Two of the most-hosted shopping carts, Big Commerce and Volusion, offer incredible user-friendly features, years of development, and award winning customer service. We'll look into how each feature is implemented other intangibles to determine the winner of this e-commerce shakedown!
Price
We might as well start at the point that steers many of us in our final decision-price! The two competitors offer a free trial which is a testament of how confident each is of their product. Volusion offers 14 days while Big Commerce comes in with 15 days for you to make your decision. Not much difference there.
Both have plans starting at $24.95 a month-Volusion, for some reason, hides their link in the footer which is a minor concern for me-why not proudly display it? Also...neither charge a transaction fee---are you listening, Shopify?
So, are there any price differences, you're wondering? You betcha!
Volusion's entry-level (least expensive) plan allows only 25 products and 1 Gb of data-that's not all impressive compared to Big Commerce's basic plan that offers 2Gb of data and 100 products! As you can see, Big Commerce dominates in the pricing category-one of the most important aspects in this battle.
Front-End Look and Feel
If your organization is fortunate enough to have an in-house designer who is going to customize your on-line shop or integrate it into your existing design, stop reading now! I implore you...I am to have some not-so-nice, ok, awful things to say about the templates in Volusion and if you aren't going to use them (you really shouldn't), don't bother! But...if you're in a surly mood and just have to...by all means....
Years ago you would have knocked any designer out if they delivered you an on-line store looking like the ones that Volusion ties you down to. I can truly say that I detest each and every one of them. Talk about looking like you're stuck in the 80's, poor optimization, visually atrocious to work with...shall I continue? You know, with as many quality clients as Volusion boasts, you'd think they would offer something better than these disgraceful templates, free as they are!
Now, Big Commerce, on the other hand, must have taken the front-end look and feel much more seriously-you can tell they dropped some serious coin on attaining very appealing, clean, and user-friendly templates for their customers. It is simple to go live with one of the free templates or even get one made by giving your designer FTP access to your site. You hear me-FTP access to your hosted shopping cart---a perfect 10 in my book-kudos to Big Commerce!
Admin Look and Feel
I really like the look of Big Commerce-clean, modern, intuitive, user-friendly, and packs the right amount of information while remaining easy on the eyes. Volusion, in contrast is a little more 'square', a bit old school, but just as effective. If you're solely going after looks, Big Commerce wins, but if you're more user-inclined, both do the job equally well---this is a draw!
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
This is one of my favorite topics as it pertains to so much more than most people think. Volusion and Big Commerce both offer the ability to specify the title, keywords, and description as they should, but there is one glaring difference.
Volusion, by default uses the ugly query strings and product identifiers, but it can be configured to look a bit better-it is weak looking though-sort of like the sloppy SEO offered by osCommerce and any other of their offerings.
Enter Big Commerce...you want clean URL's using the product name as the page (also replaces spaces with dashes) name? Now, you may run across some undesirable results if you decide to use special characters or punctuation (this is not recommended) but other than that, you've smooth sailing with them.
Oh....one more big thing to mention: Big Commerce also integrates with Google Website Optimizer so you can test away and analyze your site all you want! Volusion? Ummmmm...no.
Additional Features
Big Commerce and Volusion both offer gift certificates, e-coupons, their own payment gateway product, newsletters, etc....not enough to really have a winner, just know that they're keeping up with each other.
The main difference could be the recent release of Big Commerce v6.0-nice additions like: multiple warehouses, drop shipping, Mail Chimp integration, pre-order, back order, iPad and iPhone support (this is huge!) and eBay integration...this puts them over the top!
When it comes to your site's e-commerce, you have many choices-just be sure to make the right choice-Big Commerce!
Price
We might as well start at the point that steers many of us in our final decision-price! The two competitors offer a free trial which is a testament of how confident each is of their product. Volusion offers 14 days while Big Commerce comes in with 15 days for you to make your decision. Not much difference there.
Both have plans starting at $24.95 a month-Volusion, for some reason, hides their link in the footer which is a minor concern for me-why not proudly display it? Also...neither charge a transaction fee---are you listening, Shopify?
So, are there any price differences, you're wondering? You betcha!
Volusion's entry-level (least expensive) plan allows only 25 products and 1 Gb of data-that's not all impressive compared to Big Commerce's basic plan that offers 2Gb of data and 100 products! As you can see, Big Commerce dominates in the pricing category-one of the most important aspects in this battle.
Front-End Look and Feel
If your organization is fortunate enough to have an in-house designer who is going to customize your on-line shop or integrate it into your existing design, stop reading now! I implore you...I am to have some not-so-nice, ok, awful things to say about the templates in Volusion and if you aren't going to use them (you really shouldn't), don't bother! But...if you're in a surly mood and just have to...by all means....
Years ago you would have knocked any designer out if they delivered you an on-line store looking like the ones that Volusion ties you down to. I can truly say that I detest each and every one of them. Talk about looking like you're stuck in the 80's, poor optimization, visually atrocious to work with...shall I continue? You know, with as many quality clients as Volusion boasts, you'd think they would offer something better than these disgraceful templates, free as they are!
Now, Big Commerce, on the other hand, must have taken the front-end look and feel much more seriously-you can tell they dropped some serious coin on attaining very appealing, clean, and user-friendly templates for their customers. It is simple to go live with one of the free templates or even get one made by giving your designer FTP access to your site. You hear me-FTP access to your hosted shopping cart---a perfect 10 in my book-kudos to Big Commerce!
Admin Look and Feel
I really like the look of Big Commerce-clean, modern, intuitive, user-friendly, and packs the right amount of information while remaining easy on the eyes. Volusion, in contrast is a little more 'square', a bit old school, but just as effective. If you're solely going after looks, Big Commerce wins, but if you're more user-inclined, both do the job equally well---this is a draw!
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
This is one of my favorite topics as it pertains to so much more than most people think. Volusion and Big Commerce both offer the ability to specify the title, keywords, and description as they should, but there is one glaring difference.
Volusion, by default uses the ugly query strings and product identifiers, but it can be configured to look a bit better-it is weak looking though-sort of like the sloppy SEO offered by osCommerce and any other of their offerings.
Enter Big Commerce...you want clean URL's using the product name as the page (also replaces spaces with dashes) name? Now, you may run across some undesirable results if you decide to use special characters or punctuation (this is not recommended) but other than that, you've smooth sailing with them.
Oh....one more big thing to mention: Big Commerce also integrates with Google Website Optimizer so you can test away and analyze your site all you want! Volusion? Ummmmm...no.
Additional Features
Big Commerce and Volusion both offer gift certificates, e-coupons, their own payment gateway product, newsletters, etc....not enough to really have a winner, just know that they're keeping up with each other.
The main difference could be the recent release of Big Commerce v6.0-nice additions like: multiple warehouses, drop shipping, Mail Chimp integration, pre-order, back order, iPad and iPhone support (this is huge!) and eBay integration...this puts them over the top!
When it comes to your site's e-commerce, you have many choices-just be sure to make the right choice-Big Commerce!
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