Online shopping is now very common. Because of the increasing number of online stores on the web today, shopping carts are also gaining much popularity. Conventional businesses are too costly and so many business persons are now putting their investments in online stores. The risks involved are also minimal and as long as there is an internet connection, people can now shop conveniently. The shopping cart by BigCommerce is now recognized as one of the easiest eCommerce software. Today, it serves more than 10,000 stores in the World Wide Web.
So why do a lot of online businesses go for the BigCommerce shopping cart?
Customization is quite easy. The designers of the eCommerce software have complete access to CSS (through FTP), HTML, QuickEdit, and other tools. To customize the layout of your own store, you can simply pick among the fifty store designs or you can also use the Drag and Drop Design Mode.
Some store owners find it hard to learn how to use the shopping carts but with BigCommerce, there is no learning curve. With the aid of this eCommerce software, you can easily sell products on the web. If you have no idea how to use the software, you can use the ‘Getting Started Wizard’ and after that, you can now operate your online store together with the shopping cart. With a bit of research, you can find step-by-step videos that you can use just in case you’re stuck or you encounter problems.
SEO experts optimized the eCommerce software. In fact, Aaron Wall (an SEO guru) reviewed BigCommerce and all his feedback are now incorporated in this very powerful shopping cart. Aaron has since come out and damned BigCommerce for claiming he endorsed the product. he did not. There are links to his article about this matter in the footer. It doesn’t change the quality of the inbuilt SEO in BigCommerce, but it does call into question the marketing practices at BigCommerce.
Just imagine how you can easily outrank all your competitors online!
The eCommerce also has built-in intelligence reports that store owners can use. If you need help, BigCommerce can help you in making better business decisions. You get to work less and yet you’re earning more money.
BigCommerce will not penalize stores that tend to sell more. You can sell as many products as you like and the software will not get in the way. There are no transaction fees involved and most of all, there are no hidden costs.
The top priority of BigCommerce is the security of online stores as well as the up-time of the shopping carts. Because of this, the software boasts of 99.99% up-time average track record. You can be sure that your store is protected with the same encryption and military-grade security like the large and prominent banks.
This eCommerce software has many features. For the design, the layout customization was already mentioned earlier and aside from that, you can also choose among the many templates, edit CSS and HTML from your browser, upload business logo, edit the email templates, etc.
The features are divided into the design features, SEO features, tax features, in-store features, marketing, support, hosting and security, payment and shipping, content management, search features, order and checkout, product and inventory, import or export, customer, and the reporting features.
BigCommerce is also far better than that of the Yahoo shopping cart and Volusion shopping cart. In terms of monthly price, BigCommerce offers the lowest monthly price of only $24.95 as compared to $39.95 of Yahoo and $29.95 of Volusion. A fifteen day free trial is also available with this new eCommerce software as compared to that of the 14-day trial by Volusion (and Yahoo doesn’t even offer a free trial!). The Drag and Drop Design Mode for easy customization is unique to BigCommerce, as well as the W3C Complaint Templates, online HTML/CSS editor, and the optimization by SEO gurus. The software offers 46 templates whereas Yahoo offers only 1 and Volusion, 20. This year, BigCommerce is recognized as one of the best shopping carts known today.
By visiting BigCommerce.com, you will be guided accordingly on how to open your very own online store. You can start by determining what you want to sell on the web. If you have a business in your area, then you can make it visible on the net. After choosing the products that you’re going to sell, you will now determine how to ship orders. Will you focus internationally or just locally? Know your shipping methods and jot it down.
Creating your own BigCommerce store is free and you can do this by filling out the form. You will simply provide your full name, organization, email address, phone number, and shop address. After providing the required fields, click on the ‘create my store’ button.
Once you’ve completed the sign up, you will need to decide how you will accept online payments. BigCommerce already has built in payment gateways and you’re free to use them. Picking a domain name is another vital decision and just make it short. You can use the default or you can pick your own domain name.
Various store designs are offered by BigCommerce and you can personalize your stores layout. With so many designs to choose from, it’ll be easier to pick one that suits your business and requirements.
Use the import wizard Big Commerce to import existing products, categories, photos, and variations. It’s also easy to add products with the use of the simple wizard and it already comes with descriptions, photos, etc.
Once you’ve completed all these steps, you can now launch your online store and start with the promotions. Add the URL in the marketing materials, invoices, and business cards so that you can effectively promote your new online store. Just in case you need help from the experts of BigCommerce, check out the contact details of the company found at the pages top portion.
Having a thorough business plan before opening an online business is necessary to ensure success. The eCommerce software of BigCommerce is the perfect solution for your shopping cart needs. Having an automated and efficient payment gateway will make the shopping experience worthwhile for most customers.
