How much has BigCommerce grown in recent years?
With just under 50,000 live stores on the BigCommerce platform (compared with Shopify’s 3.83 million), thousands of new stores are being added every year:
- In 2019: 5,072 new stores were added
- In 2020: 5,228 new stores were added
- In 2021: 4,831 new stores were added
- 2022 (to date): 5,144 new stores were added
As you can see, there has been steady growth in the BigCommerce platform for the past three years despite the greater competition.
The platform benefited from the pandemic years when the world moved online, like most of the top ecommerce platforms, but was already doing well. And, while there has been a recent pullback in the space for many players, the BigCommerce statistics predict a bright future, with 14 percent year-over-year growth in the second quarter of 2022.
Who uses the BigCommerce platform?
To find out who predominantly uses the platform, BigCommerce statistics can be broken down into retail sector, employee numbers (to give an idea of size) and geographic location.
All of these stats are interesting, so, let’s first consider the types of categories of ecommerce stores using the platform, then size, then location…
By retail sector
The three major retail sectors to have adopted the BigCommerce platform are as follows:
- Home and garden product retailers account for15.7% of BigCommerce stores (7,764 in total to date)
- Apparel product retailers account for 15.0% of BigCommerce stores (7,387 in total to date)
- Autos and vehicle product retailers account for 6.6% of BigCommerce stores (3,235 in total to date)
Other notable retail categories include:
Over 3,000 stores:
- Food and drink
- Sports
- Beauty and fitness
Over 2,000 stores:
- Business and industrial
- Health
Over 1,000 stores:
- Toys and hobbies
- Computers
- Arts and entertainment
- Gifts and special events
- Pets and animals
- Consumer electronics
- Smoking and vaping (actually not quite 1,000 yet but catching up to that mark)
Size of store
According to BigCommerce statistics and a survey of around 3,500 stores, the platform is overwhelmingly most popular with smaller stores of between one and nine employees:
- 48.25% of BigCommerce stores employ 1-9 people
- 19.96% of BigCommerce stores employ 10-24 people
- 10.66% of BigCommerce stores employ 25-49 people
The employee numbers keep decreasing until you get to 5000 employees and over, which applies to less than one percent of stores.
Another good yardstick to measure the size of the store is the number of products sold. Though this is less revealing (a store may sell a lot from a limited product range or have a huge range with low sales), the statistics remain interesting.
Surprisingly perhaps, it’s not a simple case of higher product numbers applying to fewer stores. While the largest category is between one and nine products, a lot more stores sell 100-1,000 products than 25-100 products.
Here are the latest BigCommerce statistics:
- 23.5% of BigCommerce stores sell a range of 1-9 products
- 19.6 % of BigCommerce stores sell a range of 100-249 products
- 18.9% of BigCommerce stores sell a range of 250 – 999 products
- 10.5 % of BigCommerce stores sell a range of 25-49 products
Location of store
As mentioned already, the U.S. is by far the most popular location for BigCommerce stores — though the platform is used around the world, especially in native-English-speaking countries such as Canada, the UK, and Australia:
- 74.6% of live BigCommerce stores are in the U.S.
- 6.5% of live BigCommerce stores are in Australia
- 5.9% of live BigCommerce stores are in the UK
- 2.7% of live BigCommerce stores are in Brazil
- 2.7% of live BigCommerce stores are in Canada
- 1.2% of live BigCommerce stores are in Hong Kong
- 0.9% of live BigCommerce stores are in New Zealand
Unsurprisingly, these leading locations are reflected in the top-level domain distribution statistics for Big Commerce stores (but note that .com domains are used widely outside the U.S. and are by far the most popular):
- 78.6% of BigCommerce stores use .com domains
- 5.1% of BigCommerce stores use .com.au domains (Australia)
- 3.6% of BigCommerce stores use .co.uk domains (UK)
Which are the main third-party apps used on BigCommerce stores?
As with most of the major platforms, technology and apps form a major part of running a successful BigCommerce store. These apps help with security, sales and marketing, promotion and advertising, back-end processes, and tracking performance.
