Search engine optimization and CRM features:

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1 Everything you need to know about Bigcommerce Hosting Bigcommerce Why is it the best E-commerce Solution? E-commerce today is one of the biggest and most profitable industries on the internet. With such huge popularity and demand the competition is also as tough as expected. New shopping carts keep popping up on the internet everyday with increasingly diverse features. With such a humongous number of options available it gets confusing for the customer to choose one. Bigcommerce is a shopping cart which stands out from the others in design, number of features as well as security. It is considered to be the best shopping cart online ahead of others like Volusion, Yahoo, Shopify and Plimus. Let us take a look at the features that made Bigcommerce such a big success: Easy to use Bigcommerce doesn t require the user to be well versed in scripting languages like Html and CSS etc. Since it is a hosted shopping cart, the back end of the store is taken care of by Bigcommerce unlike Yahoo for which the user was required to learn an entirely different language. It also offers Video tutorials to get started for a new user which makes it easy for the user to setup a cart. Its user friendly feature has contributed the most in making it such a huge success. Superior Design: Bigcommerce is perhaps the only shopping cart to offer the drag and drop option which gives it an edge over close competitors like Volusion. Even though both Bigcommerce and Volusion offer a variety of templates for designing, the ease with which it can be done in Bigcommerce makes it a more viable option than Volusion. Abandoned Shopping cart report: Another feature which is unique for Bigcommerce is the abandoned shopping cart report which is not present in carts like Volusion, Hhopify etc. This feature generates a report whenever a customer leaves in the middle of filling their information enabling Bigcommerce to track and offer them a better deal in the future. Search engine optimization and CRM features: It is a well-known fact that Search engine optimization is a very important feature for any online shopping cart in order to feature prominently in the search results. Bigcommerce outranks other carts like Shopify and Volusion with features, like SEO friendly URL s and 301 redirects.

2 Bigcommerce also has many other features like integrated e-bay and Facebook, free trial accounts and many more. Looking at these features Bigcommerce can be considered to be the best E-commerce solution in the market today providing customers with exemplary performance. Top 5 Features of Big Commerce Big Commerce is one of the rapidly growing platforms of ecommerce. It helps budding entrepreneurs by providing an affordable platform for ecommerce that can be managed easily. It also provides a quick return on investment. Let us look at the top 5 features of Big Commerce which makes it very appealing: 1) Total Control in Creativity There is no limitation while you are designing in Big Commerce. Even if you are a beginner, it is very easy to change the layout, looks and functionality of your store. You can either drag or drop mode of design or you can use point and click customization tools. The designer can also edit the CSS and HTML to which they have full access by using the FTP or web-based file editor. There is a Live Store Showcase which has many examples of customers using the design tools to customize their design store. 2) Selling on Facebook With the help of Social Shop 2 you can offer your fans to browse and buy through different items listed over there. They can also search, checkout and compare products while browsing. The fans can also write their reviews of the products, manage their orders or also redeem their gift items. 3) Flexibility in the Display of Product Photo You can any number of photos of your products and display them as a photo gallery in your store. You can also create thumbnail version of your photos. Visitors may also click your photos to enlarge it. You can also give the link to some photos which might be there in the internet so that the visitors can have unmatched access to the products. 4) Selling on EBay You can auction or display your products on ebay from the store s control panel. There is a view of live listings when someone purchases a product or wins an auction. You can also schedule the listings to go live on a future time and date. 5) Giving Options while Selling Products You can also sell your products by giving varied options; like computers, apparel, software, stationary items, etc. Fields that can be configured by customers can also be created such as when a name is to be engraved in an ipad.

3 5 cool ways to promote using BigCommerce BigCommerce is an online store building solution that enables a merchant to manage an online store. The management process includes the managing and advertising of the page and the products. It keeps track of schemes and promotions which are one of the most basic needs of an online store. It helps a merchant to create an online store and provides with features that ensure a smooth running of the store. Social shop 2 This feature enables Facebook users to search, checkout, compare products, write reviews, manage orders, redeem gift certificates etc. while staying on their Facebook accounts. This way, the shopper is able to receive frequent updates from the merchant as activity on such social networking sites is high. The content posted by the merchant can also be viewed by the profiles linked with an individual making a very effective and cheap marketing campaign. icontact This feature of BigCommerce allows the merchant to send automated marketing s. The merchant can define a series of discounts on products and the icontact application would keep sending mails from time to time regarding some special discount coupons or other exciting offers that are linked to one of the previous purchases. Mobile Commerce This provision by BigCommerce allows shopping on the go. One can use apps designed for their Smart Phones or Apple idevices to view and purchase products. It proves to be a very effective way of shopping for people who cannot easily spare time to use a table mounted PC or a comparatively bulky laptop. Promotional Banners Banners are a very impressive way to fetch shoppers. Limited time sale banners are a very effective way of drawing crowd to a product. Limited time discount or sale banners can be placed on the top or bottom of a page on the website. They can be used to advertise special offers, shipping discounts, coupon codes, special deals etc. Flexible return system BigCommerce claims to have the most flexible automated return system. The returns are customisable. The merchant can completely design the return scheme as per their requirements and the form of return such as total cash return policy or a credit note policy or a replacement policy can be implemented on the product depending on how the merchant

