Simplify Your eCommerce Platform: Magento to BigCommerce

Are you considering a switch from Magento to BigCommerce?

We will discuss a variety of subjects in this post to explain why BigCommerce could be the platform you decide on. We’ll look at the platform’s capabilities and features, as well as the advantages and disadvantages of using it.

While both platforms (Magento and BigCommerce) offer a range of features, BigCommerce jumps ahead with a lineup such as its user-friendly interface, advanced marketing and SEO tools, various themes, and excellent customer support.

To help with the steps before migration, we will outline the pre-migration steps to ensure a smooth transition. Lastly, we’ll cover the post-migration considerations and share successful case studies of ecommerce.

Is BigCommerce the Right Choice for Your eCommerce Store?

BigCommerce could be a good option for your eCommerce business, taking into account your unique requirements. It serves enterprises of all sizes because to its adaptable features and user-friendly layout. If you want to know if the platform is good for you, you should take budget, goals, and functionality into account.

Features and capabilities of BigCommerce

BigCommerce presents a variety of customizable themes and its built in page builder to enhance your online store. Increase your visibility with its effective SEO tools, and utilize built-in marketing features such as abandoned cart recovery to drive conversions. Effortlessly integrate with well-known payment gateways and shipping providers. Robust analytics and reporting tools assist in tracking the performance of your store.

Pros and cons of using BigCommerce for eCommerce

Pros

Cons

BigCommerce Features That Make it a Worthy Upgrade from Magento

BigCommerce provides advanced, yet easy-to-use tools, making it easier for users to manage their online store. There is no maximum number of products per store, however, there is a limit to variants per product. It also delivers superior performance with faster page load times. Drive traffic and sales using built-in marketing tools and features. Additionally, BigCommerce offers top-of-the-line customer support and a robust ecosystem of apps and integrations.

User-friendly Interface

The seamlessly user-friendly interface allows for easy navigation and customization. Managing products, inventory, and orders are streamlined, eliminating the need for extensive coding or technical knowledge. The intuitive design ensures a seamless shopping experience while robust support and resources help users make the most of the user-friendly interface.

Advanced Marketing and SEO Tools

Advanced marketing and search engine optimization tools help you to drive traffic to your store and increase visibility among your competition. Improve search rankings with built-in SEO, customizable URLs, and meta tags. Utilize powerful marketing tools like email marketing, social media integration, and abandoned cart recovery. Stay ahead of the competition with comprehensive analytics and reporting capabilities. Boost your online presence and attract more customers with the platform’s advanced marketing and search engine optimization features.

Theme Variety

Choose from 170 professionally designed themes, including 12 free theme options. Each theme allows for easy customization and branding of your online store. With responsive design, your store will look great and function well on all devices. The themes are also optimized for SEO, improving your store’s visibility and rankings. Plus, you can easily switch between themes without losing any data or branding.

BigCommerce Themes

Superior Customer Support

BigCommerce’s customer service support is available 24/7, including user help docs, learning guides, in-depth videos, product news, and community resources. Their knowledgeable team ensures prompt and efficient responses, allowing you to focus on growing your business. Rest easy knowing that your concerns will be addressed promptly, ensuring a seamless customer experience.

Choosing BigCommerce Over Magento: The Benefits

The user-friendly interface and intuitive design of BigCommerce make it easy to navigate, whereas the complex technology of Magento is more difficult for businesses to manage. It offers a variety of built-in marketing and SEO tools to increase online exposure. These same features can be obtained in Magento with the use of extensions. The ease of integration with popular payment gateways allows for seamless customer-to-customer transactions. Magento can offer the same payment gateways but will require sometime very complex integrations. With online chat, email, a knowledge base, and helpful support personnel, BigCommerce provides top-notch support. With automatic software updates and security patches, the platform is always secure and up-to-date, making it a popular choice for mid-size businesses.

Comparing Pricing: Magento vs BigCommerce

When it comes to comparing costs, Magento and BigCommerce offer different pricing structures. BigCommerce provides a transparent pricing model with no hidden fees, making it easier to budget for your eCommerce platform. Additionally, it offers seamless scalability, allowing you to easily upgrade or downgrade your plan as your business needs change. Magento Open Source is free to use, but costs add up when you factor in cost for development, extensions and hosting.  BigCommerce also includes secure and reliable hosting in its plans, helping you save on hosting costs. While both platforms offer a variety of extensions, BigCommerce has many more built-in features, thus saving you on extension costs. Ultimately, when comparing costs, these factors make BigCommerce an attractive choice for businesses looking to simplify their eCommerce platform.

