EKM is an eCommerce creation platform. It gives startups and small businesses all of the tools they’ll need to open their first online shop and start selling their products. It also provides mid-sized companies with good reliable tools they can use to create a better shop for their wares and grow the company even further.
This platform has plans that support sites that makeup to 1 million in yearly revenues. While this is good enough for mid-sized and even some larger shops, certain online stores make much more than that. What we’re trying to say is that incredibly profitable stores that make more than 1 million a year will need to find another platform for their site.
This platform will give you everything that you need to promote and sell your wares. You’ll receive marketing tools, Google Analytics, automatic inventory management and purchase management tools, dropshipping functionality, and much more.
Sections
Features
Rather than using pre-built websites, EKM allows you to create the ideal platform for you to sell your products using their tools. Here’s what’s on offer.
Design
EKM has many different options when it comes to customising your platform.
Themes – You get access to more than 70 themes, and they’re split into several categories. Regardless if you have a clothing store, a home decor store, or a health and beauty store, you can find an ideal background for your products.
Responsive Themes – All of the themes you have access to are easily adjustable and can be adapted to any device. Essentially, this means that your background will look great on a PC, tablet or phone.
Advanced Editing Tools – Anyone with at least a moderate understanding of programming can go into the code and easily adjust the themes by using the tools that are provided to better suit their needs.
Additional Pages – Aside from product pages, you can also add any additional pages that you want to your site. Any information that you want to add on the “About Us” or “Customer Reviews” page can easily be included with just a few clicks.
Logos and Banners – The professional logo builder can help you design an awesome symbol for your brand. And if you’re trying to make a custom banner, you can choose from a wide range of stock photos, backgrounds, and icons. The drag-and-drop tool also allows you to add your own assets if you want to make the banner even more personalised.
Stickers – You can also add custom stickers to all of your products. This is very helpful if you want to draw attention to any discounts or special deals that the customers might be able to take advantage of.
Easy Drag-and-Drop Placement – Both uploading and organizing your products on your page is as easy as grabbing it from your PC and dragging it onto the page itself.
Multiple Employee Accounts – You can give access to several people and allow them to add products, alter descriptions, and make any changes to the site.
Marketing Tools
There are several built-in tools that EKM provides that can help improve your Google ranking.
Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools – These are essential resources if you’re looking to improve the SEO ranking of your site. Both of these tools can allow you to analyze your site, and help you get a better ranking by using keywords, backlinks, and other means.
Live Chat – Customers can contact you directly if they have any questions about a product, complaints about the site, or if they just want to leave a personal review on their shopping experience.
Loyalty Points – The loyalty points system allows you to set rewards for repeat customers. For example, spending a certain amount of money can give them a discount on the next purchase.
Customer Reviews – People sharing their opinions on a product page is an instant draw for potential customers. Reading honest reviews on the site itself can convince your customer to make a purchase or not, and see your brand as more transparent and reliable.
PPC Advertising Service – EKM offers a PPC (pay-per-click) service that can drive traffic to your site. The price of the service starts at £200 + VAT, but you only pay if someone actually finds your site by clicking on one of the ads.
Email Marketing – The email marketing templates that you get allow you to keep your customers updated on any sales, new items, and promotions that might be going on at the moment. The email service is very well implemented and customers will find it very easy to sign up.
Abandoned Cart – This feature will automatically send your customers an email reminding them they have products in their cart they might still be interested in.
WordPress Blog – Articles are a great way to engage with your customer base and share any information you might like with them. Blogs are also very useful for climbing the Google rankings with the help of using keywords.
Social Media Integration – You can link all of the major social media sites to your site, like Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, Twitter, and so on.
Customer Info – You can view the address and IP address of your customers so that you can pick the best shipping option for their location.
Holiday Mode – This feature allows you to send out automated messages when you’re unable to do so yourself whenever a customer purchases a product. These messages will notify the customer that there might be a delay when it comes to the delivery of the product so that they’re kept in the loop on the arrival times of their package.
You’ll Receive a 0333 Number – EKM provides you with a number that you can use to take calls from your customers directly, free of charge with no contract.
Products
Notifications – if you want to let your shoppers know that a certain item is out of stock or if there’s a special sale, you can do so with the stock warning notifications. You can also notify your customers that a special sale is currently ongoing, how long that same sale lasts, if there are any special coupons, and so on.
Uploading Product Images – EKM allows you to add as many products as you want to your shop, and upload as many images of that product as you want, quickly and efficiently. You can also use the various filters that you get access to in order to touch up the images and make them look a bit more picturesque and appealing.
Importing Products – You can use the “eBay Import/Export” feature to mass import certain products that you’ve already listed on that site.
Order Restrictions – Customers will be informed if your shop doesn’t deliver to their country. You can also set your own restrictions on who can and can’t buy from your shop based on your own personal preferences.
Connecting Accounts – You can connect both your eBay and Amazon accounts to your site so you can manage all of your products and sales from a single page.
Search and Organization Features – There are several categories and tags you can use in order to sort your products so that your customers can find them more easily. These same tags or keywords can also be used in tandem with the search feature so that your customers can look up any type of product that they might be interested in.
Recommended Products – Once a customer has bought, selected, or searched for a specific type of product, they’ll automatically get a few recommendations on other items that fall in the same category that they might be interested in.
Automatic Pricing – If a customer has selected several items, then the aggregate price of those items will automatically be calculated and displayed so that they know exactly how much they need to pay.
Dropshipping – Instead of stocking a specific product, you can buy that product from a third party once an order is placed on your site. The product will then automatically be shipped to your customer.
