This in-depth BigCommerce review will help you see the big picture of what this website builder can do and how it can help your e-commerce business. We’ll analyze all of the important points as well as core features required for an online business so you can choose whether BigCommerce is a good fit for you. Continue reading to get:
- About
- Cost
- Plans
- SEO
- eCommerce
- Marketing and more
If you decide to go with BigCommerce as your new platform, consider using any automated tool to complete your BigCommerce migration. All of your data will be moved quickly, correctly, and securely using popular tools, and no technical knowledge is necessary. Let’s get started by learning about BigCommerce.
Table of Contents
About: BigCommerce Review
BigCommerce is an all-in-one hosted eCommerce solution with a dynamic design. That implies that everything is already in place for you. All you have to do now is register. Then you can begin personalizing and monetizing your eCommerce store straight immediately.
Product management, order fulfillment, online payments, analytics, and other high-quality features are available on the platform. It also offers professionally created themes with a lot of customizing options. BigCommerce also does a fantastic job with security.
In general, BigCommerce is well-suited to host stores with hundreds or thousands of items. As a result, it is best suited for someone who is steadily growing and wants to operate at a huge scale. Here’s a quick comparison of BigCommerce, Shopify, and Squarespace. To provide you with an introduction to this hosted eCommerce platform.
BigCommerce Cost
The pricing of this hosted service will be closely researched in our BigCommerce review. BigCommerce price is based on the number of sales you make each year. It has three monthly pricing plans to accommodate all business types. Its most basic plan starts at $29.95 per month and goes up to $224.95 per month. Your store will have a completely responsive site, one-page checkout, digital wallets, basic SEO tools, and powerful statistics, regardless of the package you pick. One of BigCommerce’s major advantages is that there are no transaction fees. If you want to pay annually instead of monthly, you will receive a 10% discount.
It also offers a 15-day free trial if you don’t want to pay any money right now. However, if you’re on this plan, your customers won’t be able to buy anything from you. Another thing to keep in mind when it comes to BigCommerce prices is that each plan has a threshold limit.
You can only earn less than $50,000 and less than $180,000 per year on the Standard Plan and Plus Plan. You’ll need to upgrade to the Pro Plan if you sell more than that. If your shop generates less than $450,000 per month, the Pro Plan is $299.95. When you reach that level, you’ll have to pay an extra $150 each month for every $200,000 in sales you make.
In addition, BigCommerce offers an Enterprise Plan for large businesses. Its cost is determined by the features you desire in your business. However, you can hope all of the features of the Plus Plan, as well as a dedicated SSL and IP address, extensive reporting tools, Google, verified shops, priority support, product filtering, and many more.
Pricing Plans: What’s the Difference?
Standard Plan
If you’re searching for feature-rich plans at a reasonable price to start a new business, this is an excellent start. The standard plan is ideal for small businesses with yearly sales of less than $50,000. It has a good number of features, including unlimited items, bandwidth, file storage, and staff accounts, as well as no transaction fees. You may also sell on Amazon, eBay, Walmart, Facebook, Instagram, and Google Shopping, among other platforms.
Plus Plan
This plan is ideal for businesses with annual sales of up to $180,000. Merchants will get access to all of the features of the regular plan, as well as some additional tools to enhance sales and conversion rates, such as:
Abandoned cart saver: For every online shop, this is a must-have feature. It enables you to send automatic email invites to consumers who have added an item to their basket but quit before the checkout process. As a consequence, you may use this built-in feature to return customers and increase revenue.
Stored credit cards: Allowing your customers to keep their credit card information will make the checkout process easier for them.
Pro Plan
The Pro plan is designed for large enterprises with a large budget, with a $450k revenue barrier. This plan includes all of the features included in the Standard and Plus plans, as well as some of the most useful features for taking your shop to the next level:
Custom SSL: This allows you to install a third-party SSL on your BigCommerce store.
Product Filtering: Allow customers to search for items on your site by size, color, or brand to make it easier for them to locate what they’re looking for.
Payment Gateways
BigCommerce’s default payment option Paypal powered by Braintree, third-party payment processors, and Square POS are all options for accepting credit card payments (for brick and mortar businesses.
Paypal
BigCommerce’s default payment option offers more advantages than a third-party payment gateway. One-page checkout is one of them, as are favorable Paypal rates for credit card transactions, depending on your price plan:
Standard: 2.9% + 30c
Plus: 2.5% + 30c
Pro: 2.2% + 30c
Third-Party Payment
You also take advantage of a payment gateway integration. BigCommerce now offers more than 65 payment system integrations out of the box. Some of the most famous digital and mobile wallets, including Amazon Pay, Venmo, Apple Pay, and others, are also supported.
The following is a list of BigCommerce’s best-supported features for managing your payment process:
Capture
You can allow transactions without taking money out of a customer’s account until you approve them. One of the most important advantages of this feature is that if funds have not been recorded, the cardholder cannot dispute the transaction or issue a chargeback.
Refund
BigCommerce allows you to select the refund type (individual product or order level refund). You have two options: refund the entire order or a portion of it. These features make categorizing and managing refund status much easier for you.
