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For Canadian business owners looking to move their stores online (to cash in on e-commerce sales both at home and abroad), it’s hard to know which website builder and hosting platform makes the most sense.
That’s because there are so many to choose from, including Weebly, Squarespace Canada, Wix, and WordPress.
If you’re looking at Weebly as a potential platform for your e-commerce site, keep reading!
Weebly is an excellent choice for small businesses as it makes building an online store easy, with basic e-commerce features such as inventory management and shipping tools.
It’s intuitive and powerful, making it easy to build attractive sites without having to enter one line of code.
Need more information about how Weebly works for Canadian e-commerce sites?
This comprehensive guide will help you get started.
Table of Contents
In Short…
Here’s a brief summary of the most popular questions Canadian merchants ask before starting an e-commerce store with Weebly:
- Can I use a .ca domain name? YES
- Can I display details in metric terms? YES
- Can I run my store in Canadian currency? YES
- Can I add retail sales tax like HST/GST/QST/PST? YES
- Can I control sales tax by province? YES
- Can I add real-time shipping rates from Canada Post? YES
- Can I automate emails after purchase? YES, via Weebly Promote
- Can I ensure compliance with Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation with Weebly emails? YES
Using a .ca domain
Note that, if you are starting from scratch, Weebly offers .ca domain registration through their site. (Scroll to the bottom of this page to search for a domain)
If you already have a .ca domain registered, and would like to transfer it to Weebly, you can do so via Weebly’s “Domains” page.
To connect any domain, you will have to have a Personal, Professional or Performance Weebly account, which start at $7 Canadian per month ($84 Canadian per year).
If you already own a domain, you can choose to use it for Weebly by:
- Transferring it directly to Weebly, which will allow you to manage and renew it right from your Weebly account
- Point your domain’s A Records to Weebly’s IP address, which will allow you to publish your site through Weebly while managing and renewing your domain via your current registrar
Subscription tiers for e-commerce
In order to set up your Canadian e-commerce site, you will need to ensure you have the correct subscription level.
While Weebly does have a “free” version, if you need your e-commerce site to have a branded domain, you will need to purchase a Personal, Professional, or Performance tier.
Each tier has these main e-commerce features:
- Shopping cart
- Unlimited items
- Item badges and options
- Quick Shop
- Inventory management
- In-store pickup options
- Automatic tax calculation
- Digital coupons
- Square gift cards
- SEO features
- Lead capture capabilities
However, the Professional tier offers a shipping calculator, and the Performance e-commerce tier offers a shipping calculator as well as:
- Paypal payment acceptance
- Item reviews
- Shipping labels
- Abandoned shopping cart email automation
- Advanced e-commerce insights for marketing purposes
Weebly Canadian Pricing
No matter which tier you choose, the pricing on Weebly is quite reasonable.
Weebly Canadian prices are as follows billed annually:
Personal Tier Pricing: $7 per month ($84 per year)
Professional Tier Pricing: $15 per month ($180 per year)
Performance Tier Pricing: $30 per month ($360 per year)
Weebly bills in Canadian dollars and on a yearly basis as noted above, not monthly, however they do give users the option of paying monthly.
If you choose to go with monthly billing, the prices rise to $10 per month, $20 per month and $35 per month respectively for the plans above.
Support Options
If you ever run into issues with your Weebly account, the platform offers multiple touchpoints to help you out. Users of any tier of service can choose between:
- Browsing the community forum
- Connecting to a Weebly specialist via chat and email support
- Calling Weebly directly via their phone support line
Customer support is available Monday-Friday 6AM-6PM PST (9AM-9PM EST) and Saturday-Sunday 8AM-5PM PST (11AM-8PM EST).
Individuals who choose the performance tier pricing get the added benefit of priority support, meaning they go to the front of the line to get the help the moment they need it.
Adding a professional business email
Much like Wix, Weebly allows users to sign up for a professional email via G Suite.
It’s easy to get started – users simply need to go to the G Suite account on their page.
It’s important to note here that your domain must be purchased from or pointed to Weebly in order to sign up for your G Suite email via your Weebly account.
Once you’ve connected with G Suite, you can enter in the username you prefer for your email address (such as [email protected]).
After that, it’s as simple as choosing your password and purchasing the email.
In Canada, G Suite email is an affordable $7.80/user/month and users can connect as many emails as they like.
With Weebly, you can either sign-in directly via gmail.com or go to mail.google.com/a/yourdomainhere.com to check your inbox.
Alternatively, you can also check your inbox from directly in Weebly using the platform’s convenient “Go To Inbox” option on the back end.
