EKM Review: Easy E-Commerce Setup, Great Support. Is There’s a Catch?

The EKM E-Commerce Platform

Editors Note: EKM is now offering digital.com readers a 28-day free trial.

All your customers and friends are nagging you to sell your products online. The only problem is, that seems like an entirely different way of doing business, and you’ve been fine up until now anyway.

I get it.

But maybe your profits are declining, because potential customers are buying online instead. They like the convenience and the price. Or maybe your rent is going up and you need to bring in more customers to pay the bills.

Regardless of the reason, any small business that doesn’t have an online shop (and a good one at that) is missing out on a ton of sales.

A Simple Way To Get an Online Store

EKM is an all-in-one online store builder, with the company based in the UK. Furthermore, for the sake of an interesting fact, EKM was formerly known as Powershop.

It is the simplest way to remove all the technical challenges of creating an e-commerce website. No coding, no hiring web developers, just click and type for the most part.

Additionally, it comes with amazing support every step of the way, so that you’ll never get stuck. There are a few aspects of EKM that really stand out for me, and I’ll highlight them throughout this review.

Support Is Automatic When You Sign Up

EKM was built for small business owners like you who want a great website to sell their products, but don’t have any technical background at all.

While all the features are designed around this concept, the most impressive one to me is the support that EKM provides.

When you make a new account, you get an account manager assigned to you for 6 months. Your account manager will actively help you get the website that your business needs up and running.

Expert Advice Tailored for You

Now, that doesn’t mean that they’re going to do everything for you. But whenever you need advice or have a question about how to do something through the EKM platform, they will provide detailed, expert advice.

They can help through phone or email, depending on your preference. It is worth mentioning is that you don’t pay anything extra for access to an account manager, it’s built-in to the price of a package.

EKM Account Manager

There are hundreds of things your account manager could help you with, but here are a few specific ones to get a good picture of how they can help:

• Help you set-up tax and delivery options.
• Help you pick out a website theme that has everything your business needs.
• Give you marketing advice on how to drive new customers to your website.

After those first 6 months is up, you’ll have to part ways with your account manager.

Regular Support

However, the regular support is still great. You can get support  7 days a week, through their ticketing system. You can also opt for emailing or for phone support during normal UK working hours.

On top of that, there’s a great knowledge base full of tutorials, as well as video guides that show how to make specific changes to your website.

I haven’t come across another site builder of any kind with this level of support.

EKM Is One of the Easiest Ways to Set up an Online Shop

Let’s go through what creating and editing a site through EKM actually looks like.

Even the most basic e-commerce website has a high level of complexity to it. So even though EKM is designed for simplicity, it still takes some time to go through all the steps to set-up your website.

However, not only is your account manager there to help you, but there’s also a step-by-step guide built-in to your dashboard:

It will guide you through the main areas that you need to address before launching your website. Overall, there are 4 main areas of concern.

Your Store is Already Designed for You

The design is made simple in EKM. All you really need to do is pick a theme. Once you do, the design (colors and layout) will be applied to your website in seconds.

You can browse the available themes by going to the EKM site: there are around 100 to choose from.

They are all designed to work on any device (laptop, mobile, etc.) that your customers use. If you’d like to see examples of websites built with EKM by real small businesses, you can see examples on the EKM website.

Browse EKM store features

Building Your Shop

Once you’ve picked a design, you need to fill out information about your business. You can divide this into 2 major tasks.

The first goal is to fill out your business information. You can create pages to explain your business’ history, or how to contact you. These are all handled in the “web pages” section of your account.

Again, the layout is done for you, you just need to add the text and any images you’d like.

Adding Your Inventory

The other main task is to add your inventory. If you already sell online through eBay, you’ll be happy to know that you can integrate your EKM store with your eBay listings.

You start by linking up your eBay account, and then you can automatically import your products from eBay into your EKM store. You can continue to sell products on both, your inventory will stay synced.

The alternative, if you don’t sell online already, is to upload your products manually.

Setting Up Your eBay Account With EKM in 10 Steps

Here are 9 short steps which will have you set with your EKM connected eBay account. It’s quick and simple, followed by only configuration steps once connected:

1. On your EKM dashboard, select ‘Features’
2. Search for the ‘eBay Integration’ icon and click it
3. Select ‘Install Feature’ in green
4. Enter your eBay account details
5. Link your eBay shop by clicking the next green button
6. Agree to EKM’s terms upon signing in
7. Once eBay confirms the linking of your accounts, accept the confirmation
8. Wait for the integration options to show up
9. Select Settings
10. Now you are ready to configure your linked accounts

You can upload a picture, set a product name, and other product details, one at a time. Finally, you can specify how much inventory you have of each product.

You can always manually change the inventory, but it will also automatically update if you make online sales.

Filling Out Business Information and Settings

EKM lets you set which delivery options you’d like to support. You just need to check a box to enable or disable each delivery option.

When an option is enabled, you’re able to set custom prices based on the region that the customer wants the product shipped to. You’re also able to specify which regions you will and won’t ship to.

There are a ton of delivery options that you can customize to your liking. There’s a complete guide on the EKM site.

Accepting Payment

Finally, accepting payment is incredibly simple on EKM. You can start accepting payment within 48 hours of creating your site.

You can connect your payment account of any popular gateway.

Once you connect your account(s), that’s all there is to it. Visitors will be able to order products off your site, and you’ll receive payment. At any time, you can go to “orders” in your account’s menu and see all orders and when they were made.

What are EKM’s Top Features?

There are a ton of features available, but a few of them stand out to me.

Increase Your Sales With Live Chat

In addition to the features above, you’ll get to add a live chat widget to your store.

If someone’s browsing a product page and has a quick question, they can send it to you through the live chat, and you can answer instantly. This helps improve conversion rates significantly.

Follow-Up on Abandoned Carts

Next, EKM can send customers email reminders if they abandon their cart before checking out.

This is a great way to make extra sales with very little effort on your part.

Robust Product Search

Finally, all EKM sites also have a great product search. This lets visitors search through your inventory for certain products they’re interested in. It’s not easy or cheap to build one of these from scratch, which is why a free feature like this is so valuable.

SSL Certificates

Another great feature is that all sites have an SSL certificate, which makes your site more secure, which in turn makes visitors more comfortable.

View EKM sales tools