Which is right for your business? The answer depends on your technical expertise, your budget, and the goals you’ve set for your eCommerce website. Below we’ll be providing an in-depth guide on WooCommerce vs. BigCommerce so you can decide which one is right for your eCommerce site. 

eCommerce Essentials for Every Online Store

Whether you’re selling a physical product, downloadable digital goods, or services, your store needs to have some essential components. Like traditional “brick and mortar” businesses, you’ll need a way to showcase your products, as well as procedures for customers to select and pay for them. You’ll also need to give customers a way to contact your store. Because your online store reflects your brand, it needs to be highly customizable with options for adding more features as your business evolves.

The web’s top store builders and hosting providers aim to include these and related core eCommerce functionality features, with more options available via additional apps, themes, and extensions. Beyond those essentials, leading eCommerce platforms varies widely in terms of cost, ease of use, and scope. WooCommerce provides flexibility and virtually unlimited options for customizing your storefront on a self-hosted WordPress site. BigCommerce is a hosted service with an array of built-in features and round the clock technical support for those looking for a scalable, all-in-one site-building solution.

WooCommerce: Free and Flexible

Looking to run a successful eCommerce store with Woocommerce? WooCommerce powers nearly half of all online stores worldwide, but it isn’t a standalone store builder. It’s a free, open source plugin that’s designed to work on any self hosted website powered by WordPress. Learning how to use WooCommerce is simple. In order to access its many eCommerce functions and features, you’ll need to set up web hosting with a provider of your choice and install WordPress to build your site. This arrangement is called “self hosting,” since your site can be migrated at any time to any provider you like.

Once you’ve installed WordPress, you can install the WooCommerce plugin from the WordPress Plugin Directory, activate it, and start setting up your store. The basic WooCommerce plugin includes all the essentials for creating and managing an online storefront, including product display pages, shopping cart functions, and payment gateways. Using WooCommerce provides options for customizing the look of your online store, and it’s compatible with just about all of the many WordPress themes available both from WordPress.org and from third-party developers around the world. But a number of WooCommerce-friendly WordPress themes have also been designed to work specifically with the features and functions of the WooCommerce plugin.

WooCommerce is free and open source, so users can freely modify its source code and share it widely. Although the basic version includes all the essentials for building a functioning online store, it may not include all the features you want. Users can choose from among hundreds of free and paid extensions and secondary plugins to add a variety of additional functions such as currency converters, SSL certificates, abandoned shopping cart management, and tools related to specific niches and business types.

BigCommerce: A Multifaceted Hosted Solution

BigCommerce hosts more than 100,000 business sites worldwide, including familiar brands like Kodak and Toyota. It’s a fully hosted platform that offers an all in one solution for setting up an online storefront with all the essential tools built into the basic version.

BigCommerce claims to offer more features than any other eCommerce platform, but these features are all proprietary to BigCommerce itself, so that users typically can’t install functions and features from other sources. BigCommerce includes a number of free and paid theme choices that can be fully customized using its drag and drop Store Builder tool, and users with development experience can also work with the theme’s code and style sheets for even more customization. 

The basic BigCommerce site builder includes an array of advanced tools such as abandoned shopping cart recovery, integration with widely used social and eCommerce sites, such as eBay, Amazon, and Pinterest, and SSL certificates for secure payment processing. For users who want additional specific features, the BigCommerce app store offers more than 600 additional tools and extensions. 

With this general overview in mind, here’s a closer look at how WooCommerce and BigCommerce stack up in terms of a few essential features: ease of use, cost, and scalability.

Store Set Up and Customer Support

Both WooCommerce and BigCommerce make it relatively easy for new users and those with design and coding experience to get an online store up and running in very little time.  Because WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin, it’s integrated into your existing website and can be customized from the site’s admin dashboard with no need for coding—but experienced developers can work directly with its source code to make highly customized changes too. Users of all experience levels can mix and match the many additional WooCommerce plugins and extensions to achieve exactly the functions and features they want—and more can be added as a site grows and evolves.

BigCommerce is a hosted provider, so its theme and extension options are proprietary, but store owners have considerable flexibility in customizing the look and features of individual storefronts. BigCommerce says that users can set up a basic site in just 15 minutes. Additional customizing can be more challenging, but all BigCommerce WordPress hosting plans also include around the clock technical customer support and a variety of tutorials, FAQs, and videos to help out.

Cost, Plans, and Pricing Plans

Calculating the cost of setting up and running an online store with WooCommerce can be tricky. The basic pricing plans of buying a domain and setting up hosting can vary widely, and although WooCommerce itself is a free plugin, you may also want to buy a custom theme or add premium extensions to get the features you want. Once those features are in place, the cost of your site is largely under your control—and it can be scaled up as needed to accommodate your site’s growth with no additional costs.

Because it’s a hosted service, BigCommerce has more predictable pricing plans, with packages starting at around $29 USD per month for a basic storefront and ranging up to custom “enterprise” packages that require a price quote. But BigCommerce pricing also depends on the number of sales your site has—and revenues that exceed your plan’s cap can push your site into a higher tiered plan. Because BigCommerce is a hosted site, scalability can become a challenge as a site begins to grow and place more demands on the host’s resources.

