BigCommerce Review: Experiences and Features for 2021
Fortunately, the advent of technology is helping us with our daily needs, and without it, we would not know where we will be. Using a third party trading platform is critical to building a successful ecommerce business. But one such software to make it easier for business owners is BigCommerce.
Let’s take a look at one of the most popular store builders available today.
What is BigCommerce?
BigCommerce allows you to create, run and grow your own online store. Bigcommerce is a Saas (software as a service) product designed with e-commerce in mind; This means that you pay a recurring subscription to use the software and do not own it.
The software has a range of templates that you can customize depending on how you like to spice up the pages of your online store, as well as some tools to help you promote your store. You can use BigCommerce to sell digital vouchers and merchandise or physical merchandise.
Key feature
Simplify management
BigCommerce tools like inventory management, picking shipping and payment providers, and personalized shopping pages for your customers take most of the work and take away the guesswork when it comes to running your business.
Sales conversion
Advertising combined with Google AMP and Akamai Image Manager will increase the number of views and clicks on your site. However, this is only half as BigCommerce also allows you to streamline the checkout process with its streamlined checkout pages.
Drive internet traffic
BigCommerce also puts a lot of emphasis on SEO strategies and channel integration with firms like eBay and Amazon. This allows you to drive more traffic to your online store.
Get quick solutions
There is customer support for resolving issues you may encounter, including tips from BigCommerce experts, a community forum full of webinars and tutorials, and 24/7 phone support.
BigCommerce is primarily aimed at users who have little or no experience in web design, although it cannot be said that users with know-how do not get any value from it. Web developers can customize the CSS and HTML codes of their pages however they like.
BigCommerce is one of the more well-known e-commerce platforms serving big customers like Skullcandy and Toyota.
Key Features
BigCommerce is a paid service, and like many similar programs, some features are closed for paid access. Depending on the plan you purchased, there are additional features, but they are common to all policies, for example:
- Up to 12 free templates
- Integration with many payment gateways such as Paypal
- Sell physical or digital products at rates and categories of your choice
- Content Management (CMS)
- Unlimited staff accounts
- SEO functionality
- Akamai Image Manager optimizes images
- Email Marketing Integration
- View product reviews
- Customizing CSS and HTML
- Professional grade reports
These hefty feature sets show that BigCommerce offers a pretty decent return on your investment. As its name suggests, BigCommerce has several important features that you as a store owner might enjoy.
Sell all kinds of goods
Physical or digital services, whichever product you sell, is no problem for BigCommerce. They are all already built into the software, which means you don’t need to use another third-party app for every type of product.
BigCommerce is the only ecommerce platform on the market today that allows you to sell various types of products without the need for any third party software.
Various payment channels
Unlike many other ecommerce developers, BigCommerce does not block you with its payment channel and does not impose additional transaction fees.
BigCommerce is doing the right thing and letting you choose a channel with no additional fees. You only need to pay the regular fees of your chosen payment method.
One-click setup, multiple currencies and mobile payments are supported, and you have over 60 payment gateways to choose from. These include:
- Apple Pay
- Amazon Pay
- Paypal
- Skrill
- WorldPay
Plus, BigCommerce has forged relationships with various vendors to keep costs down. For example, all BigCommerce payment channels are free of surcharges and come with fixed terms from Paypal, negotiated with the platform itself.
Now that you stay a little longer with BigCommerce and decide to upgrade your subscription plan, your rates may drop. PayPal fees of 2.9% can drop to 2.2% or even lower.
Range of delivery options
BigCommerce allows you to get real-time shipping rates, print shipping labels, provide your customers with free shipping offers on your terms, and more. This is achieved through partnerships with third parties and platform integration.
BigCommerce shipping is a native all-in-one application for on-site shipping tools. The main advantage of this is that you can manage all your shipping operations from one device.
It allows you to streamline business operations with up-to-date tracking of shipments and satisfy your customers with in-store and next day delivery arrangements. The best part is that BigCommerce shipping tools are powerful and easy to use.
Security
BigCommerce has a significant number of built-in features, more than many eCommerce builders. It also emphasizes security as their security features include an SSL certificate.
Simply put, an SSL certificate encrypts your user’s data, including payment details. This makes the transaction safe.
Abandoned carts
BigCommerce’s Abandoned Cart Recovery Option is a boost to sales. When a customer leaves some of their products in the shopping cart at checkout, the seller can send an automated email to return them to the shopping cart.
You can even enter discount codes and send personalized messages. This method attracts an average of 15 customers out of 100, and customized emails are more readable than regular automated emails.
Relevant: Also read How to Remove or Change Woocommerce Checkout Fields.
Sell everywhere
Sell on virtually any platform with BigCommerce omnichannel integration like Facebook, Amazon, eBay, Pinterest, and more. Track related metrics with professional reporting tools.
Track efficiency and conversion rates without any hassle.
Plans and prices
The point is, you have to spend money to make money. Business owners cannot avoid this; the question is, are they spending money on value.
