BigCommerce

BigCommerce: An eCommerce Platform for Growing Brands

BigCommerce powers over 60,000 small business eCommerce companies, plus large brands including GE, Toyota, Kodak, Camelbak, and Paul Mitchell. With over $16 billion in transactions processed by BigCommerce, they are one of the most popular eCommerce platforms on the market. BigCommerce takes care of daily tasks like inventory, marketing, and reporting so online merchants can focus on running their businesses.

• Simple and easy to use
• Specially oriented to high-volume businesses
• Provides zero transaction fees and robust payment platforms
• Enterprise Plan offers complete eCommerce solutions for larger businesses
• Extensive features and 24/7 support

• Award-winning eCommerce platform
• eCommerce App Store: hundreds of plugins and apps to enhance functionality
• 15-day free trial offer!
• Zero transaction fees
• User-friendly interface
• Best-in-class SEO features
• Can sell on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Amazon, and eBay
• Over 40 payment gateways in 100+ countries
• Real-time shipping quotes via UPS, USPS, FedEx and more
• Ecommerce themes and templates that are built to convert
• Superior reliability - 99% uptime guarantee
• Supports over 70 types of discounts out of the box
• 5 free themes, with 12 variants.

• It can be somewhat pricey for those just starting out
• Payment through third-party apps
• Overload of options and features can be too much for inexperienced users
• You can only sell products that you have in stock (no back orders)

The BigCommerce website builder is designed for beginners as well as for users who have online sales or website building experience. Its templates are user-friendly and fully customizable, and the interface is very easy to navigate although the process can be somewhat time consuming.

BigCommerce’s simple but powerful Style Editor will help you edit all aspects of your purchased theme. This means that you don’t have to know anything about coding and still get the best possible experience. You’ll have the possibility to preview your website, and to use BigCommerce’s highly effective SEO, analytics and marketing tools to drive business and pool information about your customers.

The basic functionality of BigCommerce is actually quite simple, though the amount of features makes it appear more daunting. There are lots of minute but significant details to define and data and descriptions to add to your products. But this isn’t necessarily a drawback. It’s worth it to spend some time getting into these details (perhaps using some of BigCommerce’s tutorials as a guide) because the features offered will help you organize your business and facilitate growth.

The BigCommerce website builder is designed for beginners as well as for users who have online sales or website building experience. Its templates are user-friendly and fully customizable, and the interface is very easy to navigate although the process can be somewhat time consuming.

BigCommerce’s simple but powerful Style Editor will help you edit all aspects of your purchased theme. This means that you don’t have to know anything about coding and still get the best possible experience. You’ll have the possibility to preview your website, and to use BigCommerce’s highly effective SEO, analytics and marketing tools to drive business and pool information about your customers.

The basic functionality of BigCommerce is actually quite simple, though the amount of features makes it appear more daunting. There are lots of minute but significant details to define and data and descriptions to add to your products. But this isn’t necessarily a drawback. It’s worth it to spend some time getting into these details (perhaps using some of BigCommerce’s tutorials as a guide) because the features offered will help you organize your business and facilitate growth.

eCommerce Plan

BigCommerce is a website builder specialized in eCommerce - for this reason, it has limitless options when compared to other website builders that offer a variety of services, among them eCommerce.

BigCommerce enables you to:

• Sell non-physical products like digital downloads or services.
• Establish unlimited product characteristics: image, weight, price, inventory.
• Create categories to organize your inventory and make shopping easier for customers.
• Set up specific automated rules using product classification (like automatic discounts for big orders).
• Manage and supervise the whole business lifecycle (invoices, shipping, etc.)
• Handle refunds and product returns.
• Offer a variety of payments platforms in different currencies through the BigCommerce payment gateway, which also offers mobile optimization and one-click installs. 

Most experts agree that BigCommerce offers a great deal of tools in a fantastic pack. While other sites tend to offer customers lots of tools and features, most of which don’t fit your needs, BigCommerce’s toolset is certainly an exception. Their tools enhance your site’s functionality, allowing you to launch promotion campaigns, create discount coupons, manage shipping and tax setup, integrate online payment security, control and handle returns and statistical reports, while offering your visitors social media integration, products wish lists and reviews.

In the app store, you’ll find over a hundred free apps that will offer services like shipping refunds and email marketing service.

BigCommerce has a beautiful template gallery (as you’d expect from any top website builder). There are 12 categories, from Arts & Crafts, Home & Garden to Food & Beverage. Although the free template gallery is quite limited and you can’t preview them all until you sign up, there’s a premium template gallery which contains around 80 templates and prices that vary between $150 and $250. Within each template, you can choose between several modifications in color and layout, and then further customize and add photos. Users can also opt to upload their own templates.

Their modern and fully responsive designs will adapt to any device, which is important  as mobile browsing has overtaken desktop browsing and this will only continue with the emergence of new technologies.

BigCommerce’s templates are certainly stylish, fresh and useful, but they’re not particularly original or distinctive. Free templates look fairly similar to the ones offered by their competitors. Of course the template gallery isn’t necessarily a deal breaker when choosing between website builders, but BigCommerce ought to develop their template options. Premium templates offer more features and look better, but they aren’t as great as you’d expect for the money you’ll have to shell out.

Customer Service

BigCommerce’s Customer Service is available 24/7 across all support channels (email, live chat, and phone). As a company that helps growing businesses, it has strong customer service and an extensive resource center with articles, questions and answers and guides. The BigCommerce University has video tutorials, a support portal and a user forum. In one section, design and development experts from BigCommerce can help you customize your store.

Overall

BigCommerce is a hosting and website builder specialized in eCommerce solutions for medium to big size businesses. It’s a powerful and highly-respected online store builder that offers a complete set of tools and features to help you establish your online store - we have no reservations about recommending BigCommerce to small to medium-size business owners. They currently offer a 15-day free trial.