Pre-Migration Steps: Setting the Groundwork

Setting the groundwork for your Magento to BigCommerce migration requires careful planning and evaluation. Identify pain points in your current Magento platform and compare features and capabilities. Strategize your migration process, including data migration, theme customization, and SEO considerations. Back up your Magento store, test the migration on a staging environment, and notify customers about the upcoming transition. Providing support during and after the migration ensures a smooth transition.

Evaluating Your Current Magento Store

Evaluate the performance, structure, customizations, and user experience of your Magento store. Does it still align with your business goals? Has it become too cumbersome to manage? Consider the cost and resources required for maintenance and upgrades. Evaluate if migration to BigCommerce is necessary for improved functionality and growth.

Preparing Your BigCommerce Store

Preparing your BigCommerce store for migration is crucial to ensure a smooth transition. Prior to moving from Magento to BigCommerce, it’s essential to back up and secure your store data. Take the time to clean up and organize your product data, customizing your theme to match your brand and enhance the user experience. Thorough testing will help identify any issues before launching your new store.

What Data Can You Migrate from Magento to BigCommerce?

During the migration process from Magento to BigCommerce, various necessary data can be successfully transferred. This includes products, categories, customer information, order history, and even product attributes and images. To ensure a smooth transition and accurate data transfer, it is advisable to work with a professional migration service.

Will Your Product Information Migrate?

Migrating from Magento to BigCommerce? You can seamlessly transfer all your product information, including names, descriptions, SKUs, and prices. With the migration process, you can effortlessly transfer product images, attributes, categories, and variants. Preserve important metadata like SEO tags, URLs, and custom fields during the platform switch. Ensure accurate inventory data, customer reviews, and ratings for a seamless transition.

Customer Data

Migrate customer profiles, including contact information and purchase history, from your Magento store to BigCommerce effortlessly. Retain customer segmentation data for targeted marketing campaigns on the BigCommerce platform, ensuring a seamless transition. Transfer customer reviews and ratings to maintain social proof and enhance trust on your new eCommerce platform. Move customer subscription and loyalty program data for uninterrupted service and rewards.

Order History and Transaction Details

Migrating order history and transaction details from Magento to BigCommerce is a seamless process. All customer and payment information can be transferred, depending on the chosen program. This ensures a smooth transition while preserving valuable data and insights for analysis. With complete visibility of past orders and transactions in the new platform, you can maintain a seamless customer experience.

Overcoming Challenges During Migration

Planning and strategy are crucial in overcoming challenges during the Magento to BigCommerce migration. Develop a detailed migration plan to ensure a smooth transition. Proper data migration is essential to transfer all product, customer, and order data accurately. Customizing the design and layout of your BigCommerce store improves user experience and maintains brand consistency. Implement SEO best practices to maintain or improve search engine rankings. Thoroughly test the new BigCommerce store before going live to identify and fix any issues.

Dealing with Data Loss

Data loss during the migration process can cause significant disruptions to your business operations. You must have a comprehensive plan and the time and internal resources to properly migrate your data. If you have never done a data migration or are unfamiliar with the process, utilize the assistance of a professional. Thorough testing and verification of data integrity post-migration is also essential to identify and address any potential issues or discrepancies. By implementing proper data migration techniques and tools, you can effectively mitigate the risk of data loss during the transition.

Managing Downtime During Migration

Managing downtime during migration plays a crucial role in ensuring a smooth transition. To minimize downtime, it is important to plan and schedule the migration during off-peak hours. Implementing a temporary maintenance page can inform customers about the migration process and expected duration. Thorough testing and troubleshooting before going live can reduce downtime. Communicating with customers about the planned downtime manages expectations. Utilizing backup systems and data replication ensures minimal disruption during the migration.

Detailed Migration Process: Magento to BigCommerce

steps of data migration - extract data, transform data to target system, load data into target system, validate date on target system

BigCommerce can provide step-by-step instructions for migrating your data. Before implementing these steps, ensure that you have reviewed your data, ensuring its accuracy and integrity. After completion of the migration, test and optimize your store for functionality and user experience. Remember to update any integrations or extensions that were required. With BigCommerce’s in-house Catalog Transfer Team, you can rest assured that they will walk you through the process and get you set up on your new platform.

Step 1: Exporting Data from Magento

Exporting data from Magento is the crucial first step towards migrating to BigCommerce. You can save your data (such as products, customers and orders) in a CSV format using the Magento admin panel. It’s essential to ensure the accuracy and completeness of the exported data during the migration process for a seamless transition to the BigCommerce platform.

