Why should you be seduced by the BigCommerce platform?
According to several studies (Forester, Gartner Magic Quadrant, etc.) BigCommerce is the most efficient and innovative e-commerce solution on the market. Rewarded by numerous awards for several years now, BigCommerce has become one of the leaders in e-commerce platforms in all b2c and b2b sectors and all business sizes. The publisher is now based in France to challenge historically established solutions, some of which are aging, such as Prestahop, Shopify, Magento (Adobe) and Oxatis.
BigCommerce was designed to respond to current trends among btoc and/or btob online buyers, and to offer technology allowing the solution to integrate into the modern technical architectures that efficient e-commerce solutions now require.
The flexibility of open source combined with the performance and security of a SaaS solution, BigCommerce is the only platform on the market to offer the best of both worlds: Open SaaS!
OpenSaas, Headless, btoc and btob, omnichannel alone summarize the entire scope offered by BigCommerce. We'll detail all of this for you below.
Why use a BigCommerce agency like Smotly?
Whatever your sector of activity and your btoc and/or btob economic model, the creation or redesign of an e-commerce site cannot be improvised.
Integration with your information system (ERP, CRM, PIM) and your various sales channels (e-shop, marketplace, POS, social networks, Google shopping), the design of an optimized user journey, the creation of a web design representing your visual identity, require proven skills and methodology that only profiles such as project managers, UX/UI consultants, web designers, front and back developers, master.
Why choose Smotly among BigCommerce partners.
First of all, Smotly is the first historic BigCommerce partner in France.
We have the only and largest truly BigCommerce certified team (BigCommerce dev bootcamp) and have already put the first BigCommerce sites online in France.
Convinced by the performance of the BigCommerce solution and its ability to meet the needs of businesses of all sizes and all sectors, Smotly is the only French agency to exclusively offer BigCommerce to meet the needs of all of its clients.
Thus, we have finalized several migrations, and others are in progress, of Prestashop, Woocommerce, Oxatis, Magento sites on the BigCommerce platform.
After several years of experience in deploying web solutions, this strategic choice is the guarantee for our clients of having the best solution on the market and the best service that a web agency can provide them around the BigCommerce solution. Our teams, now focused solely on this solution, have acquired unparalleled knowledge and expertise.
Passionate, the Smotly team follows a rigorous methodology and makes each client project a challenge whose success depends on the quality of its services and the satisfaction of its clients. As you will have understood, each BigCommerce customer is of capital importance to us for the long-term success of our strategic choice.
This is your guarantee that your project will be treated with the greatest attention.
BigCommerce architecture and features?
BigCommerce's native features make it the richest e-commerce platform on the market. But it doesn't stop there. We explain to you:
What is Open SaaS?
BigCommerce is actually offered in SaaS mode, a subscription including the platform itself of course, its infrastructure based on Google Cloud whose performance is no longer in doubt, updates to the solution allowing you to benefit from functional developments throughout your subscription, and 24/7 assistance. Certain “enterprise” subscriptions include the services of a “Customer Success Manager” and a “Solution Architect” who will help you optimize your platform and enrich it as your business evolves.
Yes, you read correctly, BigCommerce is also the rare platform to directly support its customers, in close relationship with Smotly, to guarantee a high level of service. It is also in this same logic that the BigCommerce teams are directly involved in your project from pre-sales. Few solutions can claim this level of performance. For example, Prestashop, historically established in France, represents a significant share of this market. Have you ever tried to contact members of the Prestashop team to obtain advice in the pre-sales phase, or once your e-commerce solution is online? It’s a waste of time, their model is totally different. You will never communicate directly with Prestashop for advice or follow-up, which is essential to guaranteeing the success of the integration of the solution.
Thus, unlike many of its competitors, BigCommerce acts as a real publisher, involved in its clients' projects with the help of your partner agency.
Of course, other solutions are also offered in SaaS mode, but where BigCommerce is unique is that it offers customization flexibility as extensive as an open source solution thanks to its API which is more than 95% open! BigCommerce does not lock you into its ecosystem but, on the contrary, gives you the possibility of opening up to all the third-party solutions on the market necessary for your information system: ERP, CRM, PIM, Order Magagement System, Warehouse Management System, Transport Management System and any business application necessary for your economic model. Any solution with an API can be connected to BigCommerce. But above all, the opening of its API in this proportion allows you to consider any specific development necessary to cover your needs, such as an open source CMS.
In summary, BigCommerce offers the best of both worlds, performance, security, scalability and comfort offered by the SaaS model and flexibility to adapt to your needs offered by open source: open SaaS!
Edition btob
BigCommerce is of course a particularly efficient e-commerce platform for all sectors of BTOC activity and no longer has to prove it. The customer references speak for themselves: Ted Baker, Repeto, American Apparel, La Perla, Leica and many others.
But in addition, it is one of the very rare platforms to offer native btob functionalities allowing companies to consider a high-performance solution, quick to implement, at a very competitive price.
