You can be assured that I’m not going to give the prize for best shopping cart to Volusion or Shopify. Not that I have something against them. No not at all. I think both are great shopping carts.

But I think you can guess that the prize for the best shopping cart is going to BigCommerce.

Yes I know that I’m a little biased. But hey I think I have a good reason to be. Actually I have 10 good reasons why, which conveniently is what this post is all about.

10 Reasons why BigCommerce Wins My Best Shopping Cart Award

1. Complete Creative Control

This is really really important. Complete control means that you’re able to change the source code of all their standard templates, and of course templates that you get designed yourself can be integrated smoothly and changed inside of the BigCommerce backend.

The beauty is that once you’ve decided on a template, you can make simple changes by dragging and dropping certain areas around the place. Don’t like the newsletter that high up on the page? Easy. Just click and grad it somewhere else.

The reason why I say this is really important is because design could end up costing you a lot of money if you needed to go back and forth with a designer who really is holding you hostage.

In saying that I still do recommend using a freelance designer from oDesk, or other freelancer websites but as long as you have control over the process you should do fine. I recommend checking out BigCommerce Templates for further reading on this.

2. Sell on eBay

You know eBay has made more millionaires than any other website? Actually I don’t know if that’s true, but it sounds right doesn’t it? The site is massive and there are people selling just about anything on there.

Well BigCommerce offers you complete integration with eBay. From the backend of BigCommerce you can list your products on sale or auction. Yeap, I kid you not. You Can.

One of the main things to get right with eBay is putting your products on the right day and time. Timing is just about everything after all. Would be nice if you could schedule your products to start at a particular time, but eBay charges you for this. In BigCommerce you can schedule, and you don’t get charged, at all.

3. Shopping Comparison Export

Do you know websites like Shopping.com, Shopzilla, Pricegrabber and Nextag? If they don’t ring a bell, I’m sure that you’ve at least been to one of those once in your Internet browsing adventures.

What those sites are all about is that they aggregate shopping site products along with pricing, to give their visitors the best place to purchase an item.

Now their model works on ranking high for product keywords. So naturally they are driving a lot of traffic to their own websites.

And it would be in your interest to get yourself on these websites. One way is to sign up and add each individual product by hand. The other way is to use the built-in export feature to download your products right from the backend of BigCommerce.

This saves you a lot of time as you can export, and then import to these websites in a matter of minutes instead of hours.

4. Automated Email Marketing

How nice would it be to keep in touch with customers after they’ve made their first purchase with you. Not only do you significantly increase the potential that they will purchase something again from you, but you stand out with your superior customer service and monkey like abilities… (MailChimp)

So the next time a customer purchases a shirt from you, an automated message will be sent out in 2 weeks with a 25% discount coupon for a matching pair of shorts.

That stuff is all easy to set up as BigCommerce is integrated into MailChimp. One of the best Email Marketing software out there. I’ve used it quite a bit and love the product. The MailChimp folks are pretty down to earth as well with their use of language and imagery on their website.

5. Flexible Product Photo Display

The more photos you have of your products the better. Bigcommerce has some beautiful functionality to upload many photos quickly and to assign it to products.

The software will automatically turn these bad boys into small thumbnails for you, and when a customer clicks on a photo, it will be displayed in one of those lightbox popup windows. You know the one I’m talking about right?

6. SuperZoom Photo Zoom

BigCommerce is just showing off now! This function is something nice that will impress your customers, simply because not that many other websites offer this kind of stuff. Once a customer clicks on your photos, they’ll have the option to zoom in on the picture.

This allows customers to get a more detailed look at what you have to offer.

7. Mobile Commerce

I once heard Eric Schmidt talking about the future of Google and the Internet in general. He said something like they’re slowly moving all their search, and other technologies onto the mobile platform as that’s where the future is going.

I’m simply saying to not underestimate Mobile. You might not think that people will be purchasing your product from their iPhones anytime soon. But I’d say that you could get at least 5% of your market buying this way, with this number increasing in the years to come.

BigCommerce offers templates for the iPhone and other mobile platforms so that when your customers visit your website from their devices they see a beautiful template, instead of your standard template – which is made for PC’s.

8. Sell on Facebook

Facebook is getting more traffic than Google these days. How big is that? It’s big. Very Very Big. And they have over 400 million members. BigCommerce offers integration with Facebook so that you can display a tab on your fan page.

From here people will be able to click through to your products.

Personally I think more integration would be nice. But this is no doubt in the making of.

9. Google Website Optimizer

You know that changing a few elements on a page can increase conversion rates by 5-30%! Really it can. Google Website Optimizer is the program to use in order to make those tests happen.

Google says this about it:

Website Optimizer, Google’s free website testing and optimization tool, allows you to increase the value of your existing websites and traffic without spending a cent. Using Website Optimizer to test and optimize site content and design, you can quickly and easily increase revenue and ROI whether you’re new to marketing or an expert.

Yes, even this is integrated to the backend of BigCommerce.

10. Search Engine Optimization

Try typing in “SEO Training” into Google. What you’ll see in position number 1 is seobook.com Obviously the guy behind that website knows a thing or two about SEO. Especially considering how competitive that keyword is.

The guy behind that website is Aaron Wall, he’s the number one SEO expert on our hotting up planet. It was this guy who has independently audited the BigCommerce templates and structure.

Therefore you can be rest assured that the templates are optimized for search engines, and by doing so, you have a better chances to get onto page one of Google.

Best Shopping Cart

Are you convinced that BigCommerce is the Best Shopping Cart out there? If so, please check out the BigCommerce Starting Out Guide.

I’d like to hear your comments on this and other shopping carts that you’ve used.