS customization
• “alt” attributes were added to the product images
• now it’s possible to specify an URL of the page where your product browser is installed. It is very helpful when you have Ecwid minicart, vertical categories or search box on each page of your site. Now if the URL is specified and you are trying to use such a widget, Ecwid doesn’t raise the popup with product browser anymore, but redirects your to the store page.

And many other minor tweaks and improvements.

We want to thank all Ecwid users who voted for suggestions in our ideas base. If you voted for the features that are already implemented in this release, you will get your votes back. So you will be able to vote for the new ideas.

Feel free to use and enjoy the new features. If you have any questions on how to use them, ask your questions on our forums.

OpenSearch is a collection of simple formats to share search results and discovery of search engines.
It allows accessing search engines directly from search boxes in some browsers: Internet Explorer, Firefox and Google Chrome.

In this post we will describe how to add OpenSearch support to your Ecwid shopping cart. So your customers will be able to search your products right from their browsers’ search boxes.

1. Create an opensearch.xml text file with the following content:


<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<OpenSearchDescription xmlns="http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearch/1.1/">
<ShortName>Store Name</ShortName>
<Description>Description</Description>
<Url type="text/html" template="STORE_URL#ecwid:keywords={searchTerms}&amp;mode=search&amp;offset=0&amp;sort=relevance"/>
</OpenSearchDescription>


where
Store Name is your store name.
Description is the description of your store and site.
STORE_URL is the URL of the page where your Ecwid store is installed. For example ‘http://example.com/store.html’.

Example of an XML file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<OpenSearchDescription xmlns="http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearch/1.1/">
<ShortName>My Cool Store</ShortName>
<Description>We sell cool products.</Description>
<Url type="text/html" template="http://example.com/store.html
#ecwid:keywords={searchTerms}&amp;mode=search&amp;offset=0&amp;sort=relevance"/>
</OpenSearchDescription>


2. Upload this file to the root web directory of your site. Usually it’s ‘httpdocs‘ or ‘htdocs‘ or ‘public_html‘ directory.

3. Add the following line to each page of your site between tags <head> and </head>:

<link rel=search href="SITE_URL/opensearch.xml" title="Your_Store_Search" type="application/opensearchdescription+xml">

You should replace SITE_URL with your site domain (with the http:// prefix) and Your_Store_Search with the name of your store search or the name of your site.

E.g.:

<link rel=search href="http://example.com/opensearch.xml" title="Cool Store Search" type="application/opensearchdescription+xml">


That’s all. If you have any questions, feel free to ask on our forums.

• new WordPress sidebar widgets
• it is now possible to manage the look of Ecwid store from WordPress backend

2. It would be great to have Ecwid in different languages. So we’re looking for help with Ecwid translation. If you’re interested, please refer to the forum.

3. A pilot video tutorial describing on how to add taxes to Ecwid. Your feedback is welcome. Would you like to have more video tutorials?

There are more than 300 million active users on Facebook — such a great opportunity to get more customers to your e-store!
Win over more buyers by adding Ecwid to the Facebook ecosystem. It will take you 5-7 minutes at that. No PHP knowledge is required, no code changes or hosting expenses.

Below are the steps to integrate your Ecwid with Facebook:

1. Detect your Ecwid Store ID.

• Log into the Ecwid Control Panel. (Don’t have an account? Sign up for free!)
• When you log in, page “Dashboard” with section ‘Getting Started’ will appear.
• Find the Product Browser Widget Code text-box with HTML/JavaScript code in it. This is the Ecwid integration code.
• Look through the code lines, find this line:
  src=’http://app.ecwid.com/script.js?1003‘

‘1003‘ is the Store ID.

Note: you will see another number on your page. Use the number from your page as your Store ID.

Check the screen-shot:

2. Then go to Facebook Developer App. (it’s assumed you already have a Facebook account).
You will see the following form. Click the “Allow” button to let the Developer application access your profile.

3. Add a new application by clicking the “Set Up New Application” button.

4. Give your application a name (for example “Super-duper Store”). Accept the Terms of Service and click “Create Application“.

5. Then you should enter some basic information on your application, upload a logo and add a description.
“Contact Information” and “User-Facing URLs” sections are not mandatory. You can fill them in later

6. We are almost done. Click the “Canvas” link on the left side of the page.

7. Now you should specify the required URL’s.

• Canvas Page URL — The base URL of your store page on Facebook. For example, “my-cool-store“.
• Canvas Callback URL — a special URL that will show your Ecwid store. Replace pattern %STORE_ID% with your real Store ID which you got at step #1 in this URL: http://app.ecwid.com/jsp/%STORE_ID%/simple-store#?.

For example:
http://app.ecwid.com/jsp/1003/simple-store#? or http://app.ecwid.com/jsp/1234/simple-store#?

Check the screen-shot:

Change width and size of your application. Choose “Full width (760px)” and “Smart size” options in the “Canvas settings” form.
Make sure that your options look like the ones on this screenshot:

Save the changes. You will see the following page:

8. Click the “View Application Profile” link.

9. That’s it. Your store is ready! Press to view your Ecwid store.
Any user can now add your Facebook app to his/her profile, use it, purchase items, discuss your store with other users, become its fan, etc.

It was quickly, wasn’t it?

Please, share your experience on how you added your Ecwid store to Facebook in the comments or on Twitter. I’d be glad to learn about your stories and get your feedback : -)

If you have questions, feel free to ask in our forums.

^Eugene

All services are now back to normal functional level.

If you want to stay on top of all the latest news and happenings with Ecwid, you can follow Ecwid on Twitter (@ecwid). We will post announces, tips, suggestions and thoughts about e-commerce, and other interesting things.

If you don’t want to get all the updates, but only want to know important news about current Ecwid health status, follow @ecwid status.

We are not here to bash PHP: we have X-Cart and LiteCommerce, PHP products that have been the core of our business since 2001. We will continue to develop PHP e-commerce software. All of today’s best shopping carts are PHP based. PHP always was and still is the way to go if you have a bunch of geeks constantly modding your site. But what if you need just a store, nice and easy, working in minutes? That’s what Ecwid is for. And it is quite powerful, too.

We’ve spent a lot of time to ensure it is well designed and provides a smooth experience for store owners and end users alike. AJAX gives Ecwid a lightning-fast interface, drag and drop functionality, and ease of integration.

With X-Cart, we made sure that support and custom development services are always around when customers need it. With Ecwid, we focused on creating a product that would not require technical support at all. We focused on minimizing maintenance expenses, and we think we succeeded: Ecwid is … well, 100% free. Upgrades are seamless. Design alterations are just CSS changes.

But enough words. Just try it.

We would be happy to see Ecwid generating sales for you – and doing so immediately! We are looking for your feedback, so please join the forums and help Ecwid community grow! The Ecwid team will also be active on the forums. We can’t miss out on all the fun

Please mind that Ecwid is BETA and will stay in beta for quite a while. We just want to make it beta the Google way: we are going to improve it constantly.

Stay tuned, there will be more news in this blog. We’ll be adding more features. We’ll be adding more languages. We’ll be adding more widgets. We hope you’ll like it.

Welcome on board!