BIGCOMMERCE – BEST ECOMMERCE BUILDER FOR LARGE AND FASTT GROWING BUSINESSES
BigCommerce is a leading e – commerce builder that delivers extreme scalability to online stores. It has more integrated sales tools than any of its rivals, blending these features with advanced SEO and fantastic multi – channel integration. It’s designed to help the big leagues create large and rapidly growing businesses! Today, WebsitesAdvice will be doing a comprehensive review of BigCommerce.
BigCommerce is a top eCommerce site that allows you to create an online store. It lets you set up your store, add products, and make money on your website. But that’s not all of it. BigCommerce is a specialized eCommerce manufacturer, which means it’s designed to help you sell online. With tons of built – in features, data tools, and more, BigCommerce is best suited to large or fast – growing businesses. You ‘re not going to outgrow this platform anytime soon!
BigCommerce ‘s clients include big brand names including Toyota, Honda, Kodak, and Ben & Jerry. To small businesses looking to scale up, BigCommerce boasts an impressive average annual growth rate of 28 per cent for its customers. It’s not just hype. Here at Website Builder Specialist, we conduct thorough research on all the builders we ‘re reviewing. We ‘re putting each one through the hours of intense user testing and ranking. We compare, evaluate and deepen our knowledge of each manufacturer’s features, pricing, design flexibility, customer support and sales tools.
BigCommerce was no exception: we put the platform through its paces, and there was a good third overall out of all the eCommerce builders we tested (just beaten by Shopify and Wix). BigCommerce was also number one for the features of the website, and was only behind Shopify when it came to sales apps. Might BigCommerce be the right manufacturer of eCommerce for you? Check out how we shine a spotlight on the consistency of its features, ease of use, sample designs, and more. Time is money, so let’s get started now!
HOW EASY TO USE BIGCOMMERCE?
As a business owner, you want to spend as much time as you can looking after your clients, selling goods, and watching your profits go up; you don’t want to spend precious hours trying to reshape a text box. That’s why ease of use is so important, and why we research it so thoroughly. So how did BigCommerce do the research in our ease of use? It was fairly average, to be frank.
The main reason people were disappointed with BigCommerce was its user interface. Once you build your shop, it’s divided between two regions. One is where you add products and handle the “behind the scenes” aspects of your store –e.g. sales and shipping –while the other is where you edit your storefront. To counter this, we recommend that you set up the inventory portion of your store first. Upload all your products, add items such as discounts, and then go to the storefront editor to customize your storefront.
The good news is, BigCommerce recently released a new and exciting feature to make designing your shop easier than ever before! The new visual merchandising tool is called Shop Design, which means that you can see the effects of your edits. This new feature makes BigCommerce a lot more customizable. One thing that remains a consistent issue with BigCommerce is its terminology. It’s very complex, and this makes it unfit for beginners. You need to know the technical terms, or else you could waste a lot of time just figuring out what they mean–which, let’s face it, is a lot less fun than actually building your store.
BigCommerce is an eCommerce builder designed to take stores to big business. Think of it as a jumbo jet: it has all the powerful tools you need to take your online store on a long – haul flight, without you having to change planes halfway through. Nevertheless, you ‘re not going to be able to fly it right after passing your pilot’s test! With great power comes great difficulty, and BigCommerce isn’t perfect for anyone who isn’t tech – savvy. However, the recent release of the Shop Design Tool is a major step forward. It demonstrates that BigCommerce listens to input from its users and makes it easier for its builder to use.
SALES TOLS AND FEATURES
So, what are these great features that we keep going about? BigCommerce has the best in-house apps of any eCommerce producer. We provide a high level of quality and the reliance on third party apps. You basically have everything you need right at your disposal, and at no extra cost.
PRODUCT TYPES
BigCommerce is the only eCommerce retailer on the market that makes it possible to sell physical, digital and service – based products without having to use an app. All of these distribution forms are already included in the publisher. This means less hassle and less expense, because you don’t need to worry about using third party apps.
