March 04, 2010
Interview By the ZippyCart Ecommerce Software Content Team
BigCommerce is all a buzz in the ecommerce space, and it continues to evolve and grow as it gains more and more popularity among its customers and internet retailers. ZippyCart had the opportunity to speak with Mitchell Harper, Co-Founder and Product Manager of Interspire and BigCommerce. We took this chance to ask him about the future of BigCommerce, and his responses show exactly why this ecommerce solution was voted the easiest to use shopping cart solution of 2009 by over 9000 online merchants! Read the interview below and visit our BigCommerce Guide to learn more.
What are the major differences between BigCommerce and Interspire ecommerce software solutions?
BigCommerce is hosted and fully managed so it’s perfect for the non-technical business owner. The Interspire offering is a download-to-own PHP script that runs on your own web server and MySQL database. It’s great for web designers who want to customize the code, but you do need to manage and back up your own servers.
Why do you feel that BigCommerce is becoming so popular so quickly, within a very competitive space?
The most established competitor in the space is Yahoo stores and their offering really is outdated. It hasn’t seen an update for years and online retailers demand an ecommerce platform that, not just lets them sell online, but also markets their products and reaches a wide range of customers. BigCommerce has a slew of built-in marketing features such as one-click Google AdWords campaign creation, coupon and discount codes, product options and SuperZoom photo zoom to let non-technical business owners compete head-to-head with their larger competitors for just $24.95 a month.
What are your favorite features of BigCommerce, which you feel set it apart from the rest of the competition?
I love Drag & Drop design mode. It was something I invented in 2007 because I saw how confusing it was for business owners to customize the layout and text in their online store without calling a web designer. Basically you had to know HTML or mess around with config files – and for a lot of the current offerings you still do. In BigCommerce you can enable Drag & Drop design mode and easily rearrange the layout of any page in your store using your mouse. You can also click to change on-page text, such as headlines or page content.
I also love the eBay selling integration we’re currently working on for version 6. Most ecommerce software companies forget that, yes it’s easy to setup an online store, but the hard part for retailers is getting people to their stores. With our upcoming eBay integration it takes just a few clicks to list your products on eBay. You’ll be able to get your products in front of millions of eBay shoppers worldwide for little to no cost – it’s exciting!
Do you have any insight on which ecommerce software solution most merchants are using before they leave for BigCommerce?
The majority switch from Yahoo Stores and Volusion for ease-of-use, feature and support reasons. Customers who switch are reporting 800% gains in traffic (through better search rankings) and thousands of dollars in new revenue simply by using BigCommerce. You can read their stories, see their photos and view their online stores at http://www.bigcommerce.com/switch-buzz.php
Do you see many people upgrading their plans to higher-end ecommerce packages? Is it too early to see this data?
Customers who come on board on the lower plans typically upgrade when they’re familar with the platform or have the need to sell a larger amount of products. Our upgrade rate at the moment is excellent and it continues to increase.
What does BigCommerce do to help merchants with social commerce and mobile commerce?
Great question. Products can easily be shared on Facebook/Twitter/Digg/etc using the AddThis widget on every product’s page. BigCommerce customers can also quickly and easily add their Facebook fan widget to their online store as well as their Twitter badge which encourages shoppers to follow them, allowing the store owner to create a relationship with shoppers over time.
We also provide real world advice on social media marketing through our blog and YouTube guru channel which has had over 300,000 views since it launched. We discuss best practices and how to use social media to drive traffic to our customer’s online stores.
In the upcoming 6 release, we’re including an amazing store design crafted specifically for iPhone and iPad shoppers. They will get a fully functional store through which they can purchase using an experience optimized for them.
We’ll also be releasing a secret feature which we haven’t talked about yet and it will change the game. It will be unique to BigCommerce and will combine the aspects of social media with ecommerce – keep an eye on our blog for more details on this.
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