BigCommerce Review

Starting a successful online store is a process that involves different steps and careful planning. The process should start with finding a niche that has enough traffic, is profitable, and has fairly low competition. Next comes the necessary product research to develop a great product that meets the niche's needs and wants. When the product is ready to go, then it is time to set up your online store. But, what ecommerce platform will allow to set up your store quickly, professionally and affordably? In this article I will share my experience, as a web programmer and designer, with three different hosted ecommerce (Yahoo Small Business, CoreCommerce, and finally BigCommerce) platforms to help you choose the best ecommerce platform today.

My experience with eCommerce began in 2008 with La Purse, a San Francisco-based company that sells fashion scarves and women accessories. When I began working with La Purse, the company was already using Yahoo Stores as its hosted ecommerce platform. The mission was to upgrade La Purse's outdated design. What I quickly found out, however, was that making changes to La Purse’s website was not going to be as simple as knowing HTML, CSS, and Javascript. Making changes in Yahoo Stores required understanding RTML, Yahoo’s proprietary language. Even though I was able to conquer RTML and improve La Purse's design, the process was painful, tedious, and much longer than expected. If you are a small business owner looking to manage your online store, Yahoo Small Business (as Yahoo Stores it is now known) may not be the best option.

A few months after working with La Purse, I was convinced that swtiching to another platform would save us time and money. Add to this the fact that Yahoo increased our monthly plan fee by thirity percent: it was definitely time to move. Around the same time I had began working on a new eCommerce project for amberbeata, a San Francisco based company that specializes in selling Baltic Sea amber jewelry. Determined to find a better eCommerce solution, I carefully researched what other options where out there. There were two potentional solutions: CoreCommerce and a close but rising competitor, BigCommerce. We decided to give CoreCommerce a try.

CoreCommerce turned out to be much more simple and affordable than Yahoo Small Businesses. Adding and managing products was a breeze. Shipping and merchant integration was just a few clicks away. Managing and processing orders was an intutive experience. In terms of designs, however, CoreCommerce was not as strong as it could be. Even though more flexible than Yahoo's, CoreCommerce's design tools were a bit messy and required a solid understanding of CSS, page structure integration, and CoreCommerce's components referenced by ‘tokens.’ We had, however, given a great leap forward.

Now, it was time to switch La Purse from Yahoo Small Business to a new eCommerce platform. The only difference is that we would now give BigCommerce a try. Since the start, the BigCommerce software guided us through designing our store, transferring all our products, setting our payment, tax, and shipping options. The software seemed to be engineered for anyone with basic computer knowledge, yet was very powerful and full of features. Within a few minutes, it was possible to integrate with Google Checkout, Paypal, UPS, USPS, Google Analytics, Facebook, and even Ebay! However, what impressed me the most was its design tools. For beginners, BigCommerce presents a drag and drop design mode which totally blew my mind away for its simplicity and elegancy. And as a designer, BigCommerce also gave me full access modify HTML and CSS using either a built-in editor or FTP. Oh, I forgot to mention the price: It was just as affordable as CoreCommerce. It seemed like a dream!

After more than a year with BigCommerce, I truly believe BigCommerce is the best eCommerce solution out there. In fact, BigCommerce was just named the top eCommerce software by Top Ten Reviews. Creating a successful online store is challenging. But BigCommerce will definitely help you remove a lot of headaches.