PAYMENT OPTIONS
Once you’ve set up all the items and are ready to sell them like hot cakes, you need a way to get paid! Unlike some other eCommerce creators, BigCommerce doesn’t trap you in its own payment gateway. Better still, it does not impose transaction fees on any of its plans. Instead, you can choose your own payment gateway without imposing any additional charges or transaction fees. The only fees are the normal credit charges added to your preferred payment gateway (the average credit card rate is 2.2 % + 30¢).
You have over 65 integrated payment gateways to choose from. With one-click setup, mobile payments, and multiple currencies supported, BigCommerce is doing its best to get you paid quickly. Payment providers shall include:
- PayPal
- Stripe
- Square
- Apple Pay
- Amazon Pay
- Adyen
BigCommerce has established relationships with payment providers to help you succeed, in order to reduce your cost. For example, no transaction fees for all BigCommerce planning come with PayPal rates pre-negotiated. The longer you stay with BigCommerce and change the price plans, the lower your prices go–they will actually drop from 2.9% to 2.2% or lower at times!
SHIPPING OPTIONS
A collection of shipping options is offered by BigCommerce. You can get shipping offers in real time, give your customers a free shipping and print shipping labels, all with third – party integrations from BigCommerce. BigCommerce also has its own all-in – one shipping system service. Only set up the new gratis BigCommerce Shipping app and enjoy special discounts with USPS, DHL and FedEx (up to 80% off!).
Stay happy with your customers by tracking their shipments, taking delivery and delivery in stores and by automating their delivery businesses to make their own lives easier. The main thing is that you can handle all of your shipments from one central hub quickly. BigCommerce shipping comes with tons of advantages. Transportation can be a struggle, but BigCommerce aims to provide you with the most powerful tools.
SECURITY
The largest number of features designed in by any ecommerce creator is BigCommerce. This includes a key SSL Security Certificate, encrypting user data for safe online payments.
HOW ABOUT THE TEMPLATES? ARE THEY GOOD?
To stay ahead of competition, your online shop will need all of the latest sales tools. But the first point that your visitors notice is the design of the website when it comes to standing out from the crowd. Over 100 themes are available from BigCommerce. The 12 free themes and more than 100 paid themes range between $145 and $235. There are many themes of which to choose!
Fortunately, BigCommerce makes finding your perfect topic really easy. You can look for your template by industry or layout. You can choose grid designs or layouts with large pictures, for instance. You can also view free or paid subjects and find tailor-made search results using the search bar. Themes vary according to the sector under which they are classified. Themes of the category ‘Mode & Jewelry’ have a product zoom feature for example, but these are not included in other categories. It is therefore worth looking for a topic that best suits the needs of your store.
Before you choose the theme, you can preview it, a useful choice. Don’t panic if you pick a subject and change your mind! Whenever you want, you can change your template. All big business issues are fully mobile. The mobile view cannot be edited because the topic reforms to fit mobile screens automatically. It means that you don’t have to worry about losing mobile customers for a second time. This is an important function with more than 50 percent of traffic on mobile devices.
DESIGN CUSTOMIZATION
How customizable are the themes of big business? The real question is. It’s an exciting answer to a question. A new visual merchandising tool called Store Design was recently released by BigCommerce. This tool changes everything, while before you had to adapt your storefront in two separate spaces and wait to see the results!
You can choose from the Store Design tool and customize parts of your page right in front of you. This allows you to instantly monitor everything from the background colors to logo locations, number of products, colors of the navigation flap, etc. This new tool gives BigCommerce themes a much higher degree of personalization than ever before.
HELP AND SUPPORT
Any problem can be expensive when you make money on your website. Thankfully, BigCommerce has help options for quick and easy sorting. The available assistance and support channels depend on the price plan. BigCommerce offers support for live chat and 24/7 phone services. You don’t have to stress at 4 am, count the time until 9 am. Just pick up the phone or open a live chat in the morning, in order to solve your problem.