In its standard enterprise version, BigCommerce natively allows you to manage wholesale rates, specific price lists by customer group and/or customer, by country, by currency, responding to all possible scenarios. We can also offer Internet users quantitative entry grids by variation for each product allowing them to order large quantities easily and very quickly.
In addition, in “the enterprise btob edition”, it is possible to manage salespeople, quotes, orders and different buyer profiles allowing customers to manage purchase order workflows. It is also possible to create shopping lists that can quickly be transformed into orders, baskets or even repeat previous orders. Unlike many of its competitors, BigCommerce integrates all of these btob features as standard in its “enterprise” and “enterprise edition btob” versions.
Architecture Headless
If you would like to have more details on this technical aspect of BigCommerce, we invite you to consult our article: Headless architecture: the future of e-commerce
To summarize, this is about having the possibility of dissociating the front-end from the back-end which will communicate together thanks to the APIs. But for what?
To carry out the front of your e-commerce on a framework freeing development from any constraints. Thus, developers can achieve any design and any functionality without being constrained by the technical environment of the solution used in the back-end. In addition, these frameworks (Next.js, React, Vue.js, Angular) will allow you to develop a PWA (Progressive Web App) for the mobile version of your site that reacts like a classic mobile application.
And this is not a trivial matter, several studies have shown that a PWA significantly improves the conversion rate, so for an e-commerce site, it is the guarantee of an increase in turnover!
Page display times will be much faster, thus improving the user experience and the natural referencing of your site.
With this architecture, you can have your front communicate with other applications and, for example, display information about your products coming directly from your PIM (Product Information Management) which is not present in your back office. This way, you limit specific developments in your e-commerce solution and make full use of your entire ecosystem.
This architecture will allow you to implement a “best of breed” strategy, therefore to choose the tools best suited to your needs and to avoid specific developments that are costly, unjustified and complicated to maintain.
Finally, the day you decide to overhaul your design or your visual identity, you are not obliged to completely overhaul your site since you do not have to touch the back-end of your solution.
And conversely, adding back-office features will not have an impact on your front.
You drastically reduce the risks of regressions linked to developments and minimize the risks of bugs, budget slippage, missed deadlines and ultimately dissatisfaction, for you and for your customers.
In summary, headless is
- a front totally adapted to your needs without technical constraints which can leave total freedom to the development teams
- a mobile PWA version (mobile first if necessary) allowing you to have more captive customers and increase your conversions
- super fast page loading times further improving the user experience and optimizing the natural referencing of your site
- an ecosystem made up of tools best suited to your needs
- a solution that is easily scalable and simple to maintain
At Smotly, we are convinced that within a few short years, all companies will implement this type of architecture for their e-commerce solution as the advantages are enormous.
Omnicanal
BigCommerce allows you to manage different channels from a single back office, several online stores, your social networks, your marketplaces, your PoS (Point of Sale) for your physical stores, etc. It is possible to create as many channels as necessary.
Add these latest features to all the previous ones and you will see that BigCommerce is a perfect tool for putting the customer at the center of all your contact channels and making them the cornerstone of your omni channel strategy.
For certain current projects, an order-taking application is in the development phase. The latter will allow traveling salespeople to enter orders on behalf of their customers while they are on the move.
This application will also be used at trade shows to quickly take orders from prospects and/or existing customers by reading the bar code of each product on display.
No more counterfoil books to re-enter in the office for days with the risk of error, no more telephone callbacks to customers to check the validity of their order.
Your information system is up to date in real time, you gain in efficiency, in order processing time, your customers are informed in real time, they receive their goods more quickly: you reduce your costs and you increase customer satisfaction.
BigCommerce : marketing et SEO
Of course BigCommerce integrates many other features of which it would be difficult to list exhaustively.
Among them, we will find numerous marketing features allowing you to manage promotions, loyalty programs, sponsorship programs, newsletter subscriptions.
Fully integrated partner solutions also make it possible to add highly developed functionalities. For example, Smotly offers the Gorgias solution to manage your customer service with online chat, ticketing and automated and centralized processes to handle after-sales service requests and customer follow-up in a very responsive manner.
Finally, BigCommerce natively offers SEO and analysis tools allowing you to optimize your natural referencing and user experience over time.
BigCommerce is now establishing itself as a real alternative to the solutions established on the French market, in particular Prestashop, Oxatis, Magento, which increasingly appear to be aging and less and less adapted to the new challenges of e-commerce.
Without a doubt, BigCommerce will experience the same success in France as in all the other countries in which it has already been established for several years. The multiple awards and distinctions obtained (Forrester, Gartner Magic Quadrant, Gartner Peer Insights) bear witness to this.
If you are in a reflection phase regarding your existing e-commerce solution or your first investment in a btoc and/or btob e-commerce platform, you must absolutely integrate BigCommerce into your selection of solutions in your consultation.
Whether you are a fan of open source or already convinced by the SaaS model, you should not miss BigCommerce!
In any case, do not hesitate to contact us for a study of your project, we are always happy to discuss this subject which fascinates us.