BigCommerce Needs To Change Its Message
BigCommerce is going to propel the eCommerce venture capital sector for the next five years - especially given that they have a lot more room to run.
A few notes:
Now that the world is astonished at its IPO, it's a good chance to reshape their marketing. Get in more deals. Expand as quickly as possible. Most people don't know you exist. My message: there will be more than one winner in this space because there are hardly any great platforms out there. Many RFPs start with "low maintenance" and "cloud" as first principles.
Now between Tobi Lutke and Brent Belim, we have two students of Clayton Christensen - starting at SMB/underserved markets, climbing up-market. Loren Padelford (of Shopify Plus) told me previously that Shopify Plus is "stretching" up-market. BigCommerce is going after Enterprise in their messaging - saying they are a better fit for "established companies.” Shopify's unreal momentum seems to kill that idea, but we'll see!
Messaging from Brent in this interview: "BigCommerce more open and flexible" - setting up Shopify as a walled garden. Shopify's rake on partner apps sets up a natural comparison to Apple. If BigCommerce leans into the "Android of cloud" - i.e. still cloud, but more flexible - it could be good positioning for them.
I'm sure my friends at Greycroft are excited by yesterday.
Jordan Brannon of Coalition Technologies had a lot to say on this matter. I’m sharing some of his insights here, as he is someone with 10 years of experience with both Shopify and BigCommerce. His words below:
“If we have to make a very simplistic split on which one to choose for an SMB, we do so based on the simplicity of the (a) product catalog, (b) audience, and (c) pricing. More simple, Shopify tends to win readily. Easier to onboard, more content published, easier to self-service, etc. More complex… [and] you will likely find BigC holds an edge.
“Shopify has huge upside, even if BigCommerce grows and BigCommerce has huge upside, even if Shopify grows. I've seen people down on Shopify's TAM [Technology Acceptance Model], seeing it only as businesses buying e-commerce shopping cart software. Meh. Too many upsides here - room to run on payments (P2P for micromerchants anyone?), marketplace, fulfillment (even repackaging hardware and software solutions), targeting ERPs [Enterprise Resource Planning], etc., etc., etc. We're talking billions on billions in market opportunities and its location at the center of that hub for merchants makes it ideally positioned to capitalize on whichever one it wants. And for BigCommerce, they can choose to continue to market as the more mature and capable version of Shopify, or they can pick up from some of Shopify's cues and increment their take rate from merchants without increasing the total percent of revenue going to e-commerce expenses. I'm sure we'll see both make some missteps but the market here is quite favorable for both to grow.
“BigCommerce plays BETTER with others than most e-commerce platforms, including Shopify (I would argue much better than SHOP). More robust API, faster response time, higher native flexibility. Its downside is its merchant pool size. Less small to mid-sized 3rd parties are building on the platform due to limited resources and trying to bet on the whale. HOWEVER, even with a smaller merchant base, you still see most secure, reliable, and mature 3rd party app developers investing in BigCommerce products because they see Shopify like Amazon- unfaithful and unreliable in the long run. Shopify's biggest risk is that it continues to want to be a monopoly in small business e-commerce. For most software companies that have pursued an end-to-end approach, that's ended in declining relevance. (Declines that may occur over decades, so I'm not predicting that Shopify is on a path it can't correct).
“Shopify Plus is not really challenging that notion [that BigCommcerce’s original position was greater customization compared to regular Shopify]. Its advertising is challenging that notion by presenting it as a highly flexible solution and while it is getting much better, the underlying Shopify architecture is still more rigid than BigCommerce. Further, if Shopify continues to want to push into all areas of e-commerce operations, you're likely to see more rigidity in the future as it becomes a walled garden. (Because whatever is developed needs to work with SHOP POS, Pay, Fulfillment, Email, Installments, etc). We do 2x the # of builds on Shopify as we do on BigCommerce, mostly driven by smaller e-commerce businesses. At a mid-sized and enterprise tier, the selection of Shopify over BigCommerce often comes back to having 'smaller' business type needs while doing a higher transaction rate. If you have a simpler catalog, pricing, audience, and marketing cross-section, Shopify Plus can be a winner and a killer value. When you layer in complexity you start to find the walls”
I’m so appreciative of Jordan sharing these thoughts! I also want to shout out Ben Parsell, who shared a (somewhat) dissenting opinion. Ben said: “BigCommerce's marketing team pitches enterprise as their target market, but the platform itself doesn't agree. The degree of integration and customization that enterprise customers require makes BigCommerce a second thought at this point. In my opinion, they are perhaps one of the least flexible platforms in terms of a SaaS commerce platform. Developer support is next to none compared to Shopify. If they set that as their target and can catch up on the development front over the next few years, I could see them growing into that market, but as it stands they seem to be one of the most immature platforms in the marketplace, especially with support for developers.”
Christopher Vanning does a good job summing things up post-IPO: “Good to see BigCommerce put this initial cause for skepticism (successful IPO) to rest for now. Plenty of runway to lean into the "open" identity - it's going to be a fun watch either way! [BigCommerce] have work to do just crossing some awareness thresholds. This week is a great start”
