Top Reasons to Re-Platform to BigCommerce

Staying competitive and relevant while delivering exceptional customer experiences are vital for business success, especially in a rapidly evolving eCommerce landscape. The thought of  replatforming to a robust and feature-rich platform like BigCommerce may be outwardly daunting but can provide the necessary tools and capabilities to take your online store to the next level.

Despite the challenges of the prospect of a re-platforming project, the benefits may be well worth the time and effort necessary to migrate off your current platform and onto BigCommerce, a platform that currently hosts over 45,000 live websites. This post will explore in detail the best reasons to re-platform to BigCommerce and how it can empower your eCommerce business, especially if you work with a certified BigCommerce agency partner to help you during the process. 

1. Scalability for Growth:

One of the most compelling reasons to re-platform to BigCommerce is its scalability. Whether you’re a small business looking to expand or an enterprise-level company with high traffic volumes, BigCommerce can handle your growth seamlessly. With its scalable infrastructure and performance optimizations, you can focus on growing your business without worrying about technical limitations. BigCommerce is also available in 4 different service plans, Standard (starting at only $29 per month), Plus, Pro, and Enterprise (a custom package), so the platform is well-equipped to grow with your business and its marketing strategies. You can proactively upgrade your BigCommerce store at any time, and all 4 plans do not incur additional transaction fees, while offering unlimited bandwidth for staff accounts and file storage. 

2. Extensive Feature Set:

BigCommerce offers an extensive range of built-in features designed to meet the diverse needs of eCommerce businesses. From inventory management, order processing, and customer management to advanced marketing tools, reporting, and analytics, BigCommerce covers all essential aspects of running a successful online store. This comprehensive feature set eliminates the need for many costly third-party integrations and simplifies your operational workflows, despite the fact that BigCommerce remains easily integrable with a wide range of robust third-party apps and tools (as well as many that are expressly designed for BigCommerce. 

3. Flexibility and Customization:

Your brand’s unique identity is crucial when it comes to standing out from the competition. BigCommerce provides a highly flexible platform that allows you to customize your online store according to your brand’s aesthetics and requirements. With an extensive collection of responsive themes and the ability to modify design elements, layout, and color schemes, you can create a visually stunning storefront that resonates with your target audience. There are 15 free BigCommerce themes with 5 different theme styles and countless other premium versions are available, but you can also work with an accredited BigCommerce partner to develop a customized, brand-integrated theme for your BigCommerce website. 

4. Seamless Integration Capabilities, Many Apps Available 

BigCommerce boasts a vast ecosystem of third-party integrations, with over 100,000 apps available in the BigCommerce app store, enabling you to extend the functionality of your online store effortlessly. From popular marketing tools like Mailchimp and HubSpot to payment gateways like PayPal and Stripe, BigCommerce seamlessly integrates with various applications to streamline your operations and enhance customer experiences. This integration versatility allows you to tailor your eCommerce stack to your specific business needs.

5. Mobile-First Approach:

In 2022, almost a full half of all eCommerce sales were mobile sales, and in the mobile-centric era, optimizing your online store for mobile devices is essential. BigCommerce understands this and offers mobile-friendly and responsive themes, ensuring that your store looks and performs flawlessly on smartphones and tablets. By providing an exceptional mobile shopping experience, you can reach and engage a wider audience and increase conversions. BigCommerce is not only inherently mobile-friendly, but it enables mobile-design optimized shopping carts as well as the flexibility to sell through other websites (like eBay and Amazon) opening up additional opportunities for conversions.

