BigCommerce vs Optimizely

During testing, I noticed right off the bat that BigCommerce is a feature-rich platform that needs a lot of customization to fit my exact needs. Plus, there aren’t guided onboarding experiences, making implementation time-consuming. You must manually explore the interface to learn how to create or connect a domain, add products, set up fulfillment workflows, connect sales channels and design a storefront.Secondly, what caught my eye was the platform's speed and operability. BigCommerce boasts a 99% website uptime, and I could see why. It automatically optimizes images, minimizes HTTP requests and uses browser cache to identify customers. Also, a global content delivery network allows visitors worldwide to view your site from the nearest server.I loved how intuitive it is to connect and manage sales channels using BigCommerce. You can set up differentiated experiences for each channel using dynamic pricing, multiple product views, product swatches and bulk pricing tools. A robust customer segmentation module automatically groups similar customer personas based on your rules and helps design personalized experiences.The storefront editor uniquely lets you design a carousel for the website header. However, I didn’t like anything else about the storefront editor. It has limited free themes, and paid ones are comparatively more expensive than what competitors offer. That said, the platform's headless architecture helps compensate by enabling custom storefront development.My only point of contention was its unique pricing model. It charges a base subscription fee and puts a cap on your business's annual sales. If you exceed this cap, BigCommerce takes a percentage of your revenue based on your subscription plan.Also, if you connect the platform to a POS, every POS sale is considered an eCommerce sale, leading to a higher sales volume and cost. This leads to complex TCO calculations for enterprises with large sales volumes and international customers.Overall, BigCommerce is one of the best options for growing mid-sized businesses that can offset the platform cost with their sales revenue. It's flexible and can adapt to multiple business models, including B2B, D2C and dropshipping, with separate storefronts for each.However, the platform can be overkill for small businesses and may require significant investments to unlock its full potential. That's because all the good features like multi-storefront, personalization, customer segmentation and headless architecture are available in higher-tier plans. Also, lower-tier plans are comparatively more expensive than those of competitors like Shopify.

Optimizely is a powerful tool for managing and optimizing digital shopper experiences. Its content management capabilities are particularly impressive. The platform offers a centralized hub for storing, editing and approving multimedia content, making it easy to maintain consistency across channels.Customers can quickly reach their desired location and find products with built-in search and navigation tools combined with AI-powered recommendations. The integrated customer data platform (CDP) is also a valuable addition, helping organize customer data for efficient support services and personalized suggestions.The platform’s real strength lies in its experimentation capabilities. It offers a robust set of tools for A/B testing, multivariate testing and feature flagging. These tools help you fine-tune your online store to better match your audience’s taste and test variations of designs, features or products to see how effectively they boost customer conversions.However, the platform is far from an all-in-one eCommerce solution. It offers basic backend tools to manage inventory, orders and shipping. For example, you can’t manage multiple inventory locations and set up packaging and kitting workflows.Also, it doesn’t support product bundling, contract-based pricing, purchase orders and complex promotional structures. This makes the platform less suitable for B2B businesses with complex needs.Overall, Optimizely is ideal for large enterprises and D2C businesses with an existing backend setup, looking to manage, personalize and deliver branded shopping experiences across multiple sales channels. However, SMEs and growing companies must consider other options in the market, as Optimizely can be a costly investment and may not cover the full spectrum of eCommerce store management needs.