How to Create a Shopping Cart in WordPress with BigCommerce (2024 Guide)
Are you looking to add ecommerce functionality to your WordPress website? Accepting online payments and selling products directly from your site is a great way to monetize your web traffic and grow your business. But which ecommerce platform should you use?
BigCommerce is a popular and powerful all-in-one ecommerce solution that now integrates seamlessly with WordPress. It provides all the essential features you need to launch an online store, process payments securely, and manage your products and orders.
In this comprehensive guide, we‘ll walk you through exactly how to create a shopping cart and launch an ecommerce store on your WordPress site using BigCommerce. We‘ll cover everything from signing up for an account to listing your products to configuring your payment and shipping options.
Whether you want to sell a few products or build a large ecommerce operation, BigCommerce and WordPress make a great combination. BigCommerce handles all the heavy lifting on the ecommerce side, while WordPress enables you to easily showcase your products and customize your site.
Ready to get started? Let‘s dive in.
Why Use BigCommerce for Your WordPress Ecommerce Store?
BigCommerce is a hosted ecommerce platform that provides everything you need to launch and grow an online store, including:
- Easy to use interface for managing your products, inventory, and orders
- Secure shopping cart and checkout pages
- Built-in payment processing with PayPal and credit cards at competitive rates
- Shipping and tax automation
- Mobile-optimized storefronts and checkout
- Marketing and SEO features to help drive traffic and sales
- 24/7 support
Historically, BigCommerce was a standalone ecommerce website builder. But the company recently launched a WordPress plugin that lets you seamlessly connect your BigCommerce store to any WordPress site.
This means you can now leverage WordPress‘ content management capabilities and customizability while offloading all the ecommerce functionality to BigCommerce‘s specialized platform. It‘s the best of both worlds, without the technical complexity of trying to run everything through WordPress.
Some of the key benefits of using BigCommerce with WordPress include:
- Keep your existing WordPress site and design while adding ecommerce
- Avoid the performance issues that can come with running WooCommerce on WordPress
- Don‘t have to worry about ecommerce security, PCI compliance or plugin conflicts
- Easily scale your store as you grow without stressing your WordPress hosting
- Automatically sync your products between BigCommerce and WordPress
BigCommerce also has robust APIs and integrations with leading business software for accounting, fulfillment, marketing and more. So you can easily connect your store to the other tools you use as you grow.
Now that we‘ve covered why BigCommerce is a great choice for WordPress, let‘s look at how to get your store up and running.
How to Create a Shopping Cart with BigCommerce in WordPress
Follow these steps to launch a WordPress ecommerce site powered by BigCommerce:
Step 1: Sign Up for BigCommerce
To get started, you‘ll need a BigCommerce account. BigCommerce offers a free 15-day trial, so you can test out the platform before committing.
Head to BigCommerce.com and click the "Start your free trial" button. Enter your email address, name, and password to create an account.
BigCommerce will ask you a few questions about your business and experience with ecommerce to help tailor your store setup. Answer these and click "Finish & Create My Store."
You‘ll then be taken into the BigCommerce dashboard to start configuring your store and adding products. But first you‘ll need to connect BigCommerce to your WordPress site.
Step 2: Install the BigCommerce WordPress Plugin
In your WordPress admin, go to Plugins → Add New and search for "BigCommerce." Install and activate the official plugin.
Once activated, click the new "BigCommerce" tab in your WordPress admin sidebar. The plugin will prompt you to connect your BigCommerce account.
Click the "Connect an Account" button to launch the BigCommerce login screen in a pop-up. Enter your BigCommerce email and password.
After logging in, BigCommerce will ask you to confirm that you want to connect your store to your WordPress site. Click "Confirm" to proceed.
You‘ll then see a success message and the BigCommerce dashboard will now be connected to your WordPress admin.
Step 3: Configure Your BigCommerce Store Settings
Now you can configure your BigCommerce store settings directly from within WordPress. In your admin sidebar, go to BigCommerce → Settings.
Here you can set your store details, currencies, payment providers, shipping options and more. BigCommerce has an onboarding wizard that will guide you through the key steps.
Some of the important settings to pay attention to:
Currencies: Choose your default currency and configure your price display options.
Payment Providers: By default, BigCommerce supports payments via PayPal powered by Braintree and Stripe. You can easily connect these accounts to activate them.
Tax: Enter your business address so BigCommerce can automatically calculate sales tax. You can also specify special tax rates and rules.
Shipping: Configure your shipping zones and rates. BigCommerce supports real-time shipping calculations with major carriers like FedEx and UPS.
Analytics: Enter your Google Analytics ID to enable ecommerce tracking and reporting.
Step 4: Add and Manage Products in BigCommerce
Now you‘re ready to start adding products to your store. From your WordPress admin, go to BigCommerce → Products.
Click "Add A Product" and enter the product name, description, price, images, and other details. You can also set the product category, inventory levels, and SEO information.
Product Options: BigCommerce supports a variety of product options like size and color variants. Configure these under the "Options & SKUs" tab when editing a product.
Product Categories: Create categories and subcategories to organize your products under BigCommerce → Product Categories.
Once you‘ve added your products in BigCommerce, they will automatically sync and be available to display on your WordPress site. This automatic syncing is a key advantage of using BigCommerce with WordPress.
You manage all your catalog data in one place within BigCommerce. Then any changes are instantly pushed to WordPress. You never have to worry about your store getting out of sync.
Step 5: Choose a BigCommerce Plan
BigCommerce offers a free 15-day trial of its Standard plan. After your trial expires, you‘ll need to choose a paid plan to continue selling.
