BigCommerce is big on commerce and less towards site building. If you’re looking to sell, I recommend you stick to that and let BigCommerce worry about the technology.
BigCommerce is an all-in-one eCommerce platform with lots of useful features that allow you to create and maintain an online store the easy way. It offers users a complete set of tools for building online stores such payment gateway integration, advanced marketing tools, reliable hosting and security for backing your stores.
BigCommerce Features
Dedication to a cause is an admirable trait and BigCommerce certainly does with a vengeance. Everything about the site from the time you sign up is all about how to make those sales. By that, I mean that even the ‘Getting Started’ tutorial highlight related items such as analytics, revenue, products and orders.
There are MANY pre-configured marketing e-mails that will help in your sales efforts
Highlights #1: Sell Everywhere
With BigCommerce, you can integrate your store with different sales channels to boost your sales.
BigCommerce features a useful channel manager named “Omni-Channel“. It lets you connect and sell your products on different marketplaces.
It will import your products into the channels you connect. So you don't need to add product details manually on each channel.
It offers you to sell on:
Marketplaces like Amazon, eBay and Google Shopping
Social Media like Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram
Physical Stores like Square, ShopKeep and Springboard Retail
BigCommerce offers a clean, easy-to-use interface backed by powerful tools
When you get a sale on any connected channel, you can process the order from the BigCommerce Dashboard. It saves you lots of valuable time.
Highlights #2: Abandoned Cart Saver feature
BigCommerce Abandoned Carts is a feature worth mentioning. The feature will send up to 3 automated emails to visitors who didn't complete the checkout process. Clearly, this has the potential to increase your revenue from unpaid products in visitors' cart.
Here's where you can set up a series of email and configure when to send them. This is just one-time configuration.
Recover sales with BigCommerce abandoned carts.
Many site customers will leave our site keeping unpurchased items in the cart. In fact, more than 70% of the eCommerce shopping carts are abandoned before check out. Thus, we may recover them by sending some timely emails.
From BigCommerce statistics, the BigCommerce Abandoned Cart Saver helps merchant recover 15% of lost sales on average.
Highlights #3: Set your own promotion rules
You can personalized coupon codes and discounts for your stores. Plus, you can display banners ads to promote those offers. The native system lets you create and place banner ads more easily.
BigCommerce offers Cart-Level Discount. That means discount will apply to the shopping cart in real time to avoid unnecessary complexity. Deep targeting options also available in the discount system to show exclusive offers before checkout. Like, buy one more item to get free shipping.
Bigcommerce cart-level discount.
Highlights #4: Payment gateways and transaction fees The lack of different payment methods can lose you sales.
Customers will look for a comfortable payment method when they are paying. BigCommerce doesn't lock merchants with just a few payment methods.
There are more than 40 pre-integrated payment methods you can find that serves over 100 countries. The platform has native integration with PayPal, Square, Adyen, Stripe, Authorize.net and Klarna and credit card payments (powered by Braintree).
BigCommerce provides multiple payment methods.
As mobile wallet options, they are payment methods such as Amazon Pay and Apple Pay.
Depending on the payment gateway you choose, there is a certain percentage of a transaction fee merchants need to pay. Although BigCommerce doesn't charge you any transaction fees, these fees are charged by payment processing provider.
Do take note, with BigCommerce, there are no transaction fees applied to any of their plans. This is something good and stands out from others.
Using BigCommerce Store Front Editor
Customizing store front design at BigCommerce
Basic store profile configuration.
Adding payment method.
Adding product and details.
BigCommerce Themes Demo
Theme customization options is limited with Bigcommerce but you get plenty of choices at their 3rd party theme store.
I built a dummy store and measure the site's performance using Web Page Test. Results were up to expectation but First Byte Time can be improved.
BigCommerce Plans & Pricing
Plans/Price
Standard
Plus
Pro
Enterprise
Monthly Price
$29.95
$79.95
$249.95
Custom
Sales threshold
Up to $50,000
Up to $150,000
Up to $1,000,000
Unlimited
Transaction fees
0%
0%
0%
0%
Abandoned cart saver
–
Yes
Yes
Yes
Google customer reviews
–
–
Yes
Yes
24/7 Support
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
What you get in BigCommerce plan?
Note that BigCommerce plan and pricing is very depending on your store revenue. BigCommerce set a limit on your annual sales based on a different plan. As your sales increase, you are required to upgrade to a higher plan.
Here's the list of all BigCommerce plans offer:
Unlimited products, storage, and bandwidth
Unlimited staff accounts
eBay and Amazon connected
Point of sale
Social channel integration (Facebook, Pinterest, and Google Shopping)
Single-page checkout
Built-in blog
Mobile wallet (Amazon Pay and Apple Pay)
Coupons, discounts, and gift certificates
Responsive websites
Free sitewide HTTPS and dedicated SSL
Shipper HQ shipping rules engine
Special credit card rate from PayPal
Success Stories
BigCommerce has a wide range of success stories but here we’ll go with a big-name brand that has used it with effect – Toyota Australia.
Given how big the brand is, you can be certain that before choosing BigCommerce there were comprehensive studies done, and it was acceptable. If Toyota is willing to go for it, why can’t you?
BigCommerce is big on commerce and less towards site building.
The concept, design and presentation of the entire product is skewed towards that are to perfection and price-wise, I think it’s a win given that pulling together all those features and components on your own would be horribly expensive, not to mention a complete nightmare. If you’re looking to sell, I recommend you stick to that and let BigCommerce worry about the technology.
BigCommerce offers a 15-day risk-free trial to experience the platform yourself. Also, there's no credit card detail required. So, you can be very sure that it won't charge you if you decided not to continue after 15 days.
Here's the link you can follow to setup an online store with BigCommerce.
Create a free trial online store with BigCommerce.Fill in a few details to create your store.
Timothy Shim is a writer, editor, and tech geek. Starting his career in the field of Information Technology, he rapidly found his way into print and has since worked with International, regional and domestic media titles including ComputerWorld, PC.com, Business Today, and The Asian Banker. His expertise lies in the field of technology from both consumer as well as enterprise points of view.