Stored Credit Cards
This feature allows you to safely and securely store credit card information so that customers may swiftly and simply complete the checkout process. Please note that in order to use this feature, you must be on the plus plan or above.
BigCommerce POS or Square
BigCommerce POS or Square is a free tool that allows you to turn your brick-and-mortar business into an online business. Here’s a list of some of its most attractive features:
Product Import to BigCommerce
Creating a new product and importing it into your BigCommerce online store is simple. You may also import the whole Square product catalog into BigCommerce’s storefront with a single click.
Export Product to Square
You can also export your items from your BigCommerce online store to Square POS. This can be a good feature if you’re mainly operating at your brick-and-mortar store.
Inventory Synchronization
Every 5 minutes, the Square POS software will sync your stock between your online store and POS. As a result, you will be able to effortlessly handle both of them at the same time.
BigCommerce SEO
BigCommerce is an excellent option if SEO is one of your main goals. BigCommerce is likely the class leader in the SEO sector among hosted options such as BigCommerce, Wix, Volusion, and Squarespace. Why? Because, while BigCommerce has a large number of out-of-the-box features that load quickly, others rely mainly on Add-ons or Third-Party integrations, which might slow down your site’s performance. BigCommerce’s average response time, according to Quanta, is 0.50 seconds. As a result, BigCommerce is a rather quick platform. This response time perfectly matches Google’s speed guideline.
SEO Features
Security: Each BigCommerce plan comes with a free SSL certificate.
URL Structures that are SEO-friendly: URL structures for goods, web pages, and categories may all be changed. It might be lengthy, short, or custom URLs, depending on your priorities.
Mobile-friendliness: All BigCommerce templates are responsive for computers, mobile devices, and tablets. Furthermore, the Stencil template includes AMP support for both items and pages out of the box, allowing your page to load quicker.
Microdata: Microdata is known as “Rich Snippets.” Microdata is used in most Bigcommerce themes. You may use this feature to add information like ratings, pricing, brand, and stock levels to your search result listings.
On-Page SEO: BigCommerce makes it simple to change page names, metadata, and headers one of the important factors that search engines take into account when categorizing your site for search results.
Mobile Commerce
The BigCommerce Mobile App is available for download from the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store. It allows you to manage your shop while on the move. On all of your BigCommerce stores, you can verify and change orders, view important performance data, monitor items, and search for customers.
Store Performance Details: Get an overview of your store’s revenue, orders, clients, and conversion rate over the course of a day, week, month, or year.
Customer Management: Allow you to access the list of all your customers, view, and search for complete data of individual buyers. You can also contact customers through in-app phone and email options.
Order Management: Individual orders can be accessed, and the order status can be updated.
Catalog Management: Keep track of all of your products, add new ones, change inventory, organize them into categories, upload photos, and control their appearance on your storefront.
Ease of Use
BigCommerce comes with all of the functionality you’ll need to get started. It’s not complex to use, but it’s not for the unprofessional. There will be instructions to guide you through the process when you initially arrive on BigCommerce’s dashboard. Those procedures will help you in building a simple store. for example, You can add items, select shipping options, and control tax rates. The modification becomes more difficult after that.
The platform now uses the Stencil framework, which is only suitable for expert programmers. So there’s no need to be worried if you can hire a programmer. Non-technical people, on the other hand, will find it difficult to customize it as they see fit, which is essential for the average entrepreneur.
BigCommerce’s design interface is the biggest source of struggle for users. It divides into two sections. One is for controlling the “behind the scenes” aspects of your store, such as products and discounts, while the other is for customizing the storefront.
The good news is that BigCommerce has recently released a new page builder that makes customizing easier for non-techies. The tool gives you access to the template files in your theme so you can do advanced template customization. You can simply drag and drop content into pages, like text, videos, banners, buttons, blocks of custom HTML, etc.
However, you must be familiar with the technical words in advance, or you will waste a lot of time trying to figure out what they mean. BigCommerce isn’t recommended for anyone who isn’t tech-savvy.
Themes
BigCommerce has an outstanding array of templates for a variety of budgets. Beginners on a tight budget can get started with 12 free themes. If your budget is a little fatter, there are over 100 paid themes to select from, with prices ranging from $145 to $235. They are all extremely responsive, trendy, and simple to work with. However, because the majority of the themes are created by a single company, there is little variation from theme to theme.
But it’s not a major concern because you can always change the theme to make your store more unique. Colors, fonts, carousel, and other elements can be customized using the “Style Editor” tool. And, as previously indicated, the new page builder makes the process even, easier without having to understand codes. It allows you to change everything from background colors to logo positions, the number of featured products, navigation arrow colors, and more. If you have a developer background, you can also update your theme.
eCommerce Features
Without a doubt, BigCommerce provides several essential eCommerce features for an online store. Here are some of the most impressive features that set BigCommerce apart from its competitors.
