Video: BigCommerce Review

Full BigCommerce review | Subscribe on Youtube

Video transcript

Hi everyone, it’s Matt here from Style Factory — the go-to site for ecommerce reviews and tips.

In this short BigCommerce review, I’m going to spell out the five key reasons why you might want to use the platform, and the five key reasons why you might want to avoid it.

But before I begin, a quick reminder to like this video, hit the subscribe button and click the notifications bell. This will help you access all our ecommerce content more easily.

Right, let’s get going! I’ll start by taking a look at the 5 key reasons to use BigCommerce.

One — BigCommerce gives you a lot of ecommerce bang for your buck

With BigCommerce, you get a lot of important ecommerce features included as standard.

Key features that you’ll find bundled in BigCommerce’s entry-level plan include unlimited staff accounts, the ability to list products on Google Shopping, reviews and ratings tools and professional reporting. You generally won’t find these on the entry-level plans of other online store builders.

Two — BigCommerce doesn’t charge transaction fees

Unlike other big-name ecommerce solutions, BigCommerce doesn’t charge transaction fees on any of its plans.

This means that you don’t have to worry about anyone taking a cut of your sales, and you’ll have more flexibility over profit margins.

Three — BigCommerce is great for selling in multiple currencies

Displaying product prices in your store visitors’ own currency can really boost sales, and this is really easy to do with BigCommerce.

The platform uses geolocation to display prices in local currencies automatically, and it facilitates checkout in your store visitors’ own currencies too.

Four — BigCommerce makes it easy to capture custom data for your products

Some merchants require their store visitors to enter custom data at the point of purchase — for example, a jeweler might need some text from a customer for an inscription, or an artist might need a photo for a portrait.

Five — Real time shipping calculations are available on all plans

With BigCommerce, real time shipping calculations are available on all plans — this distinguishes BigCommerce from key competitors like Squarespace and Shopify, which require you to be on a premium plan or buy an add-on to avail of this functionality.

Ok, so that’s 5 great things about BigCommerce.

But what could it do better?

Let’s look at 5 reasons to avoid BigCommerce…

One — the free template selection is limited

The range of free templates available from BigCommerce is rather limited. You can only choose from 12 themes and several of these look extremely similar to each other.

Other platforms offer a lot more choice when it comes to free themes, especially Wix and Squarespace.

Two — the templates aren’t very flexible

Some of the BigCommerce templates are a bit harder than they should be to edit.

In particular, it’s difficult to hide certain parts of the templates without using custom code to do so, and this is something that some web design novices may feel uncomfortable with.

Three — the range of bundled web fonts is very limited

In its free templates, BigCommerce only gives you a few bundled web fonts to play with, and its page builder doesn’t currently support the addition of custom fonts.

This makes it harder for you to get a BigCommerce store to match any existing brand guidelines you may have.

Four — limits are placed on annual sales

With BigCommerce, limits apply to your annual sales — and if you exceed them, you’ll need to upgrade to a more expensive monthly plan. This is quite unusual and won’t suit all merchants.

Five — you have to pay quite a lot to access abandoned cart features

An abandoned cart saving tool lets you send reminder emails automatically to people who leave your store in the middle of a purchase. You can use these emails to encourage those visitors to complete their transaction.

By comparison to some of its competitors, you have to pay quite a lot to avail of abandoned cart functionality in BigCommerce.

While this feature is included on the entry level plans of some competing products, or provided at a low price point, BigCommerce requires you to be on a $79+ plan to access it.

So that’s it!

Five key reasons to use BigCommerce, and five key reasons you might want to look elsewhere for an online store builder.

I hope you’ve found this quick BigCommerce review helpful — but there are lots more pros and cons of the platform to discover. You’ll find all these in our full BigCommerce review which is available on the Style Factory website.

There’s a link to this resource in the video description, along with a link to the BigCommerce free trial.

To ensure you don’t miss any of our ecommerce reviews and tips in future, make sure you like this video, subscribe to our channel and hit the notifications bell

Finally, if you have any questions about BigCommerce, do leave a comment. We read them all and will do our best to help.