BigCommerce Features To Make eCommerce Store Stand Apart

The second decade of the 21st century has been the era of ecommerce. Within the last five years, we have witnessed tremendous growth in the ecommerce industry, with a huge number of customers going online for their everyday shopping needs. This has made it imperative for small sellers, large companies, and even wholesalers to have an online presence through an ecommerce store. For developing an ecommerce, numerous ecommerce development platforms are available such as BigCommerce, Magento, Shopify, WooCommerce, Shopware, etc. However, among these, a huge portion of retailers prefer to go with BigCommerce because of its huge set of features. BigCommerce develops a growing number of unique tools each year. The decision to choose an ecommerce platform over another relies heavily on the features and functionality.

But for now, we will go through the top BigCommerce features that make it wanted for an ecommerce platform.

• Unlimited file storage, bandwidth, and products
• Single-page checkout
• Less downtime
• Coupons & Gift Certificates
• Product Videos
• Bulk Pricing
• Ratings & Reviews
• Product Swatches
• Customer Groups & Segmentation
• Abandoned Cart Saver
• Persistent Cart
• B2B Edition

How To Choose An eCommerce Platform?

We can categorize the ecommerce platform into two different types: First is self-hosted such as Adobe Commerce. This type of ecommerce platform is a one-time download or purchase, and you will now own it. Now it is up to you to acquire hosting, installation, setup, and support for the store yourself.

The second category is of a SaaS platform (Software as a Service). These platforms combine the ecommerce functionality with the support of an ongoing service –the essential technical things like hosting, technical support, and security maintenance provided by the support team.  BigCommerce is a highly popular SaaS platform. Deciding between a self-hosted platform and a SaaS platform is not a matter of “better” or “worse.” It entirely depends on your business or industry requirements.

The traditional software generally offers flexibility and allows the owner to choose between hosting, customization, and maintenance. You can leverage this freedom to a great extent, but for that, you must have the resources who can manage these responsibilities.

On the other hand, a SaaS platform can simplify your storefront setup as it is a complete package of hosting, maintenance, and support with the product itself.

A Place For SaaS

At Emizentech, we have expertise in developing and support ecommerce stores. We have vast experience developing ecommerce stores on platforms like BigCommerce, Magento, Shopify, WooCommerce, etc. Thus, we always advise our clients for our BigCommerce services. We firstly understand the client’s requirements and then propose the right platform.  If the client wants a wholly customized ecommerce store, we always recommend the simplified workflow of SaaS platforms such as BigCommerce. It is highly beneficial for these customers. This article will talk about BigCommerce and its features, which makes it the first choice for your ecommerce platform.

One Reason That We Prefer Is That It Is Highly Customizable

Just like any other SaaS platform, BigCommerce works on a closed system. It means that support and maintenance are included in the subscription. BigCommerce provides a huge range of tools that the developers can use to meet the custom requirements of our clients. It comes with a default base theme, 1 of 10 free themes, and many other professional themes that you can purchase.

Our front-end developers can modify these themes regardless of the one you choose. We can customize your site as per your requirements and branding. The functionality can be expanded using custom scripts and a robust API for handling various kinds of integrations. In short, a BigCommerce site doesn’t need to be a cookie-cutter, just as it is a SaaS-based platform.

The native features of BigCommerce also make us fall for it. It has an app store, in which you can find integrations for purchase to extend the store’s capabilities. Now we will discuss our 12 favorite features of BigCommerce, for which you may require 3rd party integrations in other platforms but comes natively with BigCommerce.

12 BigCommerce Features That Make It Special

1. Unlimited File Storage, Bandwidth, & Products

There are no limits on catalog size, storage, or the number of requests you can receive on your ecommerce store in BigCommerce. It is also true because it is a “Standard” platform for an entry-level store; thus, you don’t need to purchase any better plan for more products or better loading times.

The only limit is on the sales, which are limited to $50K for the Standard plan, $180K for “Plus,” and $400K for “Pro.” Enterprise-level plans have no limits.

Like any other ecommerce store, your BigCommerce store will work best with a clean design and consolidated assets. The benefit is that you won’t have to pay extra for any additional bandwidth.

2. Single Page Checkout

Checkout plays a vital role in boosting sales of your eCommerce store. If customers have to fill a huge form or go through certain steps to buy a product, you will lose many of your potential customers. A streamlined checkout is crucial for a high conversion rate. The customers shouldn’t be distracted when they are on the final stage of the checkout.

