BigCommerce eCommerce Review

BigCommerce has offices in the US and Australia and has been providing business owners with eCommerce solutions since 2003, making them a well-established and experienced company. BigCommerce serves clientele in more than 65 countries and is one of the fastest growing eCommerce platforms in existence. The company has more than 25,000 clients and has received glowing reviews from Forbes, TecChrunch, Website Magazine, and Internet Retailer.

eCommerce Features

BigCommerce has tons of great features as far as marketing and design go. You are given total creative control over the design of your store and may modify the HTML or CSS of your page if you have the skills. There are also simple tools for those who are not code-savvy to modify the look of the store. An abandoned cart saver saves orders in mid-progress and sends out email reminders to customers to help them remember to complete their purchase. You may upload as many different product photos to your photo gallery as you’d like so that visitors can easy explore different angles of a product or zoom in to see a larger version. SuperZoom™ provides customers with crystal-clear zoomed-in versions so that customers know what they’ll be getting if they purchase a product. You may sell your products with options for color, quantity, and more. Create eye-catching promotional banners for the top or bottom of any page on your site to promote sales and special products.

BigCommerce offers a fully responsive interface which adapts well to mobile devices like iPhone, Android, and Blackberry so that customers can shop while they’re on the go. Everything displays clearly and is easy for customers to browse from the start of the process to the final checkout.

The eCommerce software provides you with plenty of tools for managing your store, merchandise, and returns. Automatic inventory control lets you know if an item is running out of stock, and automatically drops the stock as products are purchased so that your system doesn’t try to sell products to customers which you do not have. The flexible returns system allows customers to easily record why they are sending an item back to you. The only drawback is that there is no support for multiple languages. There is also no uptime guarantee. Fraud prevention is available but handled through a third party. Delivery network is available but optional.

Marketing Features

There are a lot of marketing features including coupons and gift certificates. You may also use this software to sell your products on EBay and Facebook. Automated email marketing sends relevant promotions to customers based off of their browsing and purchase habits. These marketing features target customers who are likely to convert and offer them the opportunity to buy from you in social venues of their choice. There is no way to provide daily offers, however, and no loyalty program.

Pricing

There are a number of pricing options based off of the number of products you can upload. The Bronze option is the least expensive at $24.95 per month and allows you to sell 100 products. The next tier up is Silver at $39.95 per month for 500 products. With Gold membership you can sell 1,000 products for $79.95 per month. Platinum and Diamond cost $149.95 and $299.95 respectively and allow you to sell unlimited products. Other differences between the tiers include the number of staff logins available, the amount of storage space, and the amount of free AdWords included with the package you purchase. The Abandoned Cart Saver is only available for the top three tiers. All tiers include unlimited bandwidth. There is no setup fee for any of the packages.

Customer Support

Customer support is offered via email, live chat, or telephone, but is not available 24/7/365. The user manual is also out of date, though there is a knowledge base, FAQ and support forum, along with video tutorials to help you learn how to use the eCommerce software. So this area is a little lacking but not bad considering there is still a lot of support.

Conclusion

We have seen a couple of superior options for eCommerce software, but this is still an excellent option. The pricing is good, though not the best, and the product display options are very good. Ease of use is top notch, but we’ve docked points for some of the missing support features as well as the lack of marketing options like a loyalty program and daily offers system. Multiple languages support would have been a nice feature as well. These are small detractors however; overall BigCommerce offers a lot to the user in terms of marketing and design and has a ton of experience in the field. The pricing options are very flexible as well. TopFiveAdvisor gives BigCommerce a 9/10. This is definitely a company you should check into when you’re researching your options for eCommerce.