If you’re still looking for a shopping cart, it’s time to go for BigCommerce eCommerce software. This is a name you can trust.
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thanks for the information on Big commerce. I am looking at their site now.
thanks,
Strongly considering becoming a reseller for this software. All the folks I talk to rave about BigCommerce. Probably going to use this myself here soon.
Sign up for the trial here – it is only short but it will give you a chance to try it out – I love it, it is the easiest shopping cart to leave clients alone with
You have some great advice in your articles re shopping carts! Wish I could figure how much bandwidth I will need to compare bigcommerce, corecommerce with shopify. Maybe the 2% or 1% of sales would be made up for by the unlimited bandwidth? Never having been in ecommerce before I don’t know how much bw I’ll end up using, but I would like to NOT have to resize all the photos! I run a b&m place in Truth or Consequences, NM right now & want to expand into internet sales. Thanks for all your articles!
Thank you for dropping by Celeste.
My general rule for bandwidth is if you don’t know how much you need then you don’t need to factor it into your decision. The plans are quite generous both BigCommerce and CoreCommerce allow 2gb a month on the entry level plans and by the time you need more than that your shop will be sufficient enough that the upgrade will not hurt the bank.
As for Shopify a more useful comparitor would be that Shopify will take a per transaction fee for everything you sell online while CoreCommerce and Big Commerce will not.
If you had to pick a cart now CoreCommerce would be the go because they have waived there setup fees at the moment so you could be up and running today for under $25
Hiya!
First, great post.
Second, I have a static site and I really just want to use Big Commerce as a shopping cart/payment portal on one “store” page of my 10 page site. What do you think is the easiest way to go about this?
Thanks!
Allison
You could setup BigCommerce as store.yourdomain.com and embed the product forms on your static product page. Once you setup the products and BigCommerce a developer could very quickly show you how to copy the buy now forms into your static pages
Hey Andrew! I have been evaluating the different shopping carts available for the past month or so…there are so many options and right now I’m between BigCommerce and 3Dcart. Have you or anyone here had any experience with 3D? I found it to be very similar in most respects to BC. They have livechat support which is a huge plus to me; I hate having to call or do a ticket. I opened a support ticket with BC yesterday, just asking when their new templates and 6.0 would be available since they have been saying it would be June, and no reply yet. With 3d, however if you want to do a trial they advertise “full html/css access”. Well, that’s not exactly true-you have access to some of it, but you are limited on customizing and adding images until you purchase a plan. Still gives you a good overview of the product, but disappointing that I couldn’t try out editing via FTP.
Aside from that, I was really suprised to see how many stores are using Yahoo Small Business! Stores in the top 500 of online sales use Yahoo and I’m not sure what the appeal is, given the transaction fees/limited features etc. There is a very cool site i found (no, I have nothing to do with it whatsoever) called builtwith.com. It lets you look up any site and find out what shopping cart they are using as well as scripts/widgets/seo/etc/etc/etc. Very interesting stuff!
In the meantime, if you have any thoughts on 3dcart I’d love to hear them. Cheers!
We just got 3 of our clients on BigCommerce and one to buy the Interspire software. Overall the systems are great but if you are going to do any freight products/sales I would recommend using the interspire version – you can get developed a freight/carrier plugin to ship those heavy packages.
May I know how much money bigcommerce is paying you to write this stuff. I understand they pay quote a chunk than their competitors both in their affiliate program and sponsored reviews.
Sure jeremy, bigcommerce have never paid me for a post or review on this or any other website (in fact i dont know of anyone that has been paid anything but affiliate fees from them)
there affiliate program is one of the most profitable yes but more because of the number of people that sign up than because of the % they pay – several of the carts pay a lot higher that BigCommerce
It would make sense that they pay alot in affiliate fees because it seems that they are more concerned with getting new customers than helping their paying customers. I tried to open a store with them 6 months ago and found it incredibly hard to use and their support is a joke. They do everything possible to not take a support phone call. Not only that but they delete threads in their forum that are unflattering. A good example of this is the PCI thread. they kept saying they were going to become compliant, and then when they sent their form off to Visa for approval, they deleted the thread and said that they comply. I have asked why they are not on the Visa list and if they will show me the Visa letter, and they will not respond. In my opinion they are very young and inexpereinced at best and only care about the next wave of suckers that they can get to buy their product. There are alot better options out there. Look at the companies that have a track record IMHO.