Should you choose this option, you may see a reminder to agree to the terms of service on your admin page the first time you check your G Suite tab after signing up.
Customizing for the Canadian market
Weebly’s e-commerce platform makes it easy for Canadian businesses to cater to their local market.
From your Weebly backend, you can tweak your store in a number of ways to ensure it’s showing information in the correct manner.
Switching to the metric system
Weebly makes it easy for Canadians to change to metric.
In order to adjust this, simply go to Store > Setup > General on your website’s Weebly backend and choose the correct measurements.
Currency selections
It’s possible to change currencies in Weebly so that your prices show as Canadian.
To find the option to switch currency, visit your Online Store Dashboard and go to Settings > Checkout > Advanced Settings.
It’s important to note here that this setting cannot be changed while connected to a payment processor.
Payment processing options
As you may or may not be aware, Square recently purchased Weebly, which means, if you are already using their service, your Square Online Store is automatically configured to use your Square account to process payments.
There is no additional setup required and you can begin selling online as soon as you’re ready.
Canadian e-commerce business owners can also connect Paypal to their account.
This gives customers more payment choices when shopping on your website.
At this point, however, payment options such as Google Pay and Apple Pay are only available in the UK and the USA.
Setting up Canadian tax rates
Canadian business owners using Weebly will be happy to hear the platform has tax tools built right into the system, making it easy to set up and manage tax rates.
Weebly customers can use pre-populated country and province taxes.
However, it should be noted that tax settings from your Square account don’t sync with your Weebly online store.
To ensure you have the correct taxes aligned to online purchases, you’ll have to visit Settings>Taxes.
While taxes are pre-populated for Canadian provinces and territories, they can be overridden in Weebly if necessary.
To create Canadian tax rates in Weebly:
- Go to Settings > Taxes
- Click “Add Tax Rate” in the Tax Rates area, or, if you’ve added shipping rates for Canada previously, click “Set Up” in the regions list.
Shipping using Canada Post
Weebly helps e-commerce companies with Performance tier plans based in Canada take advantage of RTS (Real-Time Shipping) options to help simplify the shipping process.
Canadian users can also connect to Canada Post to cover all of their shipping needs within Canada.
By adding shipping details to your products (box size, and maximum weight allowance) the shipping information gets generated automatically during checkout to give users an idea of costs.
Weebly users don’t need to use RTS exclusively, however.
They can offer free shipping or charge shipping based on flat rate, order weight, order total, or item quality.
The great thing about Weebly is that e-commerce business owners don’t have to choose just one option.
They can use a combination of shipping options to give their customers the maximum amount of flexibility possible.
Regardless of the shipping options chosen, there’s a basic three-step process to setting up shipping:
- Add a shipping address (i.e.: from where you are shipping)
- Set the destination regions that you ship to
- Decide how you want to charge for shipping and set up your rates for each region
Once the setup is complete, customers will see the corresponding rates for the shipping address they enter upon checkout.
If you’ve added more than one shipping rate in an area, the customer will be able to choose which option they prefer.
To set up your shipping in Weebly, go to your dashboard and select Settings > Shipping.
Connecting with clients via Weebly’s marketing service
For Canadian e-commerce business owners that are looking for a complete e-mail marketing service, Weebly delivers via Weebly Promote.
This email marketing service helps build email campaigns that integrate with your online store.
You can use Promote to:
- Announce new products
- Send newsletters
- Share updates
- And so much more!
As a Promote subscriber, users can create automated emails to contacts based on certain actions.
This helps e-commerce businesses engage with their site’s visitors or offer incentives to users who haven’t visited your store in a while.
Promote is a great way to continuously reach out to your customers, however, keep in mind it does come at an added cost.
How to be anti-spam compliant for the Canadian marketplace
Weebly makes it clear that it is the responsibility of the business to ensure they are following the rules regarding Canada’s strict Anti-Spam Legislation.
That said, as there are many anti-spam laws around the world, Weebly does require that every email sent out through their platform has an unsubscribe button embedded within it, to give all users the option of unsubscribing from lists.
The bottom line
Weebly is a simple drag-and-drop website building platform that can easily cater towards Canadian businesses.
The functionality of the user interface makes it easy for even beginners to build out a simple e-commerce site.
It has great flexibility to allow users to adjust everything from tax rates to shipping options, and its backend is easy to navigate.
For businesses that want to keep in close contact with their customers, Weebly also offers an excellent email marketing extension via Weebly Promote to help automate messaging and newsletters.
In short, Weebly is a good solution to make e-commerce a breeze for Canadians.
If you’re ready to get started, you can use the below to begin your search for a domain.
