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Great e-commerce platform for bookstores that are anything like us - mostly online.
May 23, 2019

Great e-commerce platform for bookstores that are anything like us - mostly online.

Matt Russell | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Software Version

Enterprise

Overall Satisfaction with BigCommerce

We use BigCommerce to host and manage our sales website. We sell Law Books and we have adapted it to help us sell to 10+ law schools and other law students throughout the world. This e-commerce platform makes all aspects of our business possible such as web hosting book lists, managing orders/tax charges, processing orders and notifying customers, not to mention the sales reporting we can draw from the system.
  • Sales tax management
  • Product/information hosting for customers to find what they need
  • Connectivity to allow many shipping methods (UPS, FedEx, USPS, DHL, in-store-pickup, etc)
  • Store/hold order information for both customer and product sales
  • Product options that could be built-in rather than needing to add manually (ie. New and Used)
  • Could use a system that could be used to rent products, not just purchase
  • Reports could use some help to narrow down what clients are trying to find, rather than a mass report
  • Mass re-pricing tool could use some help to make more user-friendly
  • Inventory reporting could use some help to narrow down the information
  • Streamlined our productivity.
  • Lowered number of employees needed to process orders.
  • Has reduced costs of web management.
$500,000 to $1 million
We could definitely see this platform being used for anywhere between 1 and 1000 employees and still be very capable of handling information in-flow. If we were capable of growing exponentially and we somehow had 200 employees (we currently have 5), this platform would still be VERY useful and helpful with managing all aspects of managing sales/retail.
The biggest integrations with BigCommerce we use include
  • Ordoro for order/shipping management - this works amazingly for us.
  • ShipperHQ for hosting our shipping options for customers to choose from - Great option to provide the different choices of shipping we offer to customers all in one place.
  • We manually manage customized product options to allow for rental of products and we can see how many other options are possible.
We have used two other e-commerce platforms in the past and this is BY FAR the BEST option we have used, both for the money spent and the quality of the product offered. Both of the other platforms we have used were out-dated and high cost, so for the ability to manage things the way we need to, this is a great product.
Great for use in most sectors of retail. Not sure how well it works for an informational product, but it can host PDFs and other documents that can be accessed by customers. Highly recommend spending time to familiarize yourself with many of the product options that you can create to make the system adapt to your needs. Very versatile once you have a grasp of what core needs your business has, and the way you can make BigCommerce adapt to those needs.

BigCommerce Feature Ratings

8.1
Product catalog & listings
9
Product management
6
Bulk product upload
9
Branding
7
Mobile storefront
9
Product variations
10
Website integration
10
Visual customization
5
CMS
Not Rated
9.0
Abandoned cart recovery
Not Rated
Checkout user experience
9
10.0
eCommerce security
10
7.3
Promotions & discounts
8
Personalized recommendations
9
SEO
5
9.8
Multi-site management
Not Rated
Order processing
9
Inventory management
10
Shipping
10
Custom functionality
10

Using BigCommerce

6 - Order processing - placing, pulling, packing, shipping.
Web management, custom information provided to customers to inform decisions of what to buy. Bookstore categories allow customers to have an easy way to find what they are looking for and how to purchase.
Reporting sales tax and sales information to accounting professionals with information that is provided by the system.
2 - We need people who have basic to intermediate computer skills to manage items in BigCommerce. Many functions of BC are very user-friendly, but most of the manual customization required intermediate-advanced understanding of needs of both business as well as BC systems to make the customer-side more user-friendly/clean/visually appealing. If you have someone who can learn the BC side, and has a strong understanding of what your customers needs are, you will be in great hands with this platform.
  • Sales-tax management
  • product/categories hosting or management
  • shipping options for customers to choose from
  • reporting ability (sales, tax, etc.)
  • We have created book-lists for more than 10 schools, all posted as "Categories" on our site for the customers to be able to use to inform their purchases.
  • We have created multiple product "options" in order to allow for sales of "New, Used, Rentals" and even "E-Books"
  • If we were able to expand, BigCommerce could easily handle managing multiple locations.
  • We hope BigCommerce will connect with Amazon to sell books, not just other products (they already have the ability to sell other products, just not books as of today).
We are VERY happy with BigCommerce's ability to manage our needs for running our business. All other eCommerce platforms fall short of what is offered by BigCommerce in almost all ways. We don't plan on leaving BC anytime soon! Love it and highly recommend to others who need an eCommerce solution.