What is BigCommerce for WordPress (BC4WP)?

We are talking about a plugin that bridges the best of 2 worlds, bringing in the eCommerce platform strength of BigCommerce for WordPress. WordPress has the full flexibility of taking various user experiences and having the exact UI/UX experience you desire through that platform and have BigCommerce offer the chosen shopping cart and payment methods on its end, keeping the PCI compliance on the SAAS end. If you investigate this case study on how it may apply to your online store, below are the details involved.

Why not use WooCommerce with WordPress?

There are a few pain points on the WooCommerce front when you think about the steps you have to take when you go live. The first is PCI compliance, where you have to work with your Payment Gateway to get PCI compliant with your website. This test will check all the flaws and will try to penetrate your database and see if there are any vulnerabilities. The next challenge is front-end performance where WooCommerce adds additional back-end load to your website, and this is a lot more noticeable during peak times. In addition to this issue, when you add additional plugins to make up for the eCommerce features that you already get with BigCommerce, then the impact on back-end load is greater and will cost you more. Lastly, the support you get from WooCOmmerce via e-ticket or Forums is restrictive when it comes to getting assistance - BigCommerce for WordPress makes this a lot easier.

The use of WordPress for User Experience (UX)

When it comes to user interface design, WordPress is a leader when it comes to delivering usability testing, user research, and user-centered design. Fine-tuning your funnel using WordPress is one of the best environments to do it in with HTML/CSS/JS and all the other front-end tools. Integration with social media platforms and using its content to highlight your brand, product, and lifestyle it engages in - all of these have great merit in the WordPress environment. While the WordPress CMS is easy to manage and navigate, it isn't a commercial environment where you can store cardholder data, protect cardholder data and adhere to data security standards (PCI). PCI/DSS Compliance does put a strain on the WordPress environment and the online store owner to manage and comply.

The BigCommerce for WordPress plugin

When you can real-time have an online store that operates in two worlds, it can give you several advantages. Sure, you do have two account management environments to work with - WordPress and the BigCommerce Admin areas. However, you gain in amazing scalability which BigCommerce offers especially at peak sales and transaction times. You gain instant security standards with PCI/DSS and can integrate any payment gateway of your choice and have payment card industry data secured in a protected connection. Google pay, debit cards, and various credit cards will be taken, and then deposited into your bank account. You can have complex catalogs when it comes to product complexity, BigCommerce can handle it with its 600 SKUs per product. And best of all - a lower cost of operating marketing features when it comes to eCommerce and reducing plugin/Apps dependencies.

Benefits of the BC4WP Plugin and BigCommerce relationship

With WooCommerce being a hosted solution that shares resources with all aspects of the store, it creates a scalability issue when it comes to having traffic engaging with your site - both front end and the Admin area as well. By having all the commercial side in BigCommerce the load is taken out from the front end, giving the users the best speed and experience. However, you gain several key advantages when your commercial side is managed by BigCommerce:

• Support: To gain access to BigCommerce and its BigCommerce experts that can assist you in setting up your store and apply the integration with WordPress. Giving you the best of both worlds all the while having partners alongside your commercial endeavors.

• Commercial power: WooCommerce is restricted to 25 or fewer combinations of coupons and has no cart-level discounts and requires you to have additional plugins to cover these gaps. BigCommerce supports over 70 combinations of Coupons and Discounts.

• Reduced Plugin/Apps costs: With integrated core features you would have to install additional Plugins to have these features reduces the overall cost of operating your store.

• Omnichannel: This is included in BigCommerce and comes as an additional cost in WooCommerce.

• Customer Groups: Another included feature in BigCommerce comes at an additional cost on the WooCommerce side of the solution.

Conclusion

While it might seem to be more complex to deal with 2 platforms rather than one, the actual effort seems less complex due to the fact that you are not managing so many plugins/Apps to achieve the same result, all the while you have the full flexibility of WordPress for how you want to impress on your customers your brand, products, and customer experience. If you would like to explore this structure, feel free to reach out to us at wish@thegenielab.com and we would be happy to assess and help plan your online store.