Welcome, you’re on the right track now! Let us guide you with what you’re looking for. Let’s say you’re a merchant, and that you’ve finally started your online business. And, to run your online store, you deeply analyze and finally choose an eCommerce platform that suits the requirements of your business. There are several eCommerce platforms such as SAP Hybris, Magento, Shopify, BigCommerce, etc. to choose from. In this blog, we’ll be discussing as to why you should be choosing the BigCommerce platform for your online business.
Being a new user of this eCommerce platform, you may be having several doubts such as:
- What is BigCommerce?
- What are its features?
- What makes it stand out from the other eCommerce platforms?
- How can this help my online business? And so on…
All these questions that you’ve been asking all along will be disclosed to you in this blog.
Contents
What is BigCommerce?
BigCommerce is one of the world’s major SaaS eCommerce platforms, empowering over 153,817 eCommerce stores. The platform provides you with a complete engaging online shopping experience through key features and benefits such as Multichannel selling, Cart-level discounts, Abandoned cart saver, and so much more. Some of the renowned brands using BigCommerce are Skullcandy, Clarks, Hush Puppies, Gillette Venus US, Fujitsu, Toyota, Kohler, and Cetaphil, etc.
3 Things You Should Know About BigCommerce
It is essential to know how your eCommerce platform works to make use of it to its fullest potential.
- It is a SaaS platform
- It supports a Headless Commerce approach
- It uses the Stencil framework
What is a SaaS Platform?
We can never predict what time does, and when we have a huge responsibility, such as managing an eCommerce platform, we must make sure that we have flexible timing. It is during this point, which makes it really exciting to have a platform that can be accessed on the go. A Software as a Service (SaaS) platform is a cloud-based platform that can be accessed at any time from any device using an internet connection and a web browser.
Instead of having to install and maintain the software, you can easily get to access it through the internet, saving yourself from the tedious task of managing complex software and hardware systems.
What is Headless Commerce?
Headless commerce is something that decouples the front-end and back-end layer of an eCommerce platform. A headless commerce platform, by default, does not consist of a front-end system to make certain of how the content is going to be displayed to the end-user.
To be precise, headless commerce is when a Content Management System (CMS) manages, delivers, and stores content without having the need for a front-end delivery layer. When using a headless commerce platform, the front-end is mostly a template or a theme that is decoupled and removed, thus having only the back-end left.
Let’s assume that the front-end layer is the head, and the back-end layer is the body. What a headless commerce platform does is that it will be separating the front-end layer from the back-end layer. So, ironically speaking, we’ll be removing the head from the body, thus making it headless.
All the editing capabilities of traditional CMS’s such as WordPress, Drupal, or Joomla are typically the same in a Headless CMS. This makes it much easier for developers during the process of setup and maintenance, hence spending less time and money invested in implementing your CMS.
BigCommerce Stencil – Templates & Themes
BigCommerce’s themes are a big plus. Stencil is the theme engine of BigCommerce that helps you in building an attractive and engaging storefront that resonates well with your brand to easily catch the attention of the user. Merchants and developers can select their preferred templates on the marketplace, or if you’re a developer, you can build an overall customized website from scratch through Stencil’s use of Handlebars.js, Javascript, and YAML Front Matter.
Theme Marketplace
As mentioned earlier, every theme in BigCommerce is developed using the Stencil theme platform. The BigCommerce theme marketplace provides professionally designed themes in both free and premium versions for online stores with plenty of variants to choose from.
Theme Editor
The theme editor is a browser-based tool that allows merchants to easily customize the look and feel of their theme as well as the function of their storefront without any need for coding. As this requires no coding knowledge, every eCommerce merchant can effortlessly customize their BigCommerce store with a choice of their own.
Top 5 Benefits of Using BigCommerce for Your eCommerce Business
The BigCommerce platform provides you with the utmost benefits for your eCommerce store. Here, you can find the top 5 benefits mentioned below.
