What is BigCommerce
BigCommerce (www.bigcommerce.com) is one of the main builders for ecommerce, with more integrated sales tools than many competitors, features SEO and fantastic multi-channel integration.
It has some ready-to-use ecommerce management features including a robust product catalog, flexible shipping and real-time quotes, coupons and discount tools, and more.
Who is BigCommerce for?
BigCommerce (www.bigcommerce.com) is designed to help propel large, fast-growing companies in the industry, such as:
- new ecommerce;
- ecommerce that sell through other platforms (e.g. Instagram, Etsy eBay): if you already have a strong presence on other platforms, BigCommerce is for you;
- Established ecommerce stores that have outgrown the capabilities of their current platform.
BigCommerce Features
BigCommerce offers many eCommerce features - here are some of the features that differentiate BigCommerce from its competitors.
Marketing Features
With the help of built-in marketing features and a wide range of third-party apps, you can further grow your audience and build your brand (www.bigcommerce.com/essentials/features/drive-traffic/marketing/).
Search Engine Optimization
From a functionality point of view SEO, BigCommerce already generates your URLs for web pages, posts and products based on best practices Search Engine Friendly. You also have the freedom to edit your URLs and change other SEO aspects on the page via apps. Finally, BigCommerce has invested heavily in fast loading, particularly for mobile devices.
Banner
You can use banners for various promotional and non-promotional purposes to capture your audience's attention and highlight your main content.
Email Marketing
The platform includes integrations with email marketing such as MailChimp, HubSpot, iContact and Constant Contact. With this feature, you can integrate functionality to your ecommerce for collecting newsletter subscribers, sending newsletters and email marketing automation.
Social Media Tools
BigCommerce makes it easy to sell on social media. Simply add "Buy Now" buttons on Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter to turn social browning into online shopping.
Some other features include a basic blog platform, mailing list tools, customer group management, app integrations, and product filtering tools. Let's not forget that you can extend the functionality with App Market apps as well. One of the big advantages of BigCommerce's full feature set is that you don't have to rely on third-party apps or content. You can then manage everything from a single platform.
Ecommerce Features
The ecommerce-specific features (www.bigcommerce.com/essentials/features/manage/) help manage the complexity of setting up and running your store, helping your business save time and money.
Ecommerce Store Builder
BigCommerce provides an intuitive ecommerce builder and the possibility to further customize the design of your ecommerce thanks to the many templates (www.bigcommerce.com/theme-store/).
Warehouse Management
BigCommerce allows you to import products, set up inventory tracking, update stock levels and understand order trends over time in a few simple steps (www.bigcommerce.com/essentials/features/manage/inventory-management/). Tracking inventory across online and offline channels is easier than ever with its seamless native management tools. Apart from that, you can edit every little detail of your products as you wish. Moreover, BigCommerce is the only platform where you can sell products, downloads, event tickets and services without having to pay for third-party apps.
Order processing
Bigcommerce allows you to process orders, print invoices and shipping documents. Basically, it manages the order throughout its journey to fulfillment.
Variety of payment gateways
You can process payments from multiple sources, including PayPal, Square, Amazon Pay, VISA Checkout, Apple Pay, Stripe, Klarna, Adyen and many more.
Multivalue
The multi-currency feature helps BigCommerce stand out as one of the platforms to manage multi-currency ecommerce. BigCommerce collaborates with 5 popular payment gateways that support multiple currencies. This feature allows merchants to improve their cross-border sales as the currency will be automatically converted to the customers' native currency. The multi-currency feature is available for all pricing plans at no additional cost.
Multichannel
With BigCommerce, you can sell on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, eBay, Amazon and more. And you can track all sales from those websites using data reporting tools. These tools help you highlight trends, performance tracking, conversion rates, and other metrics right from your dashboard.
Cart level discounts
Although almost all ecommerce platforms support some form of discounts or coupons, few support discounts that can be automatically applied to customers' shopping carts. BigCommerce (www.bigcommerce.com) provides simple built-in tools to set up over 70 types of segmented discounts that would require plugins on other platforms.
