Are you wondering if BigCommerce is the best platform to launch your affiliate marketing business as compared to other platforms such as:
- Amazon
- Shopify
- Amazon Associates
- Rakuten
- eBay Partner Network
….Or are you a beginner in affiliate marketing and considering the Bigcommerce affiliate program?
Here’s the truth: BigCommerce is a good start for your affiliate marketing program because it’s easy to use, and their support team is extremely responsive if you encounter any challenges. But just as with other platforms, to succeed, you’ll need to learn more about the platform.
This blog will help you understand why you should choose BigCommerce over other platforms. We will discuss its benefits and how to overcome its drawbacks. We hope to help you make an informed decision when starting your business on BigCommerce.
Why Choose BigCommerce Over Other Affiliate Marketing Programs
As a business owner, you want to ensure your ideal affiliate marketing platform will boost your organization’s success. Your perfect software should also maximize sales to ensure you leverage profits. These factors will guarantee that your choice of platform is the correct wager.
BigCommerce should be on your top list when choosing affiliate marketing platforms because it offers everything you want under one roof. This can save you plenty of time and money, especially if you’re just starting out. Their platform provides:
- Web hosting
- A product database
- Tools for building your online shop
- Inventory management
- Marketing tools
- Shipping
- Tax calculations
BigCommerce also acts as a Saas (Software as a Service) platform & allows you to manage all operations of your affiliate program through the BigCommerce App on a mobile device. You can also use the browser on your computer to complete tasks, meaning you will have complete flexibility in how you manage your affiliates.
Benefits of BigCommerce
Here are the benefits you will enjoy with BigCommerce.
1. Easy Access to Client Data
Your BigCommerce store’s control panel will contain various helpful features that you can employ to arrange and manage your customer accounts. The platform’s customer group capabilities enable you to search for your customers’ data whenever you want.
When you have access to your customer records, you will be able to better predict the needs of your client base and decode the kind of products they respond to the most.
You can leverage this information to decide which products from your catalog get more attention from your affiliates and also make better stocking & marketing decisions.
2. Powerful Dashboard and Strong Support Team
Customers get access to excellent technical help round-the-clock. BigCommerce has excellent live chat support and email assistance, dashboard guidelines, a comprehensive Help Center, helpful videos, and a phone number to call if you still have questions. In other words, if you run into any issues whatsoever while setting up or making the most of the platform’s features, help will be an arm’s length away.
Here’s where it gets even better: Besides offering regular customer support, they have specialized support departments for account management, technical account management, implementation project management, solution architecture, and catalog transfer, meaning you’ll get true experts to guide you through the process.
3. Solid SEO Features
SEO is easy with BigCommerce. When deciding on an e-commerce solution, this is an important consideration. While your affiliates may be sending you referral traffic, you still need to drum up your own organic traffic to boost sales.
With BigCommerce, you can improve your site’s visibility in search engines with the help of their powerful SEO tools. Site elements such as titles, meta descriptions, headers, and URLs (even custom-shortened URLs) can all be easily edited via their native platform. You can also customize your website’s robot.txt to tell search engines which pages must be indexed & which ones must be left out.
What’s more? Maintaining a blog for your online store is crucial as an effective inbound marketing strategy. BigCommerce makes it easy to run one with its blog features.
4. Highly Scalable and Supports the Growth of Your Online Business
Connecting with customers across several channels is a strength of BigCommerce. It integrates easily with other channels such as Amazon, eBay (if you run multiple storefronts for your products), Pinterest, Instagram, and Facebook to help you target your customers with omni-channel marketing.
If you own a physical store, then native POS systems like Springboard Retail, Square and others can help you keep your product inventory current on an ongoing basis. BigCommerce’s flexibility in accommodating many storefronts and POS systems with a single login is a remarkable advantage because you get to choose the systems you feel most comfortable with.
5. Tons of Other Impressive Features
Using BigCommerce, you can build a stunning design for your online shop. You can use pre-made templates or come up with your unique style.
If you’re getting started, then you can edit your pages with the page builder visual editor using a simple drag-and-drop tool; no coding knowledge is necessary.
