April 25, 2015, Denver -- We use BigCommerce to operate the store for our long-running radio program which sells science and other educational resources to our audience through store.kgov.com. Fifteen years ago we began with something called b-Commerce, which closed down so we switched to Prostores, which closed down so we switched to BigCommerce. Each time we've wanted to kick ourselves in the head.
We get the sense that BigCommerce is not on the side of their clients. They seem to be on the side of revenue-sharing app developers. They also seem to be on the side of their support staff, giving them the easiest job in the world. For every query about a BC problem, they simply have to reply: There's an app for that!
Tiny fraction of Problems with BigCommerce:
- Can't sell digital downloadable products (of any actual real-world size, like media files; but there's an app for that)
- Can't sell subscriptions or take recurring payments (but there's an app for that)
- The "Search" feature is lousy (but there's an app for that) and in a non-standard position and can't be moved
- Can't sort the order of products in categories (yes, you read that right; it's not just your eyes... too bad, because if it were, there'd be an app for that).
The sort functionality, for example, is so inane it seems inexplicable. Even when the sort actually works, it forces the same sort order in every category. To display a top-ranked science book in both our SCIENCE and LITERATURE "departments", if we want it to appear first in the Science categroy, then it's going to have to appear first also int he Literature department, even if we have a dozen better-selling (non-science) books.
Not to ruin your day, I'll stop here, because anyway, the BB support forum lists plenty more absurd problems. Still though, feel free to send your favorite BigCommerce problem to Bob@rsr.org. But in the meantime, we suggest that you avoid any reviews of "the best solutions" in eCommerce. Why? Because actually worthwhile assessments won't list "the best" but "the least lousy." No?
Bob Enyart
1-800-8Enyart (for ordering products the old-fashioned way, by phone)
RealScienceRadio.com - rsr.org