Additional Features
Testing Tools – Before you take your site live, you can use a testing site that will display your page so you can go through it and check if everything is working fine.
Evolution Mode – As the name suggests, this feature constantly changes and upgrades features on the platform. Not only will you be informed about any upgrades, but you’ll also immediately gain access to the improved tools.
Automatic Stock Management – When you upload a product to your page, you can also add how many of those products you have in stock. As customers purchase items, you’ll automatically get a notification if you’re running low on a certain product or if it’s completely out of stock, so you don’t have to manage your inventory manually.
EKM App – You can manage all of your products and orders from either your tablet or phone. This feature will allow you to stay on the move and work from several different locations without any disturbance to your workflow.
Shop Sync – Epos Now is a tool that allows you to sync up the products and purchases from both your offline and online shops.
Hosting – All of the servers where the sites are hosted have 24/7 monitoring, you get unlimited bandwidth, you get a free domain name, and you receive several other perks on top of that as well.
Support – You’ll get round-the-clock support for any issues that you might have with your shop, your blog, and any other aspect of the platform. You’ll also get access to video guides on how to use certain features, you’ll receive assistance if you want to migrate your site to a different hosting platform, and anyone that uses the Standard or Advanced plans will get an account manager.
Integration With Payment Gateways
EKM allows you to use several different payment gateways, so you can pick one that best suits your needs, or you can add a couple and have your clients decide which one they want to use.
EKMPay
EKM’s custom payment gateway is designed specifically for eCommerce websites. The gateway is powered by ClearAccept, which is an FDA-regulated sister site to EKM.
The biggest draw of this payment option is that it allows you to offer the lowest rates available on EKM. The standard rate is 1.4% plus 20p and VAT, but businesses that have purchased the Advanced plan get custom rates.
Other Gateways
EKM is compatible with a wide range of payment gateways and currencies. Depending on your needs, you can add Stripe, Paypal, Nochex and many other popular payment options. Once added, you simply need to ensure that payment through credit and debit card is enabled and you should be good to go.
As for currencies, EKM is compatible with pounds, dollars, and euros, but you’ll need to call up customer support and check the compatibility with more obscure currencies.
All of the gateways are also PCI compliant, so all of the personal information that the customer put into the site is safe behind several layers of security.
Prices/Fees
EKM has 4 different plans that you can choose from. They’re all reasonably priced and both small and large businesses can benefit from the options that are on offer.
Universal features
Before we go more in detail on the payment plans themselves, we should cover the common features they all provide. The “Key Essential Features” that are mentioned in every plan include:
- SSL certificate
- Payments included
- Fast servers
- Rates from 1.4% + 20p (+ VAT)
- Welcome call
- Unlimited bandwidth
- No contract
- Mobile App
- Dropshipping
Lite
The Lite plan will cost you £19.99 a month (plus VAT). For that price, you’ll get access to live chat support that can provide answers to any questions or solutions to any issues that you might have. You also get regular reports on the state of the site, as well as a single employee account that you can use to control and modify it.
This is the cheapest option and it supports stores that receive up to £15k in annual sales.
Basic
For a monthly payment of £34.99 + VAT, you get all of the perks that we just went over on the Lite payment plan, as well as a few additional ones.
These perks include:
- A free domain name
- Blog features
- Subscriptions
- Loyalty points
You also get access to “Basic Evolution Mode”, which is a service that evaluates the state of your site once a year and gives you feedback on potential improvements that you can make.
Additionally, aside from the live chat support option, you also get the option to make a telephone call directly for support in case you need assistance with something.
This is the intermediate plan and it supports stores that make up to £50k in online sales on a yearly basis.
Standard
The Standard Plan is the recommended option that will set you back £69.99 on a monthly basis (plus VAT). You get all of the perks that we mentioned in the Basic plan, as well as:
- Product urgency features
- 5 employee accounts
- A 6-month money-back guarantee
- Gift card tools that you can add to your site
You also get access to the Yearly Evolution Mode. Unlike the Basic Evolution Mode, the Yearly Evolution Mode team will modify the site for you and make some necessary improvements to increase site traffic.
Additionally, you also get an account manager for the first 6 months after purchasing the plan. They’ll offer suggestions on the layout of your site as well as priority support whenever needed.
This is the plan that’s recommended by EKM and you can actually get the free two-week trial that will give you access to all of the features that we just mentioned.
If you decide to purchase the plan after the initial two weeks, you’ll be able to make up to £150k in sales on a yearly basis before you need to upgrade to the last plan.
Advanced
The final plan on offer will cost you £209.99 + VAT a month. For this price, you’ll get everything that was offered in the Standard plan, as well as the option to add trade discounts to your products, API access, and 24/7 priority support.
Rather than just for 6 months, you get a full time account manager for however long you pay for this plan. Additionally, the Evolution Mode is now a quarterly evaluation rather than a yearly evaluation, so you can fine-tune your site up to 4 times a year if needed.
You also get 15 employee accounts, and your site can make up to £1 million in yearly sales.
Company Background
EKM was created in 2001 when 21-year-old Antony Chesworth started programming eCommerce software that could make site design easy and accessible for everyone.
The company got its first customer in 2002, and since then it has helped over 80,000 customers set up a site for their business.
EKM was acquired by ClearCourse in 2021, and the partnership led to the development of the EKMPay gateway.
User Reviews
Trustpilot rates EKM at 4.6 stars out of 5, and the reviews underneath support this grade.
Reviews.Io has a similar rating, with 45 reviewers putting the site at a 4.5 out of 5 stars.
StuartKerrs gives the service an overall rating of 85% out of 100%.
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