BigCommerce offers four pricing plans.
- The standard plan is slightly below $ 30 per month at $ 29.95 per month. It’s almost a dollar a day.
- The Plus plan is the most popular at $ 79.95 per month.
- The Pro plan is $ 299.95 per month.
- Enterprise plan, the price of which varies depending on the needs of your business. You will need to contact BigCommerce for custom pricing.
If you pay a lump sum for an annual Plus or Pro plan, you will receive a 10% discount on your subscription.
The Standard, Plus, and Pro plans are for small to midsize businesses, while the Enterprise plan is for larger companies with more requirements.
Review of plans
The BigCommerce Standard is their cheapest offering, but more expensive than the entry-level plans of some of the competition. However, this is definitely not a scam as their most affordable subscription is a more complete starter plan than most other products.
In addition to a fully functioning online store, the standard plan already gives you employee accounts, bandwidth to work, and file storage – all without limits. Along with gift cards and coupons, image optimization, data and reporting, and the ability to view ratings and reviews, the Standard is already a great buy.
All the main functions of the online store are included in the standard version, with the exception of the abandoned cart function. A Shopify competitor has included this in their starter plan, so it might be a deterrent for you.
In addition, Standard has an annual sales limit of $50,000. If this sales volume is exceeded, the program will automatically be upgraded to a Plus program with additional benefits.
BigCommerce Plus has additional benefits over the standard plan, including an abandoned cart tool, credit card storage, customer segmentation and grouping, and a persistent cart splash screen (stores products inside the cart regardless of device).
Customer grouping allows you to divide customers into different segments. For example, you can issue rewards based on customer activity or purchase-based loyalty programs.
BigCommerce plus has an annual sales limit of $ 180,000. As with the standard plan, when this amount is exceeded, you are automatically upgraded to Pro.
BigCommerce Pro
doesn’t have a significant amount of features compared to the Plus plan. One feature worth noting, however, is Google Customer Review, which allows you to collect and display reviews from those who have purchased from your store.
Including customer reviews Google prompts the buyer to provide feedback on Google. The ratings are then displayed on the site, in Google Shopping, and in search ads.
Plus, the Pro plan allows you to sell up to $ 400,000. For every $ 200,000 above this, there is an additional $ 150 monthly fee.
The BigCommerce Enterprise plan targets businesses with very large sales, typically in excess of a million. Due to this, they also have more complex operations and requirements.
Some of the advanced features of the Enterprise plan include advanced product filters, price lists, BigCommerce consulting, and API and software support.
If you want an Enterprise plan, you need to negotiate things and terms with BigCommerce Development Company in Lahore so they can set a price. The sales limit for this plan can also be negotiated.
The Enterprise plan with data customization, migration, account management and detailed technical consulting provides much more support than any other plan.
Transaction costs
If you’re asking yourself how much BigCommerce is taking on as a reduction in sales, the answer is no.
BigCommerce does not charge transaction fees for any of its plans. This is in contrast to its competitors, where they sometimes take a cut of your sales.
However, you need to pay a credit card commission for your chosen gateway. In addition, there are sales limits as mentioned above.
Some competing products do not have such restrictions, so this is a minus of BigCommerce.
General experience
Now that you know about the program and its multiple pricing tiers, let’s move on to the general user experience with BigCommerce.
Ease of use
We can say that ease of use is just as important as the price and functionality of the product. A business owner would like to spend time productively caring for customers or setting up shipping, not knowing how to insert images or resize a text box.
BigCommerce is relatively average in this regard, as are many other commercially available store builders. BigCommerce’s design interface can be confusing, especially for a new user.
However, once you get around that hurdle, BigCommerce is pretty easy to use and customize. The interface is intuitive and simple and very similar to the WordPress dashboard.
The Store Design tool allows you to see the effects of your edits, which means you can see how the site looks after edits, making your page customization more accessible. In earlier versions, this was a problem because store creation was split into two interfaces: the storefront and the behind-the-scenes interface.
Personally, however, one thing that has been consistent across versions of BigCommerce is the confusing terminology. You should be familiar with the terms so that you don’t waste a lot of time looking for their meaning.
This makes the system relatively unsuitable for beginners, especially those with no previous experience. For not very tech-savvy people, BigCommerce is not ideal to use.
With the recent release of the Store Design tool, BigCommerce demonstrates that it is taking steps to make it easier to use.
Customer satisfaction
A lot of people have already tested BigCommerce, and as with many of their reviews, I loved the power the software provides, even when using just the standard plan. It already has the features you need to run your online store.
I also liked the ease of adaptation and the power of the website builder. It gets the job done and results in a completely professional looking website.
As mentioned, BigCommerce’s technical language can prevent people from learning the program faster.
Plus, the sheer number of advanced features can sometimes be a limiting factor because they are quite difficult to use. Ultimately, when you have enough experience with BigCommerce, you will find that this power will make running your business smooth and easy.