Step 2: Importing Data to BigCommerce

BigCommerce simplifies the data import process for Magento users. With step-by-step guidance, it ensures a quick and accurate transfer of product, customer, and order data. This means a seamless transition to BigCommerce without the hassle of manual data entry. Easily migrate your entire eCommerce store with BigCommerce’s data import feature.

Step 4: Testing the New Store

Testing the new store is a crucial step to ensure proper functionality and a seamless user experience. Thoroughly test all features, including product pages, shopping cart, payment gateways, and mobile responsiveness. Test various scenarios like placing orders, applying discounts, and checking out as a guest or registered user. Identify and resolve any issues or bugs before making the new site live. Engage testers or use testing tools to evaluate functionality and performance.

Step 5: Redirecting and Launching Your New BigCommerce Store

Redirecting and launching your new BigCommerce store requires careful planning and execution. Properly redirecting URLs is crucial to avoid broken links for your customers. Test the redirects beforehand to ensure they are functioning correctly. It’s also important to launch your store during a low-traffic period to minimize disruptions. Inform your customers and stakeholders about the migration and the launch of your new store. After the launch, monitor the performance of your new BigCommerce store to promptly address any issues that may arise.

Post-Migration Considerations

So you finished the migration. What’s next? First, utilize the new features provided by the BigCommerce platform. Remember those great SEO features we shared earlier- put them to use now. Optimize your site for mobile – it will make for a better user experience. Make sure to test and monitor your store’s performance and fix any issues that you may find. Adjust the marketing strategies that you used before to align with the new platform.

Ensuring Smooth Operation Post-Migration

After migrating from Magento to BigCommerce, it is crucial to verify the accurate transfer of all data, including customer information and order history. Updating integrations and third-party apps will ensure compatibility with the BigCommerce platform. It is essential to thoroughly test the functionality of the new BigCommerce store, including checkout processes, payment gateways, and shipping options. Training staff on the new platform and any workflow changes will aid in a smooth transition. Ongoing monitoring of website performance and user experience will help identify and address any issues promptly.

SEO Considerations After Migration

Make sure you work on your SEO – taking advantage of those great platform features. Firstly, ensure that all 301 redirects are implemented to preserve SEO rankings and traffic. Additionally, update your XML sitemap and submit it to search engines for indexing. Conduct a thorough audit of on-page SEO elements such as meta tags, header tags, and keyword optimization. Monitor website performance and loading speed to provide a positive user experience. Lastly, implementing a comprehensive backlink strategy can help maintain or even improve search engine rankings.

Customer Communication Post-Migration

Clear and timely communication with customers throughout the migration process is crucial. Provide detailed instructions on accessing their accounts on the new platform. Address any concerns or questions they may have post-migration. Offer ongoing support during their transition. Utilize customer feedback to enhance their experience.

Case Study: Successful Magento to BigCommerce Migrations

This case study highlights a successful migration from Magento to BigCommerce. The company experienced improved site performance and faster page load times post-migration. Migrating to BigCommerce enabled the marketing department to easily manage and update their site. With the new platform, the company reported increased conversion rates and higher customer satisfaction. The migration streamlined backend operations and reduced maintenance costs. To learn more, read here.

For additional case studies, visit BigCommerce here.

BigCommerce Banner

Magento to BigCommerce

For additional case studies, visit BigCommerce here.

Conclusion

In conclusion, switching from Magento to BigCommerce can simplify your eCommerce business and offer a range of benefits for your online store. With user-friendly interfaces, advanced marketing tools, diverse themes, and superior customer support, BigCommerce is a worthy upgrade.

Before migrating, it’s important to evaluate your current store. You can migrate various data, including product information, customer data, and order history. Overcoming challenges such as data loss and managing downtime during migration is crucial.

Post-migration considerations include ensuring smooth operation, addressing SEO needs, and communicating with customers. Successful case studies demonstrate the effectiveness of Magento to BigCommerce migrations.

If you need assistance with your migration, please get in touch with our team.

How to Choose the Right Platform for Your eCommerce Business

Choosing the right eCommerce platform for your business can be a daunting task. There are so many options out there right now, and every platform has its pros and cons. We’ve got you covered if you’re wondering how to choose the ideal platform for your business. In this blog, we’ll cover the major factors you should consider before making your decision.

What is an eCommerce Platform?

An eCommerce platform is a software solution that helps small and medium-sized businesses build, manage, and optimize their online shopping business. It consists of an online shopping cart, payment gateway, email marketing, analytics tools, search engine optimization (SEO), social media marketing (SMM), website hosting, customer support tools and more. Several different types of platforms are available, including Shopify, BigCommerce and Adobe Commerce.

