It’s a typical life lesson: sometimes the most popular in the class aren’t the most effective. Among the e-commerce platforms that you can choose to create an online store, you have probably come across other names such as Shopify , WooCommerce or PrestaShop more often than with BigCommerce. And yet, knowing it will allow you to discover one of the most advanced e-commerce platforms of the class.
Founded in 2009, BigCommerce is a SaaS platform that has earned the title of most scalable software for e-commerce… and for good reason.
What is BigCommerce?
Businesses aiming to grow and expand their digital strategy will be able to take full advantage of all BigCommerce features. The platform adapts to any type of company, from $ 29.95 per month to customized plans Enterprise level.
BigCommerce is an electronic commerce or ecommerce platform aimed especially at small and medium-sized businesses. With the BigCommerce platform you can create an online store to sell products and do all the necessary steps for this type of sales.
Prestigious brands such as Kodak, Toyota and Ben & Jerry’s use BigCommerce for their websites and online stores, and the platform achieves an average annual growth of 28% for its customers . At the moment, its figures seem lower (almost 160,000 web pages supported worldwide as of July 2019 ), but its growth curve is very fast.
If you are looking for e-commerce software that allows you to launch a fully equipped online store and add it to your omnichannel strategy , and without the need for great code knowledge, pay attention to all the advantages of BigCommerce.
Why choose BigCommerce to create your online store
Combine the edition of your product catalog and your website
One of the drawbacks of e-commerce platforms is usually the interface . Some allow you to edit all the functions from a single place and in others you have, on the one hand, the inventory and products editing panels, and on the other, the design part of the website.
Now BigCommerce has incorporated a new functionality, Store Design , that allows to combine both tasks more easily, and to see edition changes before launching them.
This makes BigCommerce a very customizable platform , and that you can connect to a product information manager, such as the Sales Layer PIM (we are also an official BigCommerce partner), to import your always updated product information into BigCommerce and focus in web design.
Easy start-up
Find more than 100 templates to choose from to create your online store. It seems less variety than in other e-commerce software, and its cost is high (up to more than € 200 per topic), but all are optimized for mobile devices and guide you to choose the most suitable for your business profile and catalog of products.
More features than any other platform
While other e-commerce platforms bring limited functions and force you to invest in many payment extensions, BigCommerce has one of the most complete ranges of functions on the market for online commerce businesses:
- SSL security certificate
- Unlimited number of products
- Unlimited number of user accounts
- More than 250 payment currencies
- Real-time shipping rates
- Option to add user ratings and reviews
- Sending emails for customers who abandon the shopping cart
- SEO tools
- Analysis reports
- Multilanguage management
- Special functions for B2B businesses
This allows you to do without additional plugins and reduce the extra costs of managing your e-commerce platform. Still, you have more than 600 apps linked to BigCommerce at your disposal to choose from for extra services.
Multi-channel integration
BigCommerce facilitates a real integration of all your online and offline sales channels , and it is the only platform on the market that allows it without the need to use an app.
Add all the digital channels you want to your multichannel strategy:
- Google shopping
- Amazon
- eBay
Variety of payment methods
The most unpleasant surprise that sellers come across on many e-commerce platforms: there are monthly or annual usage fees, and additional fees for payments processed through the brand’s online store.
BigCommerce is one of the freest e-commerce platforms in this sense. It does not force you to use its own payment gateway or charge you transaction fees , except for the usual ones for credit card payments (2.2%).
You will find more than 40 payment gateways integrated into your BigCommerce account available from the beginning , including Apple Pay, Amazon Pay, Stripe, Square or PayPal (with more advantageous pre-negotiated rates).
Full technical support
While other e-commerce software leaves all responsibility on the shoulders of their user community, at BigCommerce you will never have to crawl through videos and tutorial forums to solve a technical problem.
The platform offers its clients technical support and attention 24/7, by phone, e-mail and chat .
In addition, if you try their free 15-day demo, they will include a 10-minute meeting to analyze the needs of your business in a personalized way.
More than e-commerce: additional services
As if it were not already a fairly complete e-commerce platform, BigCommerce expands its menu of services and helps its clients develop many other business fronts:
- Solution architecture
- Catalog transfer services
- Implementation project management
- Technical account management
- Business account management
- Training services
- Product information management : through Sales Layer, BigCommerce partner, to improve the quality of your catalogs and facilitate data imports and exports between all your channels.
conclusion
We are not going to hide the disadvantages, and that is that BigCommerce can be a somewhat complex system for companies or teams that are not used to the technical terminology used by the platform.
Nor does it have a linked mobile app to be able to manage your online store from any mobile device.
However, they are minor evils that you can consider if you want to launch your online store with one of the best integrations on the market and the support of the most efficient PIM.
