W2 Solution is a relatively small site-building platform that helps merchants create their own online shops.
The base version of the platform is open-source, so anyone can use it without any payments. You also have a paid version, but the actual price of the service isn’t mentioned, so you’ll need to call the company to learn exactly how much it’ll set you back if you want to get the full W2 Solution experience.
While the platform itself isn’t all that well-known, it has built connections with many large names, like L’Oreal, Crocs, and Yakult, to name a few. These connections are very useful for people that want to sell products that are endorsed or come from the companies that W2 Solution deals with.
The downside of the platform is that it’s pretty unremarkable. The features are pretty standard by site-creation platform standards, and there’s no stand-out benefit that sets this platform apart from the rest.
Sections
Features
Despite the small size of the platform, it still comes with a decent number of useful features.
Design
Easy Site Modification Tools – You can add any elements to your site by simply grabbing them from the elements dashboard and placing them wherever you want on the page. This tool also allows you to create your own custom logos, banners, and product images by importing them from your local PC files.
Headless eCommerce – This feature essentially allows you to separate the front end and the back end of the website.
Being able to work on the backend of the site allows you to implement any code modifications whenever you want, while the front end stays the same, allowing your customers to browse through your site without having to put it in a temporarily unavailable state.
There are exceptions, of course, and some customers might not be able to use the specific elements you’re working on at the time, but it’s still better than stopping the traffic to your site entirely.
Full CRM Functionality – You can add any number of customers and vendors to your contacts list and separate them into their own groups. You can also create template messages and newsletters that you can send to any group in your contacts list.
This feature helps you to bulk message customers and inform them about any discounts or new products coming to the shop, while also allowing you to automatically order new products from the vendors on your list.
Free Third-Party Integration – While all of the features on the site are developed in-house, you can still add third-party add-ons to your site. If you need some help with the payments, the programming, or any other aspect of the site, then you can add the best tool you think might help you improve it.
Single Dashboard – You’ll be able to control all of the features on your site and all of the product options from a single dashboard. This will allow you to order new products, assign discounts and points, manage site subscriptions, and do much more from a single screen.
Marketing
Intelligent Marketing – You’ll be able to create your own communication and promotional strategies based on the feedback from your customers. You’ll receive stats on the most searched and most purchased products, so you can adjust your marketing strategy accordingly.
Additionally, the service itself gives you recommendations about what products you should advertise and what customers you should market to the most. If you have the paid plan, then you can also run these marketing strategies past your project lead so they can further improve them.
Points and Rewards – The easiest way to keep customers coming back to your site is by giving them an incentive for their loyalty. W2 Solution allows you to assign points to customers that can earn them rewards, like discounts or even free products.
You can give out these points and rewards personally to any customers that you want, but you can also automate the entire process. You can set the rules for the points systems yourself so that customers know which product purchases net their rewards, or which products should be bought in bulk for the most points.
Marketplace and Industry Connections – W2 Solutions collaborates with some big names that you can use to grow your site. For example, you’ll be able to get in touch with large companies like Thermos or British American Tobacco and work out a deal to sell their products on your site.
This will not only open doors in terms of the products you’re allowed to display and sell on your site, but it’ll also allow you to potentially get discounts on the products that you buy from the distributor.
Analytics Tools – W2 Solutions also comes with analytics tools that can help you create a better marketing strategy for your products. You can generate detailed reports on the average number of visitors to your site, the most popular products in your inventory, the average amount of money that people spend, and so on.
You can generate reports on many different factors and use the data provided to more accurately market your products and figure out which products are worth restocking and which should be discontinued.
Products
Unlimited Products – You’ll be able to add as many products as you want to your site, which includes product descriptions and product images. This is particularly useful if you’re selling a product in different colours and you want to show your customers what all of the variations look like.
Unlimited Tags and Categories – You can put as many tags on your products as you want to help your customers find exactly what they’re looking for. You can also add just as many categories as tags to separate your products into their own groups.
Product Recommendation Algorithms – This tool will check the categories and tags of the products your customers were looking through, and make certain product suggestions.
Besides product popularity, the algorithm also takes into account previous accompanying purchases. In other words, if people often buy product A alongside product B, then anyone that searches for product A will automatically get product B as a recommendation.
Product Prioritization – If you want to have a bit more say in which products are recommended to your customers, then you can set product priorities yourself, based on factors like price, product popularity, and so on. You can also set any product recommendations, regardless if your customers have been searching for them or not.
Subscriptions – You’ll be able to create subscription services for your site so you can provide certain benefits to your customers. You can give discounts to specific subscribers that regular site visitors won’t have access to, restrict some products to subscribers only, and so on.
Tiered Membership – This feature goes hand-in-hand with both the subscription service and the rewards and points system. You can either set a paid membership plan for your customers or award certain customers based on their tier.
The paid option will allow your customers to simply buy any tier they want, while the award option will automatically upgrade customers to a higher tier and give them better rewards for loyalty, spending a certain amount of money on the site, or any other factors that you want to set.
