What is BigCommerce and how does it work?
BigCommerce is an e-commerce platform that helps businesses create their own eCommerce and sell online.
Through this platform you can design the interface of your digital store, manage the products in the warehouse, receive purchase orders and consolidate data such as users, items and sales.
This platform is an excellent option for small and medium-sized businesses looking to open their online store. It is a monthly subscription tool with affordable prices. Additionally, it offers a number of advanced functionalities to deliver a better user experience to your customers.
BigCommerce was founded in 2009 in Sydney, Australia. Currently, they have more than 600 employees and their headquarters is based in Austin, Texas.
More than 60,000 businesses in 120 countries use this platform within their online store. Some of the companies using this platform are Gillette, Skullcandy, and Ben & Jerry's. In 2020, it generated over 180 million dollars.
With all this information, we can conclude that BigCommerce is a consolidated e-commerce platform in the market. So, businesses can have confidence in building their online store with this manufacturer.
BigCommerce Features and Advantages
When you are selecting the best eCommerce platform for your business, it's key to analyze its features and advantages.
Interface Desgin
Design your eCommerce with pre-designed HTML, CSS and JavaScript templates in a simple way
This eCommerce platform allows you to easily and simply design the interface of your online store. It allows the user to design pages through drag and drop. A user can make basic design changes to the site without having programming knowledge.
The tool allows you to access various customizable templates through HTML, CSS and JavaScript, so you won't have to spend time and resources designing your site from scratch.
Additionally, BigCommerce is optimized to be mobile-responsive and deliver a good user experience on both desktop and mobile.
It is worth mentioning that the platform allows you to change the language of the site depending on the user's location.
Discounts
Create discount coupons
BigCommerce allows you to create cart-level discount coupons and promote them within your eCommerce store, without having to write any code on the site.
Cart-level discounts are discounts that are automatically applied following a set of rules. For example, if you want to apply a 20% discount on all shopping carts that exceed $100 USD, other eCommerce platforms have the ability to automatically apply this discount when the customer goes to complete their payment.
You can create over 70 coupons and automatic discounts quickly and easily without any extra cost. Even companies with a BigCommerce Plus plan have the ability to create discounts for a specific group of customers.
Payments
Accept Credit Card, Debit Card, Apple Pay, Amazon, and Paypal Payments
BigCommerce covers the most commonly used payment methods by users. You will be able to receive payments through credit or debit card. The tool also has integrations to receive payments through Apple Pay, Amazon, and Paypal. It is worth mentioning that this platform accepts over 120 currencies worldwide.
SEO
Optimize Your Site's SEO and Increase Organic Traffic
One of the most forgotten aspects when selecting an eCommerce platform is SEO. However, organic traffic to your site is important so that you can have more visits and therefore more sales.
In the case of BigCommerce, you can perform optimizations in the SEO of your eCommerce to appear first on Google. The tool allows you to create search engine-friendly URLs. You can also edit the metadata of your pages and modify the robot.txt to rank better.
Multi-Storefront
Create multiple online stores and manage them from a single panel
Another interesting feature of BigCommerce is that it allows you to create multiple stores with a different interface. These stores are managed from a single panel. Each store can have different products or prices. Each store can also have a different design.
This solution is mainly used by companies that have multiple stores in different countries or that handle more than one brand. In this way, a company's online store can have a different interface for each country, the product catalogs are different, and payments are made in different currencies.
If a company has several brands, it can create stores with similar products but with a different brand design and look & feel.
Headless Commerce
More Flexibility to Design Your eCommerce Interface and Experience
Headless Commerce is a software architecture that separates the frontend and backend of eCommerce. The backend is directly managed by the IT team, while the frontend is managed by the marketing team through a CMS.
Through this architecture, your marketing team can make significant changes to the website design without affecting the processes running on the backend. This way, the marketing team will rely less on the IT team and have more freedom to run marketing campaigns.
BigCommerce is designed to make Headless Commerce on your eCommerce easier. Through APIs, you can connect your eCommerce to CMSs such as WordPress, Adobe Experience Manager, Contentful, SiteCore, or Magnolia.
Multichannel
Sell your products on Amazon, eBay, Google Shop, Facebook and Instagram
BigCommerce allows you to connect your e-commerce platform with marketplaces. When you post a new product on your eCommerce, it will be automatically posted on the marketplaces you are present on. Some of the marketplaces BigCommerce has integration with are: Amazon, eBay and Google Shop.
In addition, you can integrate your eCommerce with Facebook and Instagram to sell your products on these social networks.
B2B eCommerce
Sell your products online to B2B companies
BigCommerce has a series of interesting features for B2B companies that want to open their own eCommerce.
Through this eCommerce platform, your company can determine what prices each customer sees on the site. This way, you can offer each customer a different price without others knowing these prices.
You can also generate discounts that automatically activate when a customer adds a large number of items to their cart. This way, your salespeople will not have to manually create discounts in your customers' orders.
More Advantages...
Ensure Good Performance and Loading Speed
The tool allows you to ensure a good loading speed for your users. This is achieved by using the infrastructure of Google Cloud Platform, Google AMP and Akamai Image Manager.
Find support every day and at all hours to resolve the problems of your online store
One of the aspects you must consider when selecting an eCommerce platform is the support that the manufacturer will provide you. Good support will allow you to quickly resolve technical problems on the site.
In the case of BigCommerce, they have 24/7 technical support. If you access the Enterprise plan, you will have an account executive to follow up on all your needs and problems about the platform in a timely and direct manner.
They have a long documentation on the tool and its use. They also have a dedicated forum for users to make inquiries.
Keep your customer data secure
To maintain customer trust, you must maintain the highest security standards. The cost of a data breach is very high. Your brand perception would be affected and users would no longer trust to provide their personal and payment data.
In terms of security, BigCommerce has ISO / IEC 27001: 2013 and PCI DSS 3.1, level 1 certification as a merchant and service provider. So you can have confidence that your users' data is protected with the highest standards in the industry.
Plans and Prices of BigCommerce
BigCommerce offers three monthly subscription plans. The most basic plan (Standard) costs $29.95. The Plus version costs $79.95. And the Pro version costs $299.95. Learn more about BigCommerce plans and their features here.
For what type of company is BigCommerce?
BigCommerce is a good option for small and medium businesses because of its cost-benefit relationship.
The tool offers several advanced eCommerce functionalities at an affordable price. Some of its standout features are: the Headless Commerce architecture, easy integration with other technologies through APIs, and its multichannel tools. These will help you elevate the shopping experience you deliver to your customers.
By implementing a Headless Commerce software architecture, your marketing team will be able to make design changes to the site without relying on a programming team. This way, they can optimize the checkout process in an agile and independent manner.
BigCommerce is a tool designed to easily integrate with APIs from other providers. This means you can implement high-level technologies to your eCommerce like search engines, personalization engines or CMS. This will allow you to constantly improve the technologies within your online store and, as a result, the experience received by your customers.
BigCommerce's multichannel tools will allow your team to automatically publish products on various marketplaces and social networks. This will help you have better control of your catalog across different channels.
It is unlikely that you will find another eCommerce platform that provides all these facilities for a similar cost.