Mastering BigCommerce: Your Ultimate Guide to Ecommerce Success

Dive into the world of BigCommerce with our comprehensive guide on getting started, maximizing benefits, and optimizing your online store. Learn how to add products, set up shipping methods, and launch your store effortlessly. Discover the advantages of BigCommerce, from mobile adaptability to content syndication, and explore its pros and cons. With insights on themes, payment gateways, and dropshipping options, embark on your ecommerce journey with confidence. Read more to unlock the full potential of BigCommerce and propel your online business to new heights.

Getting Started With BigCommerce

Log in BigCommerce

Visit the BigCommerce website and click Log in. You are required to fill in your email address and passwords which will redirect you to the Control Panel.

Add your first product

Go to Product and click Add. You will be taken to the Detail tab on the Product edit page. Import all possible information about your product into these sections.

Add shipping method

• Go to the Shipping Manager and click Configure or Edit.
• For free shipping, move to Free Shipping and apply it to the zone.
• To add flat-rate shipping, go to Store Setup and click Shipping and click Flat rate.
• Visit the Store Setup, click Shipping then click Configure or Edit. Fill in the popup form with the information on shipping methods.

If you want to add Ship by order shipping method, the process is somewhat similar. Go to the Store Setup, click Shipping then click Configure or Edit. Toggle on the Ship by method and you will see a popup form. Fill in the form with the information about possible shipping methods. Then click Submit to finish

Review your stores

Take a look at your store. You can have other people give you some feedback by clicking on the Review & Test of your stores.

Launch store

You are ready to introduce your store by clicking Launch Store.

The Benefits of Using BigCommerce for Your Ecommerce Site

Fully-Adapted to Mobile Devices

About 50% of online shoppers use their smartphones to make purchases. If your online business doesn’t work properly on smartphones, you will be losing half of your potential customers.

BigCommerce was the first e-commerce platform to integrate Google’s AMP into e-commerce. BigCommerce integration with AMP simplifies category and product pages, which favours page loading time, thus improving the user experience and SEO.

Content Syndication

BigCommerce website development allows you to increase traffic to your site by using content RSS and purchase feeds. This platform easily connects to shopping feeds such as Shopzilla to drive more traffic to your website. In addition, it is connected to Google’s product search engine, which gives you the ability to get more traffic directly through that channel.

Once your e-commerce is up and running, it’s important to have the peace of mind of knowing that it will continue to work properly in the face of any problem that arises. BigCommerce website development offers assistance for your store 24 hours a day, so you do not have to worry about any problem that may arise and threaten to hinder the functioning of your website, resulting in losses.

Online Marketing Apps

BigCommerce has a multitude of apps to boost the conversions and revenues of your online business. For example, there are apps to integrate social networks, shopping cart recovery app, one-click payment, etc. As a user, you can also download other extensions and use the different functions to increase sales if you need.

Multi-Platform

BigCommerce gives you the possibility to integrate your e-commerce in marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, etc. Thanks to this you will be able to attract more traffic to your business. You can also integrate your business on Facebook. Thus, you can harness the power of Facebook for your sales and marketing.

Stock and Returns Management

BigCommerce offers you an intuitive interface to manage stock, making it easier to manage product returns. Having an easy-to-use stock and returns management system is an advantage in an e-commerce business.

SEO Optimization

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) makes your website gain relevant traffic that can be translated into customers organically. SEO remains a fundamental aspect of any online business. BigCommerce includes several useful SEO tools that will make your online store rank well in search engines.

BigCommerce Pros & Cons

Pros

All-in-One Solution

Business owners who are just starting out or do not wish to hire a developer will be attracted to BigCommerce’s all-in-one platform, which comes with everything you need to power an online store.

This includes hosting, themes and apps, giving you access to multiple payment gateways, including blogging capabilities, and more.

Ease of Use

BigCommerce is incredibly easy to use as any decent all-in-one platform should be. It’s even easy to get started with a free, 15-day trial. All you need to do is enter your email address, address, phone number and answer a few quick questions about your business.

It also offers free and premium themes you can install and edit with ease. It’s also easy to create products and manage your store.

No Transaction Fees

BigCommerce doesn’t charge transaction fees on any of their plans, as stated above. Shopify, on the other hand, charges a 2% fee for every transaction a store processes if the owner uses a payment gateway other than Shopify Payments.

You will, however, be obliged to pay transaction fees charged by the payment gateways you use. This is separate from BigCommerce and is something they have no control over.

PayPal Powered by Braintree, Stripe, Square and Authorize.net are all popular payment gateways for this platform.

Multiple Sales Channels

This platform’s primary feature is its ability to allow anyone to build and run their own online store without having to rely on a number of different services, but it does allow you to sell in places outside of your store.