Taxes and shipping
BigCommerce offers a wide range of shipping options, including real-time shipping quotes for higher rate plans. It also has an all-in-one solution for shipping tools.
There is a free app called ShipStation which allows you to get special discounts with leading companies such as DHL, USPS, Fedex and others. You can provide in-store pickup, next day delivery, shipment tracking, free shipping and more.
In March 2019, BigCommerce announced a new shipping solution for those who want more discounts and easier setup. It includes:
- faster shipping from FedEx Express;
- display of shipping rates on your website;
- better accuracy of its real-time rates; more discounted rates from UPS, USPS, DHL and Fedex;
- an automated area to configure your shipment;
- Management of all your shipping functionality from a central hub.
In addition, BigCommerce allows you to set up your own tax calculation rules. Or another option is to connect with a third-party tax service to automate tax calculations and document submissions, and display a label on your page indicating whether your price includes tax or not.
Conversion functionality
According to the official website, BigCommerce users achieve higher average orders than industry benchmarks thanks to features to reduce friction and optimize conversion (www.bigcommerce.com/essentials/features/convert/).
Recovery of the abandoned trolley
When a customer enters their email and then abandons their products in the cart, it can send an automated email to prompt them to purchase. Based on 2019 research from the Baymard Institute, the average rate of cart abandonment is 69.57% and a study points out that personalized emails are six times more effective than regular emails.
Customizable checkout
BigCommerce has recently changed its checkout module. It now offers access to its Checkout SDK, or a library full of JavaScript elements for your checkout. With this new feature, you can customize every part of your checkout page, from the background images to the number of steps it takes for a customer to move through the process.
Integrations
BigCommerce integrates with multiple digital channels (www.bigcommerce.com/apps/).
You can integrate your BigCommerce store with eBay, Amazon, Google, Instagram, Square and Facebook. Big CommerceoOffers also POS (point of sale) integration for physical stores including inventory management.
BigCommerce offers deep integration with ShipperHQ, which is one of the world's leading engines for calculating shipping costs and generating rules. This should provide accurate quotes from a range of shipping services on demand.
BigCommerce can import your store from any other ecommerce platform, if you've already created a website but want to switch services. With a Pro plan, you can also import your custom SSL from a third party.
Opinions and reviews on BigCommerce
You can take a look at user reviews at https://www.g2.com/products/bigcommerce/reviews.
Prices by BigCommerce
A free trial. It lasts for 15 days, allows you to test everything and effectively set up your online store from start to finish. However, your customers won't be able to buy anything from you if you are taking advantage of the free trial. For that, you need to upgrade.
They are available three main floors Standard, Plus and Pro for individual sellers (www.bigcommerce.com/essentials/pricing/) and Enterprise for business solutions.
Standard Plan
Big Commerce's Standard plan at $ 29.95 per month -gives you everything you need from day one and doesn't limit the size of your ecommerce store in any way. Get unlimited products, storage space and bandwidth and you can accept credit cards and PayPal. There is a transaction fee of 1.5%.
Plus Plan
If you don't want to deal with any transaction fees, you will need to upgrade to Plus to $ 79.95 per month. Plus represents a plan with features at a reasonable price.
Plan Pro
Pro ($ 299.95 per month) is for ecommerce businesses with growing inventory. Product filtering will greatly improve the user experience.
Bigcommerce Enterprise
Perfect for larger companies, the plan Enterprise (www.bigcommerce.com/enterprise-pricing/) is the highest level of service that BigCommerce provides to its merchants.
BigCommerce Enterprise is intended for high-volume companies, usually those that handle over $ 450,000 in annual sales. Big names like Toyota and Gibson use BigCommerce Enterprise for their online sales platforms. Enterprise features are meant to handle huge traffic flows and facilitate high conversion rates. Merchants have an uptime of 99.99%, so their sites don't crash even on the busiest days.