If you want to change a theme, then you can use the in-built HTML, CSS, or JavaScript tools. Any BigCommerce theme will allow you to make a site optimized for mobile devices. This also helps you with your SEO efforts as Google prioritizes mobile-first search results.
In other words, BigCommerce’s smart solutions are a major selling point for online stores. The word encompasses many concepts, from “smart” operations to “smart” scalability. The Catalog API allows you to create and maintain a scalable product catalog from either your admin panel or an external system.
6. No Transaction Fee
On any BigCommerce plan, you won’t have to pay a platform fee to BigCommerce for processing payments. In contrast to its major rivals, this is a huge advantage.
You’ll only need to pay the POS system you choose that handles credit card processing a fee, which is inevitable in e-commerce transactions. What you pay will depend on the payment gateway you use.
Drawbacks of BigCommerce
The needs of e-commerce businesses are so varied that no single platform, including BigCommerce, can satisfy them all. In addition, the ecommerce sector is constantly evolving & these needs can change. Although BigCommerce has many benefits, you should also know its drawbacks before purchasing.
1. Yearly Sales Threshold
There is a cap on your online store’s annual sales volume with each BigCommerce plan. If you exceed your subscription’s limit, then BigCommerce will upgrade you to the higher plan level.
Although these volume-based restrictions on e-commerce platforms are not unheard of, they can limit companies looking to grow. Plus, there are rivals like Shopify that don’t put on such conditions.
If you’re just starting your ecommerce store, then you don’t have to worry about these caps just yet, so BigCommerce can still be a great option for you.
2. No Email Marketing Tools
Using email marketing is a fantastic strategy for attracting and keeping customers. Unfortunately, email services are not available through BigCommerce.
You can easily use a freemium tool such as MailChimp or others to do your email marketing and run those campaigns separately.
3. No Subscription Features
If your online business intends to offer subscriptions or accept recurring payments, then you may have to purchase the feature from a third-party app.
Luckily, there are many tools out there that supplement this.
4. No Multilingual Options
BigCommerce only supports one language, which is English. You might need to invest in a third-party program if your ecommerce store serves different linguistic groups.
5. Steeper Learning Curve
While BigCommerce’s user interface is intuitive, and the store can be built using a drag-and-drop builder, its comprehensive features mean that it is not necessarily the best option if you’re looking to launch an online store with little time investment.
Launching an online store with BigCommerce can therefore take more time than with alternatives like Shopify, especially for those new to the e-commerce world. However, it’s worth mentioning that you don’t have to make use of all features of BigCommerce right away; you can still learn those on the go and just set up the store first.
The benefit of investing a little time early on to learn how to measure, analyze and track different metrics that determine performance will go a long way, though, so we highly recommend it.
How to Overcome BigCommerce Drawbacks
Affiliate marketing on BigCommerce is not without hurdles, especially when first starting. A firm grasp of these challenges is essential for a smooth integration of affiliate marketing.
Okay, but what are they?
Some challenges you may have when launching your affiliate program are:
- Lack of tracking tools (lesser data points)
- Inability to recruit highly competent people from a centralized source
- No way to manage multiple affiliate programs from one dashboard (especially if you have multiple storefronts for your products)
Despite this, you may find BigCommerce a great option to run your ecommerce store & affiliate program, especially if you can supercharge the data points you get from it through third-party apps like Refersion.
Refersion’s versatility as a data collection and processing platform makes it a valuable tool for affiliate tracking. You can get started in minutes thanks to the company’s connection with BigCommerce & get access to all the features the native platform lacks, including data points that help you recruit, retain & reward top affiliates in your niche.
It also provides a dedicated affiliate signup page that features your brand’s colors and messaging. Plus, it’s flexible enough to accommodate many affiliates.
If you run an affiliate program, then you know how important it is to have everything you need to run your business in one convenient place. The Refersion platform streamlines this process and even automates payouts to your network. Its recruiting feature can also be used to either enhance an existing affiliate network or launch a brand new one.
If you’re looking to get the feel of the software, then the 14-day free trial Refersion offers is a great place to start.
