Big Difference and Big Improvements through BigCommerce
October 19, 2019
Big Difference and Big Improvements through BigCommerce
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Software Version
Plus
Overall Satisfaction with BigCommerce
We are a small business which sells our niche products exclusively online. We use BigCommerce (BC) as our web hosting service. Our BC page integrates with our shipping utility as well so orders are easily processed and shipped. BC is used across our whole organization. We don't really have departments. We're so small that almost everything is handled by me. Using BC has addressed problems with SEO that we've had prior to using BC. It has helped the shipping process run much more smoothly and efficiently. BC has provided what I think are nice-looking web page templates that help welcome visitors and make it easier for them to order. I am not a web developer, so with BC, I've been able to accomplish what I set out to do, with flexibility to user-friendly modification selections.
- BigCommerce offers a wide variety of page theme templates which look nice. This makes our small business have a professional looking online presence without requiring me to be a web developer.
- BigCommerce offers a variety of apps that are created by other companies that can be easily added and integrated on our page. For example, ShipStation which when you install, configures correctly with my page without a ton of configuration on my side. This saves time and helps me accomplish my goals of being able to ship efficiently.
- BigCommerce has some behind-the-scenes magic that has helped my page rank to the top on Google and other search engines, without my having to do very much at all. I don't have to pay for SEO services.
- There are some limitations to the theme templates as to what can be changed. For example, I want my Categories menu, which appears as a sidebar for desktop customers, to display at the bottom of the page for mobile customers. There's not an option for that in the template I'm using. I can probably do it by making customization to the code, but, I am not a web developer and I don't know how to do that. Mobile customers don't see it unless they somehow magically know they have to touch the button in the top left corner. I will need to create a Categories page that mobile customers can see by touching on the welcome carousel.
- The products consistently appear too large for my tastes, in particular, on tablets. One product image takes up almost the whole screen on a tablet. The user will magically have to know that they need to scroll down to add to cart or to view the description of the product. This kind of drives me nuts.
- The Search function, for me, is useless, and I might even say in many cases it returns the wrong products based on what my customers are searching for. There is little to no options for configuring it to select exact or phrase match results only, or, to only return results based on the product descriptions and not names of categories or pages on my site that mentions a particular word. I wish I could control exactly what it would look for. There are search apps but none of them work well for my site. Just yesterday I learned how to remove the Search completely, which is what I did successfully.
- There is a Bulk Edit feature where you can edit multiple items at once, such as product names or prices, but it is limited. I often do have to drill in and out of each product when I make universal updates, which can take a long time.
- I wish it had much greater flexibility for options in the checkout process. It's kind of clunky and slow in my opinion. I haven't found an app that I could use to replace the checkout module. I think it may partially depend on the template you use. I'd like my customer to have the option of buying now, to begin checking out rather than having to go to cart first.
- Using BigCommerce with the integrated ShipStation app has helped me save time immensely for processing shipping.
- Among our products is a digital download. BigCommerce has made it possible for us to sell our downloadable product.
- Merely by using BigCommerce, I've been ranked on page one of Google and other search engines. I have not had to pay for SEO. This has given us greater visibility to customers searching for what we offer.
$20,000 to $100,000
I'm not a web developer and I am not even sure what API means. However, there are outside vendor apps that are available in BigCommerce that are easy to install and try out with very little technical configuration. Some are free and some are paid. We use apps for data analytics, chat, shipping and SEO. All of them have helped improve areas which BigCommerce alone may be lacking.
There is a night and day difference between Yahoo Web Hosting and BigCommerce. BigCommerce is better in literally every way. When I first began looking for a different product 6 years ago, I had evaluated Shopify but did not actully purchase it or try it out as our main provider. BigCommerce's templates looked better, and more importantly, BigCommerce allows digital product sales.