BigCommerce gives you a simple, one-page checkout without any distraction. Thus, the customers will always complete the purchase.

3. Less Downtime

Like many other cloud-based solutions, BigCommerce boasts an impressive 99% uptime rate. It matters a lot for sales and building customer trust-shoppers. You can open even during a holiday rush or flash sale.

BigCommerce employs an off-site hosting solution like AWS (Amazon Web Services). Also, cloud hosting exonerates you from any burden of maintenance and updates.

4.  Coupons & Gift Cards

There is a good range of tools present in BigCommerce that you can use for increasing purchases and improving loyalty.

The flexible discount system lets you offer special incentives on purchasing on pre-determined criteria. E.g., Buy one get one free scheme or free shipping after a certain amount of order. Every BigCommerce plan also has coupons. A coupon code is a trending method to attract customers to sign up for a newsletter or create a member account. You can also know the effectiveness of your marketing campaign using Coupon codes by associating a unique coupon code with a specified advertisement.

In addition to this, the BigCommerce (all plans) comes gift products feature. The customers can buy a virtual gift certificate for a particular price range and will automatically be emailed to the recipient.

5. Product Videos

Like product images, videos also help the customers have better insight or vision of the product. BigCommerce gives you the functionality of adding videos to the products. You can add videos either through a simple YouTube link and appears right on the product page. You can showcase your products by an in-depth demonstration or sizzle reel.

6. Bulk Pricing

This feature is highly important if you are involved in the B2B business. By this feature, you can incentivize bulk purchases by offering discounts to customers if they buy a certain quantity.

There are multiple ways for offering bulk discounts. E.g., you can add a percentage discount for a quantity tier or set a fixed price for a product per tier.  You can also implement Bulk discounts by applying them at the category level. In the “Plus” plan, discounts for bulk purchasing can be implemented for certain customer groups. This makes BigCommerce a compelling choice for B2B stores.

7. Ratings & Reviews

BigCommerce has simples features for customer reviews and ratings. You can activate it with a single click, and it is available on any ecommerce product page. The reviews can be set either for manual or automatic approval and set up management for preventing spamming.

In BigCommerce, you will also get customizable templates for sending emails to customers to ask for reviews for recently purchased products.

8. Product Swatches

In every BigCommerce edition, product listings allow multiple product variants for size, color, or pattern options.

There are checkboxes, size selectors, or dropdowns for formatting these options. If the products have visual variations, you can swatch images or colors of the product to get a quick preview of each variant.

9. Customer Groups & Segmentation

In the BigCommerce “Plus” and above editions, you can create customer groups or popularly known as customer segmentation. Although every store type can use this feature, it is mostly used by B2B online retailers.

You can give special rewards, offers to a particular customer group, a membership group for offering discounts, a wholesale group for providing lower rates, etc.

10. Abandoned Cart Saver

Abandoned Cart Saver plan comes in BigCommerce “Plus” and above editions. It allows you to send automated emails to those customers who have left the cart abandoned. For instance, if the customer has left the cart without completing a purchase, you can send an email as a reminder after 1 hour to complete checkout. If still the purchase isn’t completed, then send another email automatically after 24 hours with/without a discount code to encourage purchase.

11. Persistent Cart

This feature makes sure that the customer cart remains constant even if the users move between devices. E.g., if the customer adds certain items while browsing through his smartphone and returns later on the site through desktop, the cart contents should remain intact.

This feature also ensures that the cart will remain the same after logging in if the users have added certain items before logging in. Because the product is associated with a customer’s account rather than a browser-specific cookie, Persistent Cart accommodates the seamless and flexible convenience customers expect from modern eCommerce experiences.

12. B2B Edition

For B2B sellers, BigCommerce comes with a complete package by which businesses can streamline operations and improve UX. Some of the popular features are:

• Stencil themes especially optimized for B2B stores
• Product filtering, support, and customer success management.
• Corporate account management
• Sales Representative Quoting
• Shared Shopping Lists and “Buy Again.”
• Invoice Portal

And many more features.

Also Read: How To Hire A Perfect Bigcommerce Developer For Your eCommerce Store

Wrapping Up

This article has gone through all the important features of BigCommerce that make it the best platform to build an ecommerce store. The features are highly impressive and are native that other platforms include at higher versions. You should expert in a BigCommerce development company. At Emizentech, we have expert BigCommerce developers who can build your online eCommerce store from scratch with highly advanced features. Let us know your requirements.