Which is Right for You?

WooCommerce and BigCommerce both offer tools for creating stunning and fully functioning online stores. WooCommerce can power sites ranging from single page blogs to complex corporate sites, with a long and growing list of options for customizing every aspect of a store, and so can BigCommerce, with features to support a store’s growth and expansion. Choosing the right platform for your eCommerce venture depends on your budget, your comfort zone, and your vision for the future.

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Here’s a look at five of the best WooCommerce themes for creating an attractive and fully functional online store on your WordPress website.

WooCommerce and WordPress: How Does It Work?

More people now use online shopping than traditional retail stores, and that number continues to grow. Today, just about anyone can create a virtual storefront for selling all kinds of physical products, digital downloads, subscriptions, and services. Large hosted eCommerce platforms like Shopify and BigCommerce provide space and resources for setting up your online store, but customization options can be limited, and if the site runs into problems or goes down, so does your store. 

Building your store with WordPress avoids many of the problems associated with setting up a store on a third-party host. You’ll need to arrange your own domain name and account with a hosting provider, but WordPress is free to install and customize as you like. The basic WordPress source code contains all the elements for a generic website, but you control its appearance and functions with a combination of themes and plugins – additional bits of code that can be installed into the WordPress source code to add additional functions to your site.

WooCommerce is one of those plugins. Install it for free from the WordPress Plugin Directory on your site’s admin dashboard, and it adds a set of eCommerce related functions to your existing WordPress sites, such as product display pages, shopping carts, and payment gateways. These features are integrated into your site’s theme so that they display with the theme’s overall look and layout – but your current theme might not support all the WooCommerce features and functions that go along with a dedicated theme designed with WooCommerce in mind. 

What to Look for in a WooCommerce Theme

WooCommerce themes are available primarily from third-party developers with WordPress experience, although some WooCommerce-friendly themes are also available from the official WordPress Theme Directory. If you’re thinking of switching out your current theme with a WooCommerce focused premium theme, it’s important to keep not only your own goals in mind, but also the experience potential customers will have on your site. The best WooCommerce theme for your WordPress site is the one that looks good, reflects your brand, and offers your visitors the best shopping experience possible. To achieve those goals, look for a theme that includes: Clean, uncluttered design. Your theme should be customizable to reflect the look of your brand, but also make it easy for visitors to find what they need and contact you for questions and issues. A quality WooCommerce theme should showcase your products with minimal distractions. Mobile responsiveness. A majority of online shopping is done from mobile devices, so a quality WooCommerce theme should be mobile responsive for display on devices of all sizes. Compatibility with other plugins. The functions of WooCommerce can be extended in a variety of ways with WooCommerce extensions – additional pieces of code that give your online store a variety of highly specific functions. Your WordPress site may need other plugins too, and a good WooCommerce theme should support the other plugins that add the functions you need. Social media integration. A number of free and premium plugins can add social media functionality in a variety of forms to your WordPress site, but quality WooCommerce themes and compatible plugins should offer features that integrate your site and product displays into your preferred social media sites. Easy navigation and search functions. The best WooCommerce themes also include user-friendly navigation to provide your customers with the best experience in your shop. This can include options for menu placement, easy to find search bars, and other navigation aids. Quality WordPress themes are available from a variety of online asset marketplaces and third-party developers. Some WooCommerce themes are free, but premium themes provide full support and all available features at a variety of prices ranging from less than $50 to hundreds of dollars. Here’s a look at five of the best for storefronts of all kinds. Flatsome This premium WooCommer ce theme from ThemeForest features a trendy flat design that can be fully customized to suit your brand. Flatsome has a clean layout with a featured offer section and multiple product page layouts. This theme includes a custom page builder and can be translated into multiple languages for a global reach. Shopkeeper The shopkeeper is a fully responsive premium theme from Envato Marketplace that can be customized with multiple product pages and blog layouts for a variety of different eCommerce purposes. Shopkeeper comes with YouTube video support for its product galleries and is compatible with Gutenberg, the new page builder and text editor included in the latest version of WordPress. Artcraft is a quality premium theme from Template Monster for art, craft, and boutique storefronts. This handmade theme features a clean, responsive design and easy navigation with multiple page layouts. Artcraft is compatible with Elementor, a visual WordPress page builder with drag and drops functionality for creating custom pages.

DIVI

Divi is a fully responsive, versatile general WordPress theme that integrates well with WooCommerce. The Divi builder includes multiple page layouts and extensive social media integration that fully supports the basic WooCommerce plugin features. This premium theme also includes clean, intuitive navigation and can be translated into 32 languages.

Legenda

With multiple demos and layout options, Legenda from Theme Forest can be customized for a variety of niches and product types such as clothing, sporting goods, or toys. Legenda comes with a visual page builder for creating individual pages and a set of clean dropdown menus for easy navigation. Legenda also includes multiple language support and a clean black and white design.

WooCommerce can add essential eCommerce features to any WordPress site, but a premium WordPress theme designed with WooCommerce in mind can support all its features and functions – and make your online storefront look its best.

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