I cannot believe that wasted so much time with this company. They try to make their demo look really easy to use, but in reality it is a pain to get your store ready to actually sell online. their support was also very limited and not helpful as well. the only thing that made it seem easy to use once you got in was the limited feature set. i dont see how any of their custoemrs are able to sell anything. i would bet that most of their customers go belly up within 3 months on the bigcommerce platform.
god riddance to these guys. i’m going to Volusion
Buyer beware, this ‘review’ reads like an advertisement written by BigCommerce staff.
Their HTML editor is absolutely atrocious. It will take you at least 10 times as long to edit a product as it should.
Do not under any circumstances use Big Commerce, in my opinion. I use them now and regret it daily.
I have 300 products added, and sales of almost $3000 in August 2011. Even though I feel like I am ‘stuck’ with them, I still may start over from scratch.
I think Mitch is very slick putting lipstick on a pig, and fooling noobs into thinking he has a good piece of software. I was such a fool. I thought that BigCommerces’ great SEO (for THEIR SITE) would equal a good product.
But it all starts with product descriptions. If I can’t even edit a product using their HTML editor, why bother with the rest of the features?
You can’t even save your HTML code with line breaks or tabs so that you can easily change it later. It’s just one blob of code with no breaks.
Absolutely terrible, Mitchell Harper should be ashamed of himself.
At the very least, they should delete the HTML ‘editor’ and tell users that they will need to use Notepad++ or Visual Studio or some other outside tool to write product descriptions.
This ‘review’ was not written by BigCommerce staff.
Ok I’m on Big Commerces Diamond Plan and still currently in development mode. We’re about 98% complete and almost ready for production.
I can honestly say that Big Commerce has done it right here. I’ve worked with platforms since 2003, the last platform was a painful one with Magento…
If you need to migrate over from another platform than no worries Big Commerce has you covered. Their import/export CSV tool is flawless and will import/export as many products as you can (Diamond Plan).
Making edits, setting up shipping, payment processing, 301 redirects and more is such a breeze.
No matter which way you look Big Commerce provides a solid foundation for your site and has you covered from all angles.
Oops I forgot one more thing. Their support is by far the best out there. You need to talk someone on the phone, email or live chat it’s all there at your finger tips.
I just read my posting and it may sound like an advertisement for the Big C but its not. I just recently started working with Big Commerce’s platform 2 months ago and its been a great experience so far.
I hope this helps and covers off any questions or concerns people may have about Big Commerce.
Hi Andrew,
i’m selling hardware and car parts and i was very excited about BigCommerce releasing the eBay version 6 how ever after investigating a little more i found many holes and lost trust with BigCommerce:
1. their eBay integration not available to eBay motor
2. you cant process orders from BigCommerce backend
3. you cant reply to messages through BigCommerce backend
4. their stating they have API integration in the website which is a BigLie.
5. they stating you don’t have to manage orders and listings on both eBay andBigCommerce and it’s a BigLie too. so bottom line i’m finding so many holes and lies and i’ve barely looked into their entire tools they stating they available and function and theres a big question mark about their intention sound like they interesting more selling then actually give anything back. in my opinion you give them too much credit and you didn’t drill in the product. i think you should do a little homework since people care about your opinion here .
thanks
Hi Andrew,
We are on the verge of deciding to go with BigCommerce but realised they dont have a rewards scheme feature? Is there any other webbased software that can be intergrated into BigCommerce for this?
Many thanks
Not that I have found. There is a lot of support for a reward program to be included with Big Commerce and they even recommend you use one with your online store so I expect we should see it in the next couple of releases
You ought to check Aaron Wall’s blog – he now disavows ever being involved with BC other than a 5 minute call about 5 years ago – long before the current system was for sale. Basically he calls them out on this and says he has asked them twice to stop using his name.
That isn’t very surprising Dave, do you have a link to the article so everyone can get that info. Thank you vey much for sharing
http://www.seobook.com/big-commerce
Problem is that they are probably consider themselves Gods.
They do not have usable support. They do not resolve issues.
We are switching to them and have integration problem (the one they advertise as fully functional), have critical ticket opened 3 weeks ago with absolutely no reply. Tech support people do not offer any help and they refuse to forward call to their supervisors. It’s a joke! We would not even try to make it work, if only we did not invest into website design specifically tied to BC!
Aaron Wall DID NOT have anything to do with BigCommerce’s SEO. He wrote on his blog:
“Over 5 years ago I had a quick chat with the folks from Interspire about their websites, including their shopping cart at the time (BigCommerce) & offered a few tips to fix some of the obvious issues I saw. This was over a half-decade ago & under a different product name & entirely informal.
Anyhow…as they later ramped up on marketing, they at some point claimed that I somehow “certified” their software, even as the version changed, their product name changed, their mode of sales changed (from primarily pushing a downloadable software product to an SAAS model), many SEO fundamentals changed over the years, and so on. “