Each has specific benefits and drawbacks that should be considered when making the decision which platform to use. Depending on the needs of your business and the budget, one of these platforms may be the best choice for your online shopping cart business.

Things to Consider When Choosing Your eCommerce Platform

When choosing an eCommerce platform for your business, it’s crucial to understand your business needs and requirements before making a decision. Start by analyzing the products/services you plan to sell and how you want to deliver them. This will help you identify the features of the platform that are vital for your business success.

Consider factors such as operating budget, payment gateway support, inventory management tools, and marketing tools required for your business to thrive online. Once you’ve identified the essential features of a platform, compare the various platforms based on pricing, features, and customer support. This will help you arrive at a conclusion that is beneficial for your business.

Pricing

Pricing is one of the most important factors to consider when selecting an eCommerce platform. The cost of using the platform will depend on your business’s needs and budget. It’s important to compare the features and pricing of different platforms before making a decision. It can be challenging to determine the right pricing for an eCommerce platform, so it’s important to consider both the cost of use and the pricing of optional services such as customization, hosting, and maintenance.

Additionally, it’s worthwhile to review other business reviews online and talk to other business owners who have used the eCommerce platform. The cost of using an eCommerce platform should include all required service fees as well as any optional customization, extension fees, integration and/or hosting fees. When comparing pricing options, you must consider all of the above factors; otherwise, you may end up with a costly business decision.

Scalability

It’s crucial to choose the right eCommerce platform for your business. When choosing an eCommerce platform, you must consider several factors, including scalability and ease of use. You must ensure that the platform can handle your current needs and accommodate future growth.

Additionally, look for a platform that is flexible enough to allow you to add new features, products, and services as needed. Research the platform’s ability to perform reliably during high peak volumes, perform load balancing, contains native lazy loading features, and what is the historical uptime for the hosting.

Security

When choosing the right eCommerce platform, look for one that offers secure payment processing, data encryption, and other security measures. It is vital to ensure customer data is kept safe. Some platforms provide fraud protection services and make use of two-factor authentication, which allows customers to verify their identity using something they have (such as a smartphone or email account) in addition to their password.

Other verification methods can include requiring customer input when making online payments or asking for additional proof of identity (such as copies of passports or driver’s licenses). In addition to these steps, it is important for e-commerce platforms to meet all applicable industry standards for security, such as those set by the Payment Card Industry Security Standards and the National Retail Federation’s Code of Safety.

Product Catalog

When choosing an eCommerce platform, consider the size and complexity of your product catalog. If you have a large number of products or plan to add more in the future, look for platforms that offer robust product management capabilities.

This will allow you to manage your inventory and keep your online store consistent and up-to-date. If you have a complex product catalog, it is important to ensure that the product catalog interface of your eCommerce platform can handle a large inventory and feature multiple images, sizes, attributes, colors, and prices. This will help shoppers quickly find what they are looking for without scrolling through endless pages of options.

OMS/IMS Capability

An order management system enables customer order entry and processing. An inventory management system tracks and manages product inventory, sales, and other production processes. Basic IMS should record and manage information about the physical goods in your business.

The ability to interface with customer orders, inventory levels, and fulfillment status can give business management real-time visibility into their business’s health. Researching the native services provided by the platform for OMS/IMS is important to understand if an integration will be needed for your business.

Customization Ease

When choosing the right eCommerce platform, customization is key. While choosing a platform that suits your business requirements is important, it’s also vital to search for one that offers customization options.

It’s important to look for platforms that offer easy-to-use customization tools so you can further tailor your store’s look and feel to match your brand. Some other customization options you should consider include different pricing models, payment processing support, shipping support, and inventory management tools.

Integrations

When choosing a platform to use for your online store, you want to make sure that it has the tools and features necessary to support your business operations. One of the most important features of an ecommerce platform is integration with third-party services such as payment processors, inventory management systems, and marketing platforms. By integrating with these services, it will be easier for you to manage business operations and maximize the potential of your online store.

Additionally, an integrated platform allows eCommerce business owners to connect easily with third-party services that can help improve customer conversion rates and increase business profits over time. This saves time and money in the long run.

SEO & Social Integration

One of the most important things to consider when choosing an eCommerce platform is its SEO-friendly features. For eCommerce SEO, these features can include optimized page URLs, meta descriptions, and image tags that help search engines better understand and display your online store. Additionally, search engine optimization (SEO) tools such as keyword research and website analytics are essential tools to use while building your online store. Look for platforms that offer analytics so you can track customer behavior and make informed decisions about how to optimize your store.