In 2022, the most popular apps used by store owners on the platform are:
- Google’s reCAPTCHA app, which is used by 57.5% of BigCommerce stores
- Facebook Pixel, which is used by 34.6% of BigCommerce stores
- Google Analytics, which is used by 31.9% of BigCommerce stores
Other notable mentions go to the following third-party apps, used by many thousands of stores according to the latest BigCommerce statistics:
- Google Tag Manager
- PayPal Express Checkout
- Google Analytics Enhanced Ecommerce
- Mailchimp
- Google Ads Pixel
- YouTube Player
Who are the top shipping carriers used by BigCommerce stores?
Shipping carrier options used to be dominated by a few major companies and while those companies largely still lead the way, the international nature of ecommerce has opened up more options:
- USPS is used by 16.7% of BigCommerce stores
- UPS is used by 14.5% of BigCommerce stores
- FedEx is used by 9.7% of BigCommerce stores
Other notable mentions go to:
- Australia Post
- Royal Mail (UK)
- Canada Post
Note that DHL lags behind all of the above, according to the latest BigCommerce statistics.
Who’s switching to and from BigCommerce?
With all the growth in BigCommerce, a valid question is whether new stores are springing up from scratch or migrating from other ecommerce platforms.
And, conversely, when stores decide to leave the BigCommerce platform, what do the statistics say about where they are migrating to?
These are important considerations for those in charge of the growth strategies of the platform.
Stores switching to BigCommerce
The latest BigCommerce statistics suggest the following for stores switching to the BigCommerce platform in recent months:
- 37.5% of stores that switch to BigCommerce migrate from Shopify
- 17.5% of stores that switch to BigCommerce migrate from WooCommerce
- 14.6% of stores that switch to BigCommerce migrate from Custom Cart
- 5% of stores that switch to BigCommerce migrate from Magento
- 5% of stores that switch to BigCommerce migrate from Wix
Stores switching from BigCommerce
The latest BigCommerce statistics suggest the following for stores switching from the BigCommerce platform in recent months:
- 53.3 % of stores that switch from BigCommerce migrate to Shopify
- 17.8% of stores that switch from BigCommerce migrate to WooCommerce
- 11.6% of stores that switch from BigCommerce migrate to Custom Cart
- 2.7% of stores that switch from BigCommerce migrate to Square Online
- 2% of stores that switch from BigCommerce migrate to Magento
Social media usage in BigCommerce stores
There are few surprises with the social media usage statistics for BigCommerce stores.
The stats reflect the general trends you can see with social media usage in everyday life, as stores reach out and connect with millions of prospective customers on the channels that they use daily.
- Facebook is the predominant platform for 28.6% of BigCommerce stores
- Instagram is the predominant platform for 23.6% of BigCommerce stores
- Twitter is the predominant platform for 13.7% of BigCommerce stores
Other social media platforms widely used by BigCommerce stores are (again unsurprisingly) YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn and TikTok.
Communicating with BigCommerce stores
BigCommerce stores are twice as likely to provide a phone number than Shopify stores. This may reflect the US-centric merchant base on the platform and the US-centric customer base of the stores using the platform.
Shopify is more international in its spread, and its stores are increasingly engaging in cross-border commerce, making phone numbers less of an effective communication tool than email, chat messaging or contact forms.
Around two-thirds (64 percent) of BigCommerce stores provide a phone number on their stores.
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What are the top BigCommerce stores?
While BigCommerce is widely known as a platform heavily used by smaller stores in the U.S., we should not ignore the larger stores set up on the platform.
The following stores are a few of BigCommerce’s headline acts, all receiving between 500,000 and 1.75 million visitors per month:
- Rock Bottom Golf
- Mountain Rose Herbs
- Star City Games
- Solo Stove
- ToyWiz.com
The BigCommerce stats show a thriving ecommerce platform…
The above BigCommerce statistics paint a picture of a thriving ecommerce platform that is more than holding its own despite the larger competition pushing for “global ecommerce domination” around it!