Email support is also available. Indeed, when you sign up for a free trial, you receive a letter to discuss your company, its objectives, and how BigCommerce can help you to achieve your goals by offering you a 10-minute call. You can use video tutorials–even better, BigCommerce Help Center – alongside telephone, live chat and email.
You unlock priority support if you are on the most expensive business plan. This includes a consultant for onboarding and priority phone calls. This provides the highest standard of quality support to your store with immediate connections to the highly trained and senior support staff.
BIGCOMMERCE PRICING
Everyone knows you’ve got to spend the money to make the money. But how much do you have to pay on BigCommerce? BigCommerce has four pricing plans in place:
- The Standard Plan is the cheapest at $29.95/ month
- The most popular is the $71.95/month Plus Plan
- The Pro Plan will cost you $224.95/month and provides even more scalable features
- The Enterprise Plan is the most advanced, and has custom pricing
There’s a 15-day free trial, and you can even ask for a demo to see how BigCommerce will help your online store.
The Standard Plan sets up a well-rounded, fully equipped online store for you. It’s best to set up your business and find your feet before scaling up–we ‘d say it’s good for sales of up to $50K a year. The standard features of the plan include:
- Unlimited number of products to sell
- Unlimited staff accounts
- Multiple sales channels, such as eBay, Amazon, Facebook, and Google Shopping
- Coupons, discounts, and gift cards
- Real time shipping quotes
- Product ratings and reviews
- 24/7 support
As you work your way up the price levels, you unlock more advanced features. It’s worth noting that you’re just getting Abandoned Cart Recovery on Plus and higher.
The Plus Plan is the most common one, at $71.85/month. It is suitable for businesses that make up to $150k in annual sales. It’s also the best way to grow your business, as it comes with marketing tools like:
- Abandoned Cart Recovery
- Customer groups to reward frequent shoppers
- Store credit cards
- Sending automatic emails to draw customers back to your site and rewarding frequent and long-term buyers gives your business extra appeal.
For $224.95 a month, the Pro Plan is ideally suited to scaling up fast-growing companies with up to $400k in online revenue a year. You’ve got everything included in the lower plans, plus bonus features like:
- Google customer reviews
- Product search filtering
- Custom SSL (Secure Sockets Layer)
This gives your customers a higher level of user experience on your site. Easy shopping with product search filters and trusts recognized brands like Google. If you have one, you can even apply your own custom SSL certificate.
There is no denying it: BigCommerce has costlier plans than some rivals. This is however due to all the built – in features it comes with. While other ecommerce builders require you to use lots of third – party apps, BigCommerce provides you with most of these features. That means you don’t rack up any unforeseen costs. Those prices really represent the ideal users of BigCommerce. You pay for a whole range of really powerful tools and these costs should help large and fast – growing businesses rather than hold them back. Why? For what? You ‘d likely be hitting with a smaller (and cheaper) ecommerce builder as they eliminate the roof.
REVIEW SUMMARY
BigCommerce is a top builder of ecommerce, with a lot of weight behind it. In our research on the ecommerce owners, it came third overall. Impressive data reports, a large inventory, and any builder’s most built-in features make it a force to be reckoned with. It is perfect for both large and fast – growing companies. If you’re not looking for growth or are a total beginner, it’s not for you that this builder is.
Its strong features make BigCommerce a little like a rocket. Add it to the right company and the next tax rate will blast you in. But apply that to something that the stars don’t touch, and you’re going to spend a lot of money on fuel just to get from A to B. BigCommerce provides businesses of all shapes and sizes, so don’t be turned off if you’re not the biggest store on the playground. If you’re planning to grow your business you’ll simply get the most out of this ecommerce builder.
If you think BigCommerce is the perfect location to expand your business, why wait? Try it for 15 days free, no card details are needed and decide for yourself!
Do you have any experience using BigCommerce? Share with us your comments below!