Help and customer support
The support and help channels available for your use depend on your current subscription plan. Standard plans already entitle you to 24/7 live chat, 24/7 live chat and phone customer support, and I expect the same for all plans.
There is also email support. I tried the free demo and a few minutes later received an email inviting me to meet with them to discuss how they could help.
The BigCommerce Help Center is also a huge boon. You can ask questions in the community forum or find the answers yourself in the Knowledge Base.
The Enterprise plan gives you the highest level of priority support, including priority phone calls and your personal advisor. This access to highly qualified and most experienced support staff gives you the best customer support experience for your online store.
Themes
The first thing a potential buyer will notice is the design of your website. Yes, your site will need the best tools to keep up with the competition, but the site’s aesthetic is bound to attract visitors.
BigCommerce doesn’t skimp on this as they have hundreds of themes, both free and paid. Theme prices range from $ 150 to $ 300.
Each of the themes contains from three to four options, so there are actually more of them. You will definitely find a theme to work with.
Free themes are a great starting point for building an online store. However, there is little variety in them; many free themes look very similar.
In this department, BigCommerce … isn’t that great. In contrast, Shopify has separate free themes, while Squarespace has almost a hundred free themes.
However, to expand your choices, the BigCommerce theme store offers themes at reasonable prices. They are of more than decent quality and look stylish and modern.
The program also makes it easy to find the topic you want using filters. You can search based on the layout you want, such as grid layouts, or by industry.
You can view only paid or only free, or use the search bar for more accurate results. Themes have features that differ depending on their industry category (Fashion and Jewelry themes are scalable).
You can also preview a theme to see what it looks like before choosing it, and you can switch templates anytime you want.
It is important to note, however, that all themes are suitable for mobile use. They are fully mobile-responsive, and the themes themselves are reformatted to fit mobile screens.
Design customization
BigCommerce visual merchandising tool for store design enhances theme customization. Unlike previous experiences where your store had to set up in two separate areas and wait for results, store design brings everything together on one screen.
The tool allows you to select a section of your page and customize its content. You have complete control over everything from background and gradient colors, logo colors, featured products, and more.
Programs
BigCommerce offers apps on its marketplace that are designed to enhance the overall experience through the use of external apps. Many of them are free, but may require a subscription before use, so they are not completely free.
For example, the Loyalty Program Manager application is free to install, but it requires a monthly fee to work. It can cost up to hundreds of dollars a month, depending on the participants.
This may sound good to you, but if you think about paying for this along with other apps that might require recurring payments, it could be a thousand dollars more in cost. If you are a big business, then you are probably fine, but if not, then you will definitely feel the consequences.
SEO
BigCommerce’s SEO capabilities are very powerful; the basics are fully documented and it is easy to manage titles, meta descriptions and page titles with it. You can create links for specific products or short URLs, which is an advantage over some similar products.
AMP
Accelerated Mobile Page (AMP) is a Google-driven page format that renders your site quickly and seamlessly on mobile devices. Some templates support AMP and you can always search using the AMP filter.
Combined with stellar image optimization, this results in crisp and fast loading of mobile pages.
BigCommerce is also diving deeper into blogging! Yes, a staple of many inbound marketing campaigns, blogging, if done right, increases SEO and site traffic.
BigCommerce has a built-in blogging feature. It certainly cannot be compared to the functionality of a dedicated blogging platform, say WordPress, but it will still allow you to create content that will attract visitors.
Data analytics
BigCommerce reports are available for all rates, including standard rates, and can be used for the following data
- Marketing reports
- Customer reports
- SEO and search data
- Abandoned Cart Information
- Financial statements
The Insights report, which provides additional and more accurate data, is also available for a fee. The price varies depending on your current plan.
BigCommerce alternatives
When it comes to hosting store solutions, the main competitor is Shopify, which has a similar price tag and almost the same features.
Another option is to use WordPress and another ecommerce tool like Woocommerce or Ecwid.
Squarespace, while not nearly as feature-rich, is a great choice for those who love visually appealing storefronts.
Wix is also a preferred product, although it is aimed at more professional owners with a fair amount of web building know-how.
Final verdict
BigCommerce more than does a great job of what people need in an online store. You won’t hesitate to call him one of the best store builders today, and that claim carries weight.
The interface is clean and intuitive, it has most of the features you need and lots of tutorials to help you get started. If I had to quibble, their terminology might be confusing and the sales caps a bummer, but that won’t affect the overall positive experience I’ve gotten from this product.
There is some room for improvement, for example, themes might be clearer, but it sets the bar in many other features that are hard not to love.
If you’d like to see how BigCommerce pairs with your store, a 15-day demo is available.
I would rate BigCommerce as a great tool that can be improved to take it into near-ideal territory.
And this is my review of this ecommerce building tool. Have you had any experience with BigCommerce?
Let me know your thoughts below or tell me what to reconsider!
Find out more about e-commerce in these articles!
- Customize your ecommerce store with these tips
- BuzzSumo review: is the hype worth it?
- Become a Millionaire with Ecommerce
