4 Plugins that Enhance BigCommerce for WordPress

The BigCommerce for WordPress plugin was built with the intention of being a massive plugin, meaning that it would hold all needed features in one plugin, without the need for many addons like WooCommerce. That said, there are some features which either really shouldn’t be in the core plugin, or already existed so well in the WordPress theme already that it seemed pointless to try to recreate them. In this post, we’ll take a look at some of the add-ons that can enhance your BigCommerce for WordPress store.

1. FacetWP:

FacetWP adds faceted search to the BigCommerce user experience, so people can better find what they’re looking for. Faceted search functions offer all possible variations in a UI, and the customer narrows the search results by making selections. With FacetWP the results pane reloads over AJAX, so the narrowing experience is very fast and smooth, with new results appearing instantly.

2. SearchWP:

While BigCommerce for WordPress comes with the Refinery, a dedicated and powerful search tool, the site wide search tool built into WordPress is not very powerful. This isn’t an issue with the BigCommerce plugin, the search in WordPress is simply poor.

SearchWP is a WordPress plugin that greatly enhances the WordPress search. One of the nicest parts is that it hooks into the existing search seamlessly, so there’s no coding required for the most part.

3. Bolt Checkout:

The default checkout for BigCommerce for WordPress is an embedded iframe. If you don’t want that because the store site is running HTTP, or the checkout page is heavily customized, then customers could be directed to a whole page on the BigCommerce WordPress themes. Bolt Checkout is an attractive, powerful other option.

4. WP Rocket:

All WordPress sites should have a caching layer in front of them. The site speed advantages are enormous. One of the very best caching plugins for WordPress is WP Rocket. It’s by far the simplest of the available options, yet covers all the bases a caching plugin should.

Additionally, it’s one of the few caching plugins allowed by hosts that do their own caching. This is because WP Rocket does extra things, and plays nicely with the built-in caching.

The issue with any caching plugin and ecommerce is that some things shouldn’t be cached in ecommerce. The cart page for example. If it gets cached then the second person on the site will get the same cart as the first person, regardless of what’s in it. The same holds true for the checkout page and personal account pages.

This means that if you install a caching plugin you need to carefully white list all the right pages.

The great thing about WP Rocket is that it comes with BigCommerce support, and all the proper pages are automatically white listed without any pattern on your part.