4 treats the complain. These were 5 cool ways to promote using BigCommerce using the various features that they provide for advertisement and management of an online store. 5 reasons to sign up with BigCommerce BigCommerce is one of the trendsetters when it comes to looks and applications. It provides with fabulous features that get BigCommerce the edge over the other contemporary online store hosting sites. Following 5 points highlight some really useful features that BigCommerce has to offer. Automatic Inventory Control Merchant can track the number of products and number of options available for each product in the stock. The application can monitor the number of products sold/returned and accordingly shows the availability to the buyer. A reminder can be set that alarms the merchant when number of items in stock falls low. Bunch of cool promotional tools The Social shop 2 is an application that connects the merchant s online store to the social network Facebook. This allows the shoppers to stay on their Facebook profiles and get to know about new offers and also allows them to search, compare products, manage orders, redeem gift certificates, write reviews, checkout etc. while still being connected to Facebook. This also opens a window for the merchant to promote his products by sharing his product information on his shoppers walls on a potentially very large customer base. icontact is another cool application that sends automated mails for the merchant. It notifies the shoppers associated with the site about new offers and discounts. The merchant can also use this application to send mails according to a customer s shopping profile based on any previous purchase made by the customer. Mobile commerce is an application that allows the store to run on mobile devices, making it available for Android, idevices, Blackberry etc. which enhances the accessibility of the site. Hassle free business BigCommerce has point and click customisation tools and drag and drop design mode which ensures that users who do not have command over web designing applications, can also customise the look and place the menu boxes as per their convenience. All in all, BigCommerce focuses on making things easy for non-technical users.

5 Reasonable pricing The most stunning offer that BigCommerce provides is the free setup. This concession directly reduces an amount of $49.95 from the total amount. There are five packages the site offers- Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum and Diamond. The Bronze package starts at a reasonable rate of $24.95 per month. The best value pack, as promoted by BigCommerce itself is the Silver Pack that costs $39.95 per month in which the site allots a space of 300 MB for 500 products which is pretty decent amount of space for the kind of information that product pages use. It also provides 10 staff logins. Support The site provides with a consultant as soon as a merchant signs up via phone calls and s. The consultants are well trained for handling a newbie in the field which makes BigCommerce a good option to go with for them. Bigcommerce vs Volusion Internet today has spread into almost all the aspects of our life like healthcare, education, business and many others. One such aspect which recently turned into a very lucrative industry is E-commerce, which consists of buying and selling products online. In order to facilitate this process several softwares have been developed of which shopping carts are the most successful ones. Two of the biggest and the best shopping carts available online today are Bigcommerce and Volusion. Let us take a look at how these shopping carts fare against each other: Design interface While both Bigcommerce and Volusion offer design options that are far better than any other shopping cart in the market allowing you to customize your store, Bigcommerce is easy to work with since it offers a drag and drop interface which makes it simple to design the store. Also the templates offered in Bigcommerce outrank the ones offered in Volusion in design and also the functionalities provided. Also Bigcommerce offers the users an option to provide links to YouTube videos about the product which is very helpful. newsletter and Abandoned shopping cart One more feature which Bigcommerce offers is the abandoned shipping cart which generates an information report when a customer leaves the middle of filling a form. With this feature Bigcommerce can contact and offer a better deal to the customer. Volusion does not contain this feature but it offers newsletter through which the user can setup a mailing service in his store. Bigcommerce doesn t have this feature so the user will have to setup with a separate mailing service.

6 24*7 Customer service In terms of customer support, Volusion scores over Bigcommerce. They have a phone and online support which is present 24*7. Also since Volusion has been present for a longer time than bigcommerce their employees are more experienced and volusion also has an impressive client list which gives the image of stability. Volusion offers a wider variety of payment methods compared to bigcommerce. But Bigcommerce offers larger storage capacity and cheaper rates at low bandwidth. Apart from the above features Bigcommerce also has a better SEO than Volusion since it generates keyword based URL s and also it offers many third party integrations. Both the carts are equally matched in the Admin area offering the user many functionalities. A basic knowledge of Html is all that is required to get started. Hence Bigcommerce appears to be the obvious choice with its better design and prices but Volusion is better suited for small time customers.