6. Enhanced Security and Compliance:

Protecting your customers’ sensitive information is paramount. BigCommerce takes security seriously and provides robust built-in security features to safeguard your online store. With regular security updates, SSL encryption, and PCI DSS compliance, BigCommerce ensures that your customers’ data is protected, enhancing trust and credibility for your brand. Another great thing about the platform that gives BigCommerce merchants peace of mind is that since BigCommerce is hosted, security is taken care of automatically. Unlike open-source platforms, in which security can suffer if users miss a patch or update, BigCommerce has site security automatically buttoned up. That helps SEO, too – speaking of which…

7. SEO-Friendly Architecture:

Search engine visibility is crucial for driving organic traffic to your online store. BigCommerce offers an SEO-friendly architecture, empowering you to optimize your website for search engines effortlessly. With features such as customizable URLs, meta tags, sitemaps, and responsive design, you can improve your store’s search engine rankings and attract more qualified traffic. BigCommerce offers other features that make it appealing from a search engine optimization perspective as well. It automatically generates and updates a sitemap, offers excellent site speeds and security, and comes with a built-in blog. For the other aspects of SEO, however, such as keyword research, content production, backlink building, and other components of SEO strategies, it’s best to work with an accredited BigCommerce SEO agency. 

8. Streamlined Checkout Process:

A smooth and hassle-free checkout process is essential for maximizing conversions. BigCommerce provides a streamlined checkout experience with features like guest checkout, one-click purchasing, and support for various payment gateways. By reducing friction during the buying journey, you can minimize cart abandonment rates and boost overall conversion rates. BigCommerce also accepts a number of different popular payment gateways and methods and is compatible with several BNPL (buy now pay later) providers like Sezzle and Affirm.

9. Shipping, Simplified

BigCommerce has a built-in shipping calculator that makes it easy and straightforward for your customers to come up with accurate shipping estimates associated with their orders. Moreover, the eCommerce platform easily integrates with major carrier accounts like UPS, FedEx, and USPS, streamlining shipping for both the merchant and the customer. 

1o. Built-in Analytics

It’s never a bad idea to brush up on Google Analytics and Google Search Console, but with BigCommerce, you don’t need to be a Google expert, because the platform is pre-configured with robust analytics and reporting functionality. BigCommerce analytics is a powerful tool that offers insights into user behavior, buying trends, and even offers the ability to analyze customer segments. 

11. Overall Ease of Use

If there’s one great thing about BigCommerce, perhaps more than all of the other things I’ve covered so far, it’s that you don’t have to be an eCommerce developer to figure out how to build a legitimate-looking online storefront. In fact, pretty much everything about the platform is straightforward and easy to use. I don’t personally have any experience with open-source eCommerce platforms like Magento, but I have both heard and read nightmare tales about making the most mundane of customizations with platforms like that. With BigCommerce, writing a blog, creating a new product, updating metadata, and integrating most apps and tools, is as easy as a few keystrokes and button clicks. Not every platform can say that. In fact, most can’t.

12. Outstanding Customer Support

BigCommerce offers exceptional customer support to assist you at every step of your eCommerce journey. Their knowledgeable support team is available via email, phone, and live chat to address any concerns or issues you may encounter. Additionally, BigCommerce provides a vast library of documentation, tutorials, and community forums where you can find resources and best practices, so if you don’t know how to do something from personal experience, there’s almost definitely a white paper or guide out there on how to get it done.

13. A Large BigCommerce Ecosystem of BigCommerce Experts Is at Your Disposal 

Thanks to its large pool of users, there is a robust, multi-hued, talented pool of BigCommerce partners out there. Through its BigCommerce Partner Program, the platform vets and certifies a wide range of BigCommerce experts, including marketing experts, website designers, and development agencies, all based on their experience with the platform and with their respective spheres of expertise. There are three tiers: BigCommerce Partner, Preferred Partner, and Elite Partner, all with varying levels of experience and capability. 

14. Because Migrating Doesn’t Need to Be a Hassle 

Finally, and thanks in part to both the large support network of BigCommerce partners and the platform’s own customer service, migrating to BigCommerce doesn’t need to be a hassle, especially when you work with an experienced BigCommerce partner that specializes in eCommerce migration and support services. While the prospect of migrating thousands if not hundreds of thousands of categories, products, orders, and customer accounts may be daunting, with the help of a BigCommerce agency that follows a proven migration process, it really can be a walk in the park, one that can pay off big in the long run.