POS – The point-of-sale system will allow you to gather the sales from the physical and the online stores into one place so that you can manage them more easily. The system also simplifies selling products offline to a single press of a button and makes sure that the order is placed and the payment is processed with very little chance of human error.
Automated Seller Payout – All of your vendor fees and your customer payments will be automatically calculated and taken care of. You’ll also be able to select which services can be made to run automatically, and which should require manual approval from yourself.
Vendor Plans – Similarly to the subscription services for your customers, you’ll also be able to create plans for your vendors as well. This will allow them to choose between several options that dictate the number of products being sold on your site, the height of the monthly payments, any potential discounts, and whatever other options you want to offer.
Scheduled and Dynamic Payment Options – You’ll be able to offer your customers flexible payment options so they can pay the full price of the products at a later date or pay off their purchase in increments. Additionally, you’ll also be able to set the number of days that the payment can be delayed and the number of payments that it can be split into according to your preference.
Other Features
Blog – W2 Solution has a blog page where you can get more information about the platform and the eCommerce industry in general.
It’s essentially a beginner’s guide to some of the most important parts of the online business and the site-creation side of things.
Workflow Management – You can sort all of the daily tasks that you have into several groups so that they’re much easier to manage, all done in a single dashboard.
You’ll also be able to automate certain actions on your site, like subscription payments or discount assignments. All of the subscription payment request messages will be sent automatically, and any accounts that haven’t paid will automatically be cancelled. You can also set timings on when certain discounts go live and when they should be discontinued.
These are only a few examples of automated tasks, and there are plenty more that you can implement.
Managed Services – You can entirely outsource certain parts of your business by having a W2 Solution representative take care of things for you. These managed services include everything from occasional consultations and programming tips to site design planning and marketing strategy development.
The one downside of this service is that you’ll need to contact the company directly in order to get a цлеарер picture of the extent of the service, the availability of the representative, and whether or not you’ll need to pay for certain parts of the service.
Customer Support Options – By adding a live chat function to your site, you can talk directly with your customers and address any issues they might be having with the site or answer questions about the products, the prices, the shipping options, and so on.
Prices/Fees
Rather than pricing plans, W2 Solution only has a free and paid option. Both can be used to create great-looking sites, but the paid option naturally comes with extra benefits.
Free Version
The free version of the platform is open-source and comes with the complete end-to-end eCommerce functionality that W2 Solution has to offer, including all of the features that we mentioned above.
You also get support from all of the agencies that have partnered with the platform, like the Stripe payment gateway, the ShipBob product shipping agency, and many more.
However, there are also a few downsides to using the free version of the platform, like the lack of updates to the platform. You get access to all of the features from the site, but any upgraded version of these features will not be made available to you, and you’ll only be able to use the standard version of the tools.
Additionally, while you get support for your site, it’s outsourced to a third-party agency. You’ll still get answers to any questions you might have about site issues you’re experiencing, but you might need to wait a bit more before you get a response from a maintenance representative. To make things even worse, you’ll be charged for the support that you get.
Paid Version
The paid version of the platform comes with all of the same features as the free version, however, it also comes with additional, enterprise customization options and platform modification features.
Unfortunately, the extent of these features and the costs are not mentioned, so you’ll need to contact a representative of W2 Solution in order to get a better idea of what these additional features actually do and how much it’ll cost you.
The good news is that this version of the platform comes with continuous product updates, so you’ll see constant changes to the tools that are at your disposal. These features are constantly being improved by an in-house team of software developers that are in contact with the customer base of the platform.
This familiarity with the customers allows them to make changes that they want to see and ensures that the platform will keep improving and keep getting more user-friendly as time goes on.
You also get a designated project lead for your site, which is without a doubt the single most useful service that this platform has to offer. The project lead will tell you everything you need to know about creating a site, they’ll explain the best way to market your products, and they’ll create an expansive game plan for you that can help you grow your shop.
You also get customer support for any issues that you might have with your site or the features that you’re using. This time the support team is in-house and you won’t have to pay for it since it’s free of charge.
Payment Options
W2 Solution offers a large number of payment gateways that you can integrate into your site.
You’ll be able to add Stripe, Rakuten, and Amazon Pay as payment options, and that’s just to name a few. You can give your customers a large selection of payment options, or only add the gateways that you want to be paid through.
While there are many online payments that are mentioned, there’s no mention of debit or credit card payments.
While it’s very unlikely that these sorts of payments are entirely unavailable through the platform, you’ll need to contact someone at W2 Solution to find out if there are any restrictions on certain cards or payment methods that you might have been planning to add to your site.
Additionally, all of the payment gateways have their own transaction fees, but there’s no mention of any additional fees that W2 Solution might charge on transactions, so that’s one more thing on the list of potential questions that you might want to ask before you start using this platform.
Company Background
W2 Solution was founded in 2005 with the goal to provide a platform where merchants can start and grow their own online shops.
It’s a relatively small company, but it has still managed to help more than 450 people start their own eCommerce companies and has helped with the development of more than 750 projects.
All of the features and their updates are developed in-house, and they’re all designed so that merchants can easily get the hang of them and intuitively use them to improve their websites.
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