Another important factor to consider is ease of integration with social media platforms, such as Instagram and Facebook. This will allow you to easily share customer photos and reviews with social media audiences, promoting your business and engaging with your customers in a personal way.

shopping cart and bags in front of a laptop for shop onlin

3 eCommerce Platforms Compared

There are many different eCommerce platforms to choose from, but it can be overwhelming when deciding which is right for your business. Each platform offers unique features and functionalities that can help businesses reach audiences online and grow their business online.

It’s important to evaluate each platform’s features and functionalities before making a decision and consider factors such as pricing, customization tools, user interface, payment processing, inventory management, marketing tools, website hosting, support, and analytics. By carefully assessing each of these factors, businesses can find the best eCommerce platform for their business needs.

Shopify

Shopify is one of the most popular eCommerce platforms, offering a range of features and tools to help you get up and running quickly. It provides a variety of payment options, allowing you to accept various forms of payment, such as credit cards, PayPal, Apple Pay, and more. There is a fee if you do not use Shopify Payments.

It also offers a wide range of themes to customize the look and feel of your store. These themes include business-focused themes such as eCommerce store templates or fashion-focused themes such as a store for women or men. Shopify integrates with many third-party services, allowing you to use it to manage shipping, marketing, and accounting tasks. The lack of built-in features may require the addition of many apps.

Additionally, Shopify offers 24/7 customer support, making it easy for you to get support when needed.

BigCommerce

BigCommerce is an eCommerce platform that is suitable for medium-sized and fast-growing businesses. It offers a wide range of features, including SEO tools and marketing support, payment processing, and integration with major shopping cart plugins.

Additionally, the platform includes various pricing plans to suit different business budgets. The revenue-led billing may be a concern for stores with tight margins. With BigCommerce, business owners can easily run their online store without having to worry about technicalities or customization.

Some users may find the set-up of the store confusing at times and will need time and patience. BigCommerce includes all the tools needed to run a successful online store without requiring any additional setup or management.

Magento (Now Adobe Commerce)

Adobe Commerce is an open-source eCommerce platform that offers powerful features for online business. It supports multiple languages, payment methods, and currencies, and enables merchants to create a unique shopping experience tailored to their business needs.

Adobe Commerce is highly customizable and allows merchants to create a website that is tailored to their business needs and preferences. The cost to start and run a store on this platform varies depending upon self-hosted Open Source to Adobe Commerce Cloud.

This open-source eCommerce platform has been widely acknowledged for integration capabilities, scalability, and reliability. For most things, setting up and maintaining an Adobe Commerce store will require a developer.

Conclusion on Choosing the Right eCommerce Platform

When it comes to choosing eCommerce platforms for your business, there are no simple solutions. You have to consider many factors, from customer support to pricing and customization capabilities.

However, if you can prioritize these factors and compare eCommerce platforms based on them, you can choose the platform that matches your business plan the most.

To get more details about the features you should look for in an eCommerce platform and a holistic view of Shopify- BigCommerce – Adobe Commerce, contact atmosol.

Magento BigCommerce or Shopify?

Are You Trying to Determine Which Ecommerce Platform is Right for You?

Making the final decision on which platform to use is difficult. Your choice will deeply impact future customer experience and scalability options.

On top of that, you’re considering:

  • Fixed Costs
  • Variable Fees
  • Catalog & Product Architecture
  • and More

It’s a complicated and demanding task to pin down which platform is right for you, so we’re here to help. We created a handy guide as a short cut to save you time and energy in your research.

Magento provides eCommerce merchants the most customization, flexibility and control over their store’s design, content and functionality.

BigCommerce delivers an all-in-one SaaS solution that comes with built-in hosting, payment integration, advanced marketing tools, and security.

Shopify offers intuitive store setup to get your site up and running fast with valuable extensions, simplicity of interaction, and reliable hosting.

TOP 3 ECOMMERCE PLATFORM DIFFERENCES

Keeping your best interests in mind, we leverage our partnerships with Magento, BigCommerce, and Shopify to weigh your unique business needs, challenges, and goals against the pros and cons of each platform. That way, you benefit from an unbiased, holistic consultation.

We work with integrity, which is why we do all services ourselves rather than outsource work abroad. Your investment in atmosol stays hard at work in-house with our 100% US-based team. That’s our promise to you.

We make more than awesome websites. We make your entrepreneurial dreams a reality.