Big Commerce, often referred to as BigCommerce (oneword), offers a simple solution to start an online store. If you have a product or service to sell online, you will need build your store on some type of shopping cart software. There are dozens of shopping cart software providers on the market. BigCommerce is the #1 rated shopping cart software available today, according to TopTenReviews.com…and for good reason.
Shopping cart providers normally offer their software in one of 2 ways…
Licensed – You can purchase the shopping cart software, download the software to your website host server and allow your host server to “run” the software. These are often called “licensed” shopping cart solutions, as you purchase and own a license of the software that resides on your server. By the way, if you hear the words “e-commerce software,” we’re talking about the same thing. Although, licensed versions of shopping cart software can offer an additional level of html or php code customization, they offer some limitations in terms of upgrades, features, and cost. Good software provider licenses, like Interspire, typically start at $1,000 or more, and some of them are much higher, like Magento, whose recommended Enterprise software license starts at $12,900 per year.
Hosted – Hosted shopping cart software is different. Hosted shopping cart software providers like BigCommerce host the software for you on their servers. Sometimes called SaaS (software as a service), hosted software providers offer you the ability to build your website by logging into a store control panel account you have with the hosting provider. There are several nice benefits for using hosted vs. licensed shopping cart software. Version upgrades are often more regular and much, much easier. Cost is also a very big benefit. BigCommerce plans start at $24.95 per month, and include many of the deluxe features that you would normally find in the best of the best shopping cart software licensed versions.
BigCommerce, in fact, includes over 400 features that include elements to help you build a great online store and to use the latest social media and mobile marketing tools to build traffic and sales for your store. BigCommerce stores offer over 96 professionally built BigCommerce templates to make your store look good. You can offer your customers coupons, gift certificates, wishlist, gift wrapping, account login for rapid checkout. BigCommerce has a really cool feature called SuperZoom that gives the store visitor the ability zoom way in to your product pics just by hovering their mouse.
With BigCommerce, your customers can buy from their phones. BigCommerce stores look great on the most commonly used mobile devices, including iPad, iPhone, Blackberry, Droid, and Palm. And the best part is, you don’t have to purchase a completely separate mobile website system…it’s built right in with BigCommerce.
BigCommerce SEO Features – BigCommerce was developed and optimized by the number 1 SEO expert in the world, Aaron Wall. The shopping cart includes many do-it-yourself SEO tools that you can use right out of the box. Search Engine Optimization gives you the best chance of landing on the front page of Google. If you want to know more about the BigCommerce SEO tools available through your BigCommerce store, click here. Also, check out the BigCommerce YouTube channel to learn from the many training videos provided by company co-founder and e-commerce expert, Mitchell Harper.
BigCommerce allows you to sell all over the world, with multiple currency support and worldwide shipping provider integration.
Sell on Facebook, eBay, and many other shopping sites all from within your BigCommerce store. You can even create auctions.
BigCommerce has all of the latest and greatest features that you see on sites like Amazon. Side panels that include: top sellers, you might also like, mini-cart, newsletter signup, brand tags, most popular products, customers also viewed, add this to your wishlist, 5-star reviews, new products, you recently viewed, compare products. BigCommerce also has dynamic dropdown search, like Google, social AddThis buttons, Facebook like button.
Do-it-yourself online stores are a reality with BigCommerce. If you are willing to invest the time to build out your store, you can do everything yourself using easy-to-edit features within your BigCommerce control panel. Add products, create web pages, upload photos, create discount coupons, process orders. It’s all very user friendly. You can even design your store, using drag-and-drop to move panels around, unheard of with other shopping cart software vendors.
Sell wholesale and retail with one BigCommerce store. You can create a professional wholesale e-commerce website using BigCommerce. Using customer groups within BigCommerce, you have the ability to hide wholesale products from customers who are not in your approve wholesale groups. Set different pricing structures for different groups of customers. You even have the ability to set the pricing to “Call for price” or to use your BigCommerce website as a catalog only.
BigCommerce even supports digital download products. So, if you want to sell an e-book, software download, music download, or any other downloadable product, BigCommerce makes it easy.
The possibilities are endless when starting a store online with BigCommerce. If you have an idea, an established product, or a store that you want to transfer, contact Redhead Web Development, or start a free trial store right now to take a test drive.
Redhead Web Development is not only an e-commerce consulting firm, but it is also a Certified BigCommerce Reseller, specializing in custom BigCommerce template design, as well as, complete store setup, and ongoing SEO and store marketing. Here are samples of some of the latest custom BigCommerce template designs by Redhead Web Development.
Redhead Web Development is a Certified Reseller and Design Partner for BigCommerce. If you need help with online store setup, Big Commerce template customization, BigCommerce SEO, or e-commerce consulting, contact Redhead for more information.