BigCommerce has three main plans ranging from $29.95/month to $299.95/month based on your sales volume. You can compare the features and specs of the BigCommerce plans here.
Keep in mind you‘ll also pay a transaction fee of 2.59% + $0.49 for PayPal and 2.9% + $0.30 for Stripe payments on top of your monthly BigCommerce fee.
Larger businesses can contact BigCommerce for a custom Enterprise plan.
Step 6: Launch Your WordPress Ecommerce Store
Your final step is to add the BigCommerce shopping cart and products to your WordPress site. You can do this in a few different ways:
Create a dedicated Shop page: BigCommerce will automatically create a new "Shop" page in WordPress that displays all your products. You can find this under Pages → All Pages in your WordPress admin. Add this page to your site‘s navigation menu.
Embed products in pages/posts: Using the BigCommerce Gutenberg block, you can easily embed specific products or product categories on any page or post. Just search for "BigCommerce" in the block inserter to pull in products.
Use widgets: BigCommerce also provides widgets for your shopping cart and products under Appearance → Widgets in WordPress. Drag these into your sidebar or footer.
By default, BigCommerce will use your WordPress theme‘s styling for the product catalog and shopping cart pages. But you can customize the appearance by overriding the CSS or choosing a BigCommerce-specific theme.
Play around with the different options to find the product layout that works best for your store. Make sure to test the checkout flow as well.
Additional BigCommerce for WordPress Tips and FAQs
How does BigCommerce compare to other WordPress ecommerce plugins like WooCommerce?
The main difference is BigCommerce is a fully hosted and managed platform, while WooCommerce is a self-hosted WordPress plugin.
With WooCommerce, your store‘s performance and security depend on your WordPress hosting environment and technical configuration. You‘re responsible for managing PCI compliance, plugin updates and compatibility, and more.
BigCommerce handles all of this for you as a SaaS platform. Your store is hosted on BigCommerce‘s enterprise-grade infrastructure and the company manages security and compliance. This can be much simpler than trying to run everything through WordPress, especially as you grow.
BigCommerce also has more advanced ecommerce features built-in without the need for tons of plugins like WooCommerce often requires. However, WooCommerce does provide more design flexibility since it‘s open-source.
Overall, BigCommerce can be a great choice for WordPress users who want a fast, scalable and secure ecommerce platform without all the technical complexity. It‘s an excellent option if you want to add ecommerce to your WordPress site without migrating everything to a new platform.
Can I use my existing WordPress theme with BigCommerce?
Yes, BigCommerce will work with any WordPress theme. The BigCommerce plugin adds a special template for the shopping cart and product catalog pages. These inherit the styling of your theme by default.
If you want more control over the design of your product pages, you can customize the BigCommerce template files directly or use a theme specifically built for BigCommerce.
How do I get support for BigCommerce?
BigCommerce provides 24/7 live chat, email and phone support. The company also has an extensive knowledge base with guides and tutorials.
If you need help with the WordPress plugin integration specifically, post a question in the plugin support forum or email the BigCommerce WordPress support team.
What‘s the best way to drive traffic to my BigCommerce WordPress store?
Some proven strategies for promoting your BigCommerce WordPress site and getting more sales include:
SEO optimize your product pages with keyword-rich titles, descriptions and image alt tags. BigCommerce lets you customize all these for each product.
Set up Google Shopping and dynamic remarketing campaigns to reach shoppers across Google.
Invest in paid search and social media ads to drive qualified traffic.
Build your email list and send targeted campaigns. BigCommerce has built-in email marketing tools.
Partner with influencers and affiliate marketers to extend your reach.
Optimize your site for mobile and improve page load speeds. BigCommerce stores are mobile-responsive out of the box.
The key is to experiment with different channels and tactics to see what resonates with your unique audience. Use your BigCommerce analytics to track your results and double down on what‘s working.
How does the BigCommerce WordPress plugin handle product data syncing?
When you connect BigCommerce to WordPress, the plugin will automatically import all your products, images and categories within a few minutes. It then keeps everything in sync moving forward.
Whenever you add or update a product in BigCommerce, those changes will get pushed to WordPress automatically. You can control the frequency of the sync under the WordPress plugin settings.
This automated 2-way syncing eliminates the need to manually update product info in multiple places. It keeps your store catalog consistent across BigCommerce and WordPress.
BigCommerce for WordPress: The Bottom Line
Adding a shopping cart and ecommerce capabilities to your WordPress site doesn‘t have to be complicated or require migrating to a whole new platform. With the BigCommerce plugin for WordPress, you can easily integrate a powerful and secure ecommerce back-end while still taking advantage of WordPress‘ flexibility on the front-end.
BigCommerce eliminates many of the technical headaches that come with trying to run an ecommerce store entirely through WordPress. You can leverage BigCommerce‘s infrastructure and payment processing while keeping your existing WordPress site.
To recap, here‘s how to launch a WordPress ecommerce site with BigCommerce:
- Sign up for a BigCommerce account
- Install the BigCommerce WordPress plugin and connect your account
- Configure your store settings and payment providers in BigCommerce
- Add your products and set up your catalog in BigCommerce
- Embed your products and shopping cart on your WordPress site
- Choose a BigCommerce pricing plan
- Launch and start promoting your WordPress store
Whether you‘re just getting started with selling online or looking to scale your store, BigCommerce and WordPress make a powerful and flexible combination. By following the steps in this guide, you‘ll be well on your way to ecommerce success.