Product Management
In a few simple clicks, BigCommerce allows you to import products, adjust stock levels, set up inventory tracking, and analyze order trends over time. With its seamless native management features, inventory tracking between online and offline channels is easier than ever. Apart from that, you can edit each little detail about your products as you want. Even better, BigCommerce is the only platform that allows you to sell products, downloads, event tickets, and services without paying for third-party apps.
Order Processing
After a visitor clicks the buy button, Bigcommerce takes the process to the next phase. You can use the platform to process orders, print invoices, and packing slips. Basically, it manages the order from start to finish. This is a key feature, especially for stores with a lot of products.
Multi-Currency
The multi-currency feature assists BigCommerce to stand out as one of the best platforms for global businesses. BigCommerce has partnerships with five popular payment gateways that handle multi-currency transactions, from which you can choose. Because the currency is automatically changed into the customer’s local currency, merchants can enhance their cross-border sales. The best part is that multi-currency functionality is included in all pricing options at no extra charge.
Multi-Channel
A multi-channel strategy is also required for a developing eCommerce store. Because reaching out to customers has never been easy, having this function integrated into your store is important. BigCommerce allows you to sell on a variety of platforms, including Instagram, Pinterest, eBay, Amazon, Facebook, and more. You can also use BigCommerce’s data reporting capabilities to keep track of all sales from those websites. These tools assist in identifying trends, tracking performance, conversion rates, and more.
Tax & Shipping
The good news is that BigCommerce provides a large selection of shipping alternatives, including real-time shipping quotes for BigCommerce price plans with higher BigCommerce pricing. It also includes an all-in-one shipping tool solution. ShipStation is a free app that allows you to earn great discounts with leading companies such as DHL, USPS, FedEx, and others. You may also keep your consumers satisfied by offering services such as in-store pickup, next-day delivery, package tracking, free shipping, and more.
BigCommerce launched a new shipping service in March 2019 for consumers who want additional discounts and a simpler setup. Faster FedEx Express shipping; displaying shipping costs on your website; better accuracy of its live rates; more discounted USPS, DHL, UPS, and FedEx rates; and an automated area to set up your shipment are all included. The highlight is that you can easily handle all of your shipping functions from one location.
You can also set up your tax calculation rules in BigCommerce. Or connecting with a third-party tax service to automate tax calculation and document submission. Both methods are incredibly simple and convenient. You can even show a label on your page that says whether or not your pricing includes tax. This will help you avoid any miscommunication with your customers.
SEO & Marketing
BigCommerce has a good selection of marketing tools to help you promote your online store. Some of the ways have a price attached to them, while others are completely free. The following are some of BigCommerce’s most important marketing features:
Banners
A banner can be used for a variety of purposes, both promotional and non-promotional. This will assist you to attract the attention of your viewers and showcase your main content.
Coupon Codes and Discounts
These are especially useful if you’re running a special campaign and want to send codes via email. It is quite beneficial in terms of inspiring buyers.
Email Marketing
MailChimp, HubSpot, iContact, and Constant Contact are among the platform’s strong choices. This feature allows you to create smart customer lists and send relevant ads and newsletters to avoid lost purchases.
Abandoned Cart Recovery
If a client inputs their email address and later abandons their shopping cart, an automatic email can be sent to remind them of their purchase. The average cart abandonment rate is 69.57 percent, according to Baymard Institute’s 2019 research. It’s a key feature that will prevent you from making a loss. According to research, customized emails are six times more powerful than standard emails.
Integrations with Google AdWords
This makes it possible for you to promote your items on Google.
Social Media Tools
BigCommerce’s social media tools make it simple to promote your business online. To turn social browning into online purchasing, just add “Buy Now” buttons to Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter.
Support & Security
When you sign up for a free trial, you’ll get an email right away inviting you to a 10-minute conversation. The BigCommerce support team will talk with you about your business, its objectives, and how they can help you succeed during this brief discussion. This is enough to set them apart from other eCommerce website builders.
Other BigCommerce support channels are available depending on your price plan. BigCommerce offers phone calls, live chat, and email support 24 hours a day, seven days a week. There are numerous resources on this page to assist you, from online forums to a knowledge base. If you’re completely new to the platform, you must check out BigCommerce University. It contains a series of instructive videos that will guide you through each step of how to succeed with your online store.
Priority support is available with the most expensive Enterprise package. This includes an onboarding adviser and priority phone calls with direct access to the most senior and well-trained support staff.
BigCommerce is also one of the best in terms of security. BigCommerce hosts all sites that are level 1 certified PCI compliant. As a result, you don’t have to be afraid about exposing your customer’s personal and financial information. An enterprise-grade network architecture protects your company’s infrastructure as well.
Final words: BigCommerce Review
Overall, BigCommerce is a great hosted eCommerce platform that allows you to easily develop and manage your online store. It is well-known for being the ideal match for medium and large-scale businesses. The platform still works well for small businesses, but it is not the ideal option. There are many more excellent solutions available if you are about to establish an online business. However, if you already have one and are looking to expand quickly, BigCommerce is a hard bargain to pass on. What are your thoughts about this topic? I’d love to hear about it in the comments section below! If you like this article please give us a like and share this on social media.
