BigCommerce or sales funnels? What is more effective to make sales? The right answer is it depends. Both of them are web tools to help you make sales online. They have similarities, and they both come in different packages with different prices, but one cannot really say that one is a better choice than the other because they have a different function.
Let us review each tool’s features, and then help you make a decision at the end of this article where to invest your money.
What is BigCommerce?
BigCommerce is a web-building platform that mainly services online sellers like dropshippers and huge companies. Founded in 2009, the company has grown into an international and premier choice of people who want to build e-commerce sites. The company is located in Austin, Texas, and is currently one of the toughest competitors of other web-building platforms like Shopify, WordPress, and Wix.
With BigCommerce, you can build an online store. In this online store, you can add a lot of apps and pages, including a blog. You can also use this platform even if you are not selling physical goods because BigCommerce allows you to post digital products like songs, graphic arts, written materials, and so much more.
If you use BigCommerce, your website will have a payment gateway. There are many choices here so you can give your customers many options to pay you for your products and services. Apart from this, there are also marketing tools and educational services to help you with your online selling career.
BigCommerce is split into two types of services. One is for small businesses, and the other one is for huge enterprises like Hush Puppies and Electric Motor Supply Company. If you are a small business, you need to buy from the packages with built-in features. If you are a huge company, you need to contact the BigCommerce management and work with them so they can create the kind of website that you need.
How a Sales Funnel Works
If BigCommerce is a full-on webstore, a sales funnel is like a portion of that. A sales funnel is a one-page website, called a webpage, where you put all the important information about your product. It does not always have to be a product as you can also use a sales funnel for services. There are professionals like attorneys, doctors, hypnotherapists, and gastric band surgeons who use sales funnels to attract clients and make a sale.
A website, like the one you do with BigCommerce, has different pages like About Us, Contact Us, product pages, and so much more. A sales funnel only has one, and this is called the landing page. It is on this landing page where you explain to the site visitor what the problem is, how you can solve it, for how much, and what guarantees you offer.
The sales funnel is also where you showcase your credentials like your awards or certificates, or how many million sales you have made already, or how you have helped other people by showing their testimonials on the page.
On a sales funnel, your goal is to convince a customer to buy, or subscribe to your email list so you can send follow up marketing emails. The sales funnel is also the same place where a customer can complete a purchase, and then download your product.
Related Post: Create A Sales Funnel
However, the sales funnel cannot always contain the product. For example, if you are selling an online course, the video series or course materials must be placed on a website, which is different from the sales funnel.
A sales funnel is a marketing material, like along advertisement, so you can show your product benefits and convince your potential customer to make a purchase.
What Can You do With BigCommerce?
If you want to build a complete website, BigCommerce is a good choice. The start-up cost is affordable at $29.95, and you can build a fully functional website at that price.
Here are some of the features you can enjoy if you use the platform:
- Build and design a store – there are hundreds of templates that you can use to start building a web site. You can use these or customize them. You can even build from scratch.
- Dropshipping – dropshipping is a business model where you do not keep an inventory. In this model, you look for a supplier who will ship the product directly to your customer. What you need to do is to post the product on your website, then order it from the supplier if a customer makes a purchase.
- Multi-channel selling – with BigCommerce, you can post the products from your store in other platforms like eBay, Amazon. Instagram, Facebook, and Google Shopping. You control all of them from your BigCommerce dashboard.
- Charge money – you can select from different payment systems to charge your customer money for the product.
- Add apps – choose from many apps that you can integrate to make a more professional website such as banners, pop-ups, carousels, and more.
- Analytics – with analytics, you can see real-time reports like visitor count, revenue, conversion rate in relation to the number of people who viewed your store, number of orders, and so much more.
BigCommerce is a great platform for an online store, and you can also take advantage of benefits like unlimited storage and bandwidth, unlimited staff accounts, web hosting, and real-time shipping quotes
What Can You do With a Sales Funnel?
By paying a subscription to a sales funnel platform, you can use several features to boost your marketing.
- Landing page – you can use a drag-and-drop landing page feature to make it easy to build your sales funnel.
- Opt-in page – use a system where you can get your site visitor’s email address. Use this list for your marketing campaign via email.
- Email marketing – a sales funnel platform gives you access to email automation, customer segmentation, and automated follow-up emails
- Checkout – you can choose from different payment gateways, and use these payment processors to charge your customers who decided to buy. You can charge them a one-time fee or a subscription.
- Download content – if you are selling digital content, the customer can download this content right after he completed the payment
- Affiliate marketing software – most sales funnel platforms allow you to recruit online marketers. With this software, you can give your affiliates unique product links. They will use these links to sell your product, and then you will be able to track who made a sale, and how much commission you will pay per person.
A sales funnel platform delivers you the tools you need to market your products. This includes a landing page where you can embed videos, and a web page that you can customize to showcase your products in the way you think is right for your business.
Summary
BigCommerce and a sales funnel are two different platforms with different specializations. You have to use one to a specific purpose, but you cannot just choose one and use it for both purposes. Use BigCommerce to build a website, so you have an online presence to build credibility. Use a sales funnel to reach out to people who may be looking for your product, or those who did not know that you are here to solve their problems.