As we’ve promised, here we are with another opinion piece on E-commerce platforms’ strengths and weaknesses.
In these blog post series, we unravel all the good and bad qualities of E-commerce platforms, helping you, the webshop owner, make the right decision when it comes to what you choose.
You can always go online and google each and every one of the platforms that exist out there. In this piece, we’re not going to sugar-coat or sell them to you. They’re amazing at doing that themselves.
On the contrary, below we will tell you their specifics, what they’re good at but also what they lack. We’ll unravel their true nature and according to us, the more you know and read about them, the better they will be at delivering exactly what you’ve expected.
This time we’ll talk about BigCommerce’s strengths and weaknesses.
BigCommerce: Strengths
BigCommerce is a fair choice when it comes to an all-in-one solution platform. It’s one of the best in the industry and it’s a preferred choice by many webshop owners around the globe.
They have everything – integration with an email newsletter, unlimited product variations, shipping configurations, handling returns, social sharing, product wish lists, promotion campaigns, secure payment gateways, even store statistic reports, and product reviews.
Very few platforms will give you all this along with a friendly user experience to manage your store. Their customers say that the BigCommerce software is easy to work with and loading your products into the platform is effortless.
Now, if all the tools included in their initial plan are not enough for your web store, BigCommerce has prepared a large app store for you. You will find solutions with more advanced tools there. If you’re just starting out you won’t necessarily need these tools. But if you like thinking ahead, then, in the future, all these advanced tools will help you scale your business.
Browse through BigCommerce’s app store.
The chances BigCommerce gives its customers are endless.
Very few platforms do that and we gotta give it to them, they definitely do everything they can to help their customers sell more.
Their strengths don’t stop here. Another great thing about BigCommerce is the fact that they manage your entire hosting process, unlike WooCommerce, for example. So, you shouldn’t pay extra or worry about handling this. BigCommerce websites don’t load as fast as other platforms’, such as Shopify, but they are still extremely fast and extremely secure. It’s a huge advantage that everything about the security of your online business will be taken care of by professionals. Without a single penny on your side.
And, of course, unlike Magento, they are not behind when it comes to support. You will receive the attention of BigCommerce’s support team 24/7. This is always reassuring to know. Especially, when you’re in the middle of a customer crisis. Many BigCommerce users say this is the most valuable thing when it comes to the platform – they never feel rushed when talking to support and they always get asked back if there is anything else to help with.
BigCommerce: Weaknesses
But there are a few things that BigCommerce lacks or is not good enough to a certain point.
Vicky Briggs, from So Suzy Stamps, says that the platform doesn’t show the lowered price on an item that is on sale. Only at check out, which is inconvenient for both the customers and the webshop owners.
“I worked with WooCommerce before and they had a corner banner across the item that said Sales, so the customer knew that item was on sale. I wish BigCommerce had that.”
Another weakness of BigCommerce is the fact that they offer only 7 free website templates but at least they are easy to use and to customize. Everything else besides these 7 is paid starting from 145$.
Browse BigCommerce themes here.
And on that subject: a lot of BigCommerce users are unhappy with the fact that the company is dependant on the design of Pixel Union. Because working with just one design company really does provide with amazing themes but they are not so different one from another.
Another little thing that we find unsettling about BigCommerce is the fact that if you ever decide to move to a self-hosted server or a different E-commerce platform it’s not really going to be an easy process. Everything you have built on your website – design, payments, functionality, and content is in a way built into the BigCommerce platform. This is just something to have in mind when you’re shopping around for platforms.
Overall
This is not a verdict. We wouldn’t like to discourage you from purchasing BigCommerce. In fact, it’s one of the few very best E-commerce platforms out there. We give it to them that they put a lot of effort into trying to help you succeed. Very little companies care about this and this is why BigCommerce has our infinite respect. They have built a BigCommerce University inside their website. This is where they help webshop owners achieve their goals. And it doesn’t matter whether the readers are using BigCommerce or not as an E-commerce platform.
They do have their ups and downs and we hope we brought some light on the matter for you.
Next, we’ll unravel Shopify’s strengths and weaknesses. Stay tuned.
