WHAT IS BIG CARTEL’S BIG SELL?
Since Big Cartel caters to small online stores, you can expect this platform to come with fewer frills than site builders meant to power huge online stores. And if you’re a small creative agency, blogger, or artist, that’s exactly what you should be looking for.
Your goal here isn’t to build a massive store around vast quantities of merchandise; you simply need a tool to help you monetize your work and make it available to the public online.
Features
Overall, compared to larger ecommerce platforms Big Cartel is quite basic. It’s not ideal for enterprise-level businesses, and therefore the list of features is short.
However, the features they offer are exactly what beginners and small businesses need to get started. The main advantage is that merchants don’t get overwhelmed with an abundance of options. Instead, they can build and run their business with minimal skills, knowing that everything they need they already have. So what do you get with Big Cartel?
Sell Digital Products
The integration with Pulley lets merchants put their digital products on sale. The integration helps sellers outsource their skills, as well as their products. Whether you’re looking to make an extra buck writing content, or turn poems into wall art, Big Cartel can help you achieve that.
Sell on Facebook and Instagram
Today merchants need to be present, ready to assist shoppers across all channels. Luckily, Big Cartel offers integrations with Facebook and allows tagging products on Instagram. Regardless of your price plan, as long as Facebook approves your products, you can expand your business and reach customers scrolling on Facebook. To integrate social platforms to your online store, you will need to do some coding.
Order management
You can set up automatic emails to notify customers once their order is confirmed, fulfill orders, print shipping labels and export order history in CSV files.
Inventory tracking
Easily keep an eye on stock levels to prevent sales of items that are out of stock, and list items as “sold out” or “coming soon”.
Easily Editable Product Information
In Big Cartel you can easily edit such product information like name, description, inventory status, price, edit product URL for SEO reasons and much more. By the way, one useful feature that needs to be mentioned is that you can group products into the categories straight from the product edit page.
Marketing and SEO
The platform offers great SEO features, like sitemap generation to drive relevant traffic to your store. Users can also apply discounts and run special promotions with ease.
Intuitive Product Management
It has quite an intuitive product management system. Everything here is user-friendly and there are no unnecessary complications.
Track progress
The platform integrates with Google Analytics, which provides sellers with insights into how and what products are performing well. It also helps to identify what channels drive the most traffic to your store, making it easier to plan marketing efforts.
HOW MUCH DOES BIG CARTEL COST?
Pricing is fairly low, which is a great incentive for smaller businesses and startups trying to secure a solid builder tool on a budget.
IS BIG CARTEL FREE?
Yes, there is a starter free plan available (the ‘Gold’ plan) that’s completely cost-free to use. It comes with:
- The ability to add 5 products
- One image per product
- A bigcartel.com domain name
- A selection of pre-made themes
- The ability to sell in-person
- The option to add the store tab on Facebook
- A real-time dashboard
- The option to upgrade at any time (but no limited trial contract that forces you to do this)
- 24/7 support, Monday to Friday
Therefore, this free plan can do one of two things:
- It can serve as a trial for users that want to test out the software and get a taste of what they can do with it.
- It could also be a nice little addition to a current business’s website if you only have a few products to sell.
Is Big Cartel legit?
One of the key attractions for Big Cartel are the competitive prices. You can have your store up and running with zero investment, even if it’s a small shop. Sure, the features it offers are basic, compared to the likes of Shopify, but if you are an artist looking to make an extra buck from your art — this is a great place to start. The features on offer are everything you need to run an online store and make it a successful one.
If you’re not looking to run an enterprise-size business, you should definitely check Big Cartel out. After all, it says what it does on the tin — it’s an easy way for makers and shakers to start and run a creative business.