This includes online marketplaces like eBay, Amazon and Google Shopping, but it also includes in-person sales through integration with Square POS as well as the ability to sell on social media through integration with Facebook and Pinterest.

BigCommerce Support

BigCommerce support comes in a variety of different formats. One-on-one support is available 24/7 through chat, email and phone. The knowledge base, known as BigCommerce University, also contains a lot of helpful articles in case you get stuck.

There’s also a blog, webinars and help from other merchants in the community forums.

Security

BigCommerce stores are protected by multiple layers of security. This includes being PCI compliant on a Level-1 basis. Server protection comes in the form of different types of firewalls, file-integrity scanners and 24/7 monitoring. All of this security and hands-on monitoring allows BigCommerce to achieve a 99.99% uptime average and fast servers capable of sustaining heavy traffic.

You’ll also have access to automated fraud detection through integration with Sift Science, a service trusted by such brands as Zillow, Airbnb, Twitter and more. All plans also come with free SSL certificates, but enterprise customers can upgrade to more premium certificates from third-party sellers.

Shipping

Merchants also get a break on shipping with this platform. For starters, it features a quick setup process when it comes to configuring shipping options. This process allows you to define fixed shipping rates for a variety of different locations with ease.

Creating Products is Simple

Continuing on with the ease-of-use section, creating products is also incredibly simple with BigCommerce. The Create New Product page allows you to enter a price, tax, SKU and/or product code as well as details on weight, product type (physical or digital), shipping, and more.

You can even arrange products into categories and subcategories that can be eight categories deep. Each store can have as many as 16,000 categories in total, making this platform a viable option for large department stores.

Store Management

Lastly, BigCommerce makes it incredibly easy for you to manage every aspect of your store. This includes organizing the Orders section into multiple sub-sections, including Awaiting Payment, Awaiting Fulfillment, Awaiting Shipment and Pre-Orders. You can even create custom views for external sales channels, export orders, track shipments and import tracking numbers.

This platform also has built-in analytics features that allow you to monitor traffic over time or traffic in real time and gain insights into how your customers shop. This means you’ll be able to see which products should be bundled together to increase sales, who’s browsing but not buying, which of your customers bring the most business to your store and which valuable customers haven’t purchased anything in a while.

Cons

• Extra Fees for Successful Customers
• Expensive BigCommerce Themes
• No Lite Version
• Theme Editor Could Use Improvements

Features in BigCommerce Ecommerce Platform

Website Customization

BigCommerce B2B provides significant advantages to any business that uses it to build an eCommerce website.

Greater usability: BigCommerce develops and integrates a wide range of B2B functions listed down in the next section and beyond that are potential enough for freedom in customizing your website.

Better conversion rate: With flexible single-page checkout customization, BigCommerce provides many options for you to learn how to make its best use.

Trusted & Reliable hosting: BigCommerce commits a 99% uptime guarantee, which is proven true by many reviews from registered users.

Express support: Instant support is valuable for wholesale business. Any corporation that registered the Enterprise plan will receive high-priority support in the status queue.

For Standard edition and BigCommerce Plus, BigCommerce still has a decent amount of features that could satisfy smaller wholesale businesses. Most of them can also be used to create a B2C store if required.

SEO & Analytics Optimization

BigCommerce includes built-in SEO features to help businesses increase organic exposure. Its analytics dashboard offers customer insights and visibility into page and product level performance. BigCommerce recognizes the analytics suites as a key differentiator and as such, their in-house team continues to invest in improving the dashboard.

Payment & Inventory Management

BigCommerce supports a variety of third-party payment services. Specifically, they accept payments from major providers including PayPal, Stripe, Apple Pay, Pay with Amazon and more. This feature allows businesses to make the decision of which service is a right fit for them based on features that align to their target users.

BigCommerce will not penalize companies that use non-standard payment gateways and also helps you manage inventory and orders from a single location. You can also use third-party fulfillment applications to scale your business as you grow.

Application Integrations

BigCommerce integrates with external applications and maintains a marketplace of tested and approved third-party apps. The active app developer community and a well-stocked app marketplace helps businesses find custom elements or desired features that can improve their sites.

HubSpot CRM functionality with BigCommerce stores allows merchants to recapture lost revenue associated with abandoned carts, segment their customer population and automate emails and workflows by marrying HubSpot with BigCommerce data.

Although apps can enhance your store, BigCommerce also offers significant out-of-the-box functionality and doesn’t require external applications to function (like Shopify).

