Choosing BigCommerce for eCommerce
There are various platforms you can build your store with, such as:
- Shopify
- Wix
- Magento
- and many more…
However, BigCommerce gives you all the tools to easily create your shop in just under an hour.
BigCommerce allows you to customize your site with free or paid layouts, choose your payment options, and list your products on multiple platforms. They even have 99% uptime, which is one of the best uptimes in the industry.
Having everything on one platform makes your shop easier to manage. You can sell your products on eBay, Amazon, and others and manage it all from your BigCommerce dashboard.
BigCommerce offers you a 14-day free trial with no commitment, and their plans start at $30 per month. This makes it easy to test their services and affordable to continue utilizing BigCommerce if you like what you test.
Who Does Ecommerce Benefit?
Ecommerce can benefit any type of business that owns a store or wants to sell a product.
Ecommerce is an online option for businesses who have a storefront – which enables them to sell to everyone in all locations, rather than just where their store is located. This gets them more sells.
Ecommerce is the chosen platform for those entrepreneurs who work from home. This is due to them not having a