1. Endless Customer Support
Once your eCommerce store goes live, you would want to make sure that no problems arise, which may hamper the performance of your website, leading to a massive loss. Keeping this in mind, BigCommerce offers you 24/7 support (live chat, email, and phone) for your online store during the need of the hour, so that you don’t have to face any loss.
2. Affordability & Free Trial
BigCommerce is one of the most popular eCommerce platforms, not just for its impeccable features, but also for its affordability. And, the best part is that it offers a free 15-Day trial, where you can uncover all the aspects of what the eCommerce platform has to offer, and finally decide if it is worth the investment. The cost-efficiency is one of the prime reasons that makes BigCommerce stand out from the others, thus helping you save your hard-earned money.
3. SEO Friendly
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) plays a vital role in making your online business more visible to the outside world by allowing you to gain relevant traffic. BigCommerce covers you with all the required SEO fields for your eCommerce store such as the URL Structure, Metadata, Product and Category Description, and Keywords. It provides quite a lot of SEO tools that will help your store in ranking well in search engines, along with increasing the visibility.
4. Ease of Use
The BigCommerce platform is very user-friendly. If you are a new user to BigCommerce, you don’t have to worry much about having to figure out on how to get started, as it is very easy to use when compared to most of the eCommerce platforms. This makes it convenient for you to quickly set up your online store, and also saves a lot of time by allowing you to focus more on growing your business.
5. Multichannel Selling
BigCommerce provides you with access to integrate your eCommerce store in marketplaces such as Amazon, eBay, Google Shopping, etc., which helps in driving more traffic to your eCommerce website. With BigCommerce, you also get access to integrate your online store on social media channels such as Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram.
Top 10 Features of BigCommerce
BigCommerce is loaded with several robust features that help in enhancing the look and feel along with the overall performance of your eCommerce store. Here are the top 10 features of BigCommerce.
- Multi-Currency Support
- Returns System (RMA)
- Mobile-optimized store
- Point of Sale (POS)
- Built-in blog
- Free complete website HTTPS and dedicated SSL
- Single-page checkout
- Unlimited product listings, file storage, and bandwidth
- Automating complex tasks
- Promotions, discounts, and coupons
Abandoned Cart Saver
This is one of the most remarkable features of BigCommerce, and one shouldn’t miss out on it. This feature helps in reducing cart abandonment by sending up to three automated emails to visitors who haven’t completed the checkout process, where you can set up a line-up of emails and configure when it should actually be sent out to them, thus persuading them to finalize their purchase. This plays a major role in increasing the revenue of your online business.
BigCommerce Pricing & Plans
BigCommerce has put together four different plans with suitable prices for each plan. The BigCommerce pricing keeps varying based on the growth of your eCommerce business, where you will have to upgrade. Instead of paying on a monthly basis, if you choose to pay annually for any of the BigCommerce plans, you’ll get to save up to 10%.
Standard Plan – $29.95/month
When compared to the other platforms, the BigCommerce Standard Plan provides quite a lot for the price it offers. This plan is best suitable for small scale businesses who are mostly beginners (start-ups) in the online space.
Plus Plan – $79.95/month
The Plus Plan comes with all the features that the Standard Plan offers. This plan is well-suited for small to medium scale businesses. It comes with additional features such as Customer Groups and Segmentation, Abandoned Cart Saver, Persistent Cart, and Store Credit Cards.
Pro Plan – $249.95/month
The Pro Plan comes with all the features that the Plus Plan offers. This plan is perfect for medium to large scale businesses and comes with additional features such as Google Customer Reviews, Faceted Search (product filtering), and a Custom SSL.
Enterprise Plan – Custom Pricing
The Enterprise Plan comes with all the features that the Pro Plan offers. This plan is best for large eCommerce enterprises that generate good revenue and comes with multiple additional features such as Custom Facets (product filtering), Price Lists, Unlimited API Calls, Availability of Express Routing, Priority Support, Strategic Account Management, and API Support. For the Enterprise Plan, you will have to speak to a BigCommerce advisor to get a quote.
BigCommerce Apps
The BigCommerce app store or A.K.A ‘E-commerce Apps Marketplace’ provides eCommerce merchants with a wide range of apps to choose from for their online store, where they can extend their store’s functionalities with those set of applications.
Bundle B2B
Bundle B2B is a customizable SaaS application provided by BigCommerce for B2B businesses. The endless capabilities of the app allow online store owners to run their B2B business through hassle-free management of the front-end and back-end processes. The app comes with useful features such as Corporate Account Management, Custom Catalogs and Pricing, Multiple Shopping Lists, Bulk Ordering Tools, Sales Representative Masquerade, and so much more.
Marketing Tools
BigCommerce provides a set of extensive marketing features such as Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Built-In Blog, Email Marketing, and Promotions, Discounts, and Coupons.
BigCommerce SEO
The BigCommerce admin panel provides you with complete access to URLs, header tags, titles, and metadata, where you can customize your website content accordingly and make them SEO friendly. This will help in boosting your site’s ranking.
Built-In Blog
With the built-in blogging feature, you won’t be needing to invest in an expensive Content Management System (CMS), as BigCommerce makes the blogging process simple and quick, without you having to waste your time on longer processes.
Email Marketing
BigCommerce helps you with your email marketing strategies by providing you with useful platforms such as Mailchimp, dotdigital Engagement Cloud, Privy, HubSpot by CedCommerce, and so on.
Promotions, Discounts, and Coupons
You can now boost your sales with promotions, discounts, and coupons without using any third-party app. BigCommerce offers more than 70 out-of-the-box discount options that are made available, along with some of the most advanced promotion tools.
Payment Processors & Gateways
BigCommerce offers worldwide payment options for your online store’s checkout app and integrates over 38 payment gateways. Your online customers will be provided with an array of trustworthy payment gateways to choose from, such as Stripe, Amazon Pay, PayPal Express Checkout, 2Checkout, and Authorize.net, etc.
POS Integrations
BigCommerce gives you the possibility to connect your online store with leading point of sale (POS) platforms such as Square, ShopKeep, Springboard Retail, Hike, Vend, and Clover for accepting payments at your brick-and-mortar store.
Fraud Prevention & Security
BigCommerce provides online merchants with complete security through Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) compliance, along with a 256-bit SSL encryption. This helps their users to shop without any hesitation. The SSL features keep varying based on the choice of your plan.
Inventory & Order Management
With the Inventory Tracking in BigCommerce, you can easily sync, organize, and accurately track inventory such as shipments and incoming materials across different channels. You also get to maintain the exact count of your products that are ready for sale, send low stock alerts/notifications to yourself or your suppliers, communicate with your shoppers about the stock levels and the availability of your products, automate the stock level adjustments, and also be able to set up the out of stock product behaviour.
BigCommerce Dropshipping
Dropshipping is a selling model that gives you the opportunity to partner with a supplier to showcase their products in your store, where you actually get to sell their goods. Until the item has been ordered, the supplier will keep a hold of the product, and will later on directly supply the order to your customer. To use the dropshipping model in BigCommerce, you will have to install a third-party application.
You can dropship with BigCommerce with some of the essential apps such as Printful, AliExpress, Inventory Source, Wholesale2B, Sunrise Wholesale, Aliexpress Dropshipping Integration by CedCommerce, etc.
When it comes to a normal shipment process, you can choose top BigCommerce shipping apps such as ShipStation, ShipperHQ, AfterShip, ShippingEasy, etc.
BigCommerce majorly incorporates everything that’s required in an online store, and that too at quite a reasonable price. The extensive set of features is undeniably a great solutions for online merchants who are on the lookout for a good SaaS eCommerce platform.