B2B Integration

• Support various integrated apps with a wide range of functionality.
• Support ERP system integration: Netsuite, Brightpearl.
• Support integrated tax calculating, accounting, marketing & conversion applications: Avalara, Quick Book, Xero, Sage, MailChimp, Adwords.
• Support POS (point of sale) integrations like ShopKeep, ConnectPOS, Hike.
• Check out the complete list of integration marketplace apps.

Sell anywhere

BigCommerce allows retailers to sell via their online store, as well as in-person, as in a pop-up shop or physical store. Yes, other ecommerce platforms have this capability, but what sets BigCommerce apart is that you can run all your different types of sales through one system.

Further, BigCommerce natively interfaces with three popular point of sale (POS) systems: Square, Shopkeep, and Springboard. This means that retailers have more freedom to choose the POS that works best for them, rather than adhere to one solution. With BigCommerce, by having out-of-the-box integration with three of the most prevalent POS systems, retailers have more control to select the system that works best for them.

Sell Different Types of Products

BigCommerce has native capability that lets merchants complete a full range of sales on their site. Meaning: you can sell physical, digital, and service products all on the same site. For example, let’s say you sell headphones online. With BigCommerce, you could also offer digital music downloads for sale, as well as a warranty service for the headphones, all from the same ecommerce site.

Fewer Limits on API Calls

When you want to extend the functionality of your ecommerce site with a third-party app, the app will need to make API (Application Program Interface) calls to your platform. Some platforms restrict the number of calls that are permitted to a site.

BigCommerce, however, allows for more API calls than many other ecommerce platforms. This means that retailers can customize your website with different add-ons and customizations, and you won’t run into extension limits.

Growing International Capabilities

BigCommerce has big plans for cross-border ecommerce, and the work has already begun. The platform currently gives merchants the opportunity to create microsites for several international regions at once. It also can be set up to translate your site content based on the IP address of your site visitors. Further, looking to the future, BigCommerce is adding staff around the world, so we expect this to lead to more global innovation, including native multi-currency functionality.

Pioneers in Social Selling

Social media is one of the big reasons direct-to-consumer brands have come on strong in recent years. Instagram is the club of choice for many lifestyle consumers, especially when they are shopping for fashion and apparel. BigCommerce has been ahead of the curve on social selling. In fact, when Instagram piloted their own checkout, they chose BigCommerce as one of their partners in their pilot program.

5 Examples of Outstanding BigCommerce Sites

• solostove.com
• shoprevelry.com
• livelarq.com
• burrow.com
• skullcandy.com

How to Find Awesome BigCommerce Themes

LaParis

The theme features a large slider area in the header made to showcase your products. It also has payment gateway feature, customization options, product filters and responsive design.

Solo

Solo is responsive and features a front pages slideshow, customizable, product selector, one-page checkout and more.

Exhibit 

Exhibit is a feature-rich theme tailored for small to medium-sized catalogs. It has classic sidebar navigation and distinctive blog posts. Exhibit is a responsive theme with the front-page slideshow, product filtering, product comparison table and more. 

Chelsea 

Chelsea helps you creates large imagery and elegant typography for products to tell the story while making your customers feel like they’re walking around in a shopping mall. Chelsea is perfect for apparel stores, health and beauty products. 

Gameworld 

Gameworld has several options to display a variety of games for the most popular platforms. Every part of this theme is customizable through the theme options panel and the theme supports multiple languages and currencies. It’s also responsive and comes with built-in filtering options, mega menu, and detailed documentation. 

Supermarket Yellow 

Supermarket Yellow is a responsive mobile optimized theme which has outstanding features like sidebar navigation, mega menu, multiple products advanced quick menu, product showcase and more. 

Verve 

Verve is a fully responsive theme and can help you reach where your audience is. It also has feature like quick add to cart, free theme upgrades, one-page checkout, product videos and much more. 

Venture 

Venture is a theme for progressive online stores which supports modern design and stylish look, at the same time feels like enterprise. It is fully responsive and has features such as frontpage slideshow, product comparison table, complex search filtering and so on. 

Showroom 

Showroom has a unique space saving product grid and customizable sidebar menu which makes it ideal for any brand. It has features like quick add to cart, one step checkout, product videos, front page slideshow and more. 

Lookbook 

Lookbook takes product photography to the next level with dual column product grid and detailed product shots.

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BigCommerce Payment Gateways in UAE

• 2Checkout
• PayPal
• Stripe

BigCommerce Dropshipping in UAE

• Spocket
• PrintFul
• Inventory Source
• AliExpress
• Wholesale2B
• Sunrise Wholesale

BigCommerce Reviews

• Ease of Use – 9/10
• Support – 10/10
• Features – 10/10
• Pricing – 8/10
• Ecommerce Guide Score – 9.25