Top 5 Benefits of Selling on BigCommerce
Written by Jessica Smith, a Content Writer at Americaneagle.com with 6+ years of experience in digital marketing, website management, and social media advertising.
Ecommerce sales are growing and online shopping is quickly becoming consumers’ ideal purchasing method. NASDAQ estimates that by the year 2040, as much as 95% of shopping will be facilitated by ecommerce. It’s no wonder that many merchants are looking for a simpler way to create an online store. Enter BigCommerce.
As one of the leading SaaS platforms powering over 60,000 online stores, BigCommerce is making its mark. The platform serves a range of brands from small businesses just getting started to industry-leading brands like Avery Dennison, Bliss, Burrow, Skullcandy, Sony and Woolrichs. At Americaneagle.com, we have the pleasure of working with dozens of content management systems and commerce platforms, each with their own pros and cons. Here are 5 of our favorite features:
Software as a Service
One of the biggest draws to BigCommerce has to do with the fact that it’s a SaaS-based solution. With SaaS, a company licenses a product through an ongoing subscription as opposed to a one-time purchase. Instead of having to buy and implement multiple versions of a platform as new features and updates get released, you just pay a regular rate that’s typically billed on a monthly basis.
The benefits of this structure are wide-reaching. When BigCommerce releases new functionality, that update gets rolled right to your store automatically, increasing your speed to market and ensuring you always have the latest features. As you scale up your store, you can simply move up a tier without requiring a complete overhaul of your business. Plus, without the need for multiple large scale implementations, you can put your focus back on optimizing your conversions and growing your store.
Secure Hosting with No Additional Fees
Many web platforms require independent hosting which can get costly, especially as you grow and require more server space. If you’re trying to cut costs by going to a run-of-the-mill hosting provider, high traffic times can spell disaster and if those servers become overloaded, your business can suffer.
As a SaaS, cloud-based product, BigCommerce rolls hosting fees right into your monthly subscription, saving you on average a quarter of the costs of an on-premise ecommerce solution. Security is also much-needed in the ecommerce world and online stores on BigCommerce get automatic PCI Compliance and integrated fraud protection tools to keep their customers’ information safe. Reliability and security is a must, especially when your next customer could be on the other side of the world.
Omni-Channel Selling Built Right In
People are shopping everywhere these days, whether that’s through brick and mortar stores, online marketplaces like Amazon and eBay, or even social media sites like Instagram and Pinterest. It’s more important than ever for retailers to have a presence on multiple channels and BigCommerce makes this simple.
With built-in integrations with Amazon, eBay, Facebook, Google Shopping, and more you can save time and avoid maintaining separate databases. You can connect your inventory directly to these channels and process orders all from one place. BigCommerce also features ‘buy buttons,’ that you can easily integrate within your blog, emails, or affiliate posts. With a small amount of coding, these buttons can match the look and feel of your store and send shoppers directly to your site.
Powers Your Search Engine Optimization
Retailers need to have a strong presence on search engines if they want a chance at getting discovered by potential customers. You can have the best looking site out there but none of that matters if you can’t drive traffic to it.
BigCommerce comes with a multitude of features that can help push your SEO efforts to the next level. With on-page SEO, you can easily inject relevant keywords into page titles, meta data and headings. Moreover, no matter what plan you’re on, BigCommerce comes with site wide SSL and mobile friendliness – two factors that Google uses to determine where your site ranks on search engine results pages. While this is only one part of the ever-expanding SEO puzzle, these out-of-the box features are great when you’re just getting started.
Endless Customization Options
While BigCommerce comes with eye-catching themes built right in, many ecommerce companies have unique needs and branding that they’d like to incorporate into their stores. Thankfully, BigCommerce comes with a Stencil Theme Framework that makes it simple for designers and front end developers to create beautiful, intuitive websites.
BigCommerce also partners with third party applications for shipping, product information management, search, analytics, and more. All of these apps are available within an ever expanding marketplace and installation is turnkey. The powerful BigCommerce APIs also allow programmers to build custom applications and integrations no matter what systems you’re already on. All of this provides much-needed flexibility that can adapt to the way you do business.
What next?
BigCommerce is a great choice for both large and small merchants today. As you weigh the pros and cons of ecommerce solutions, consider your business’ unique needs around growth, flexibility, and multichannel strategy. Americaneagle.com has extensive experience creating custom ecommerce solutions with partners like BigCommerce. See how their solutions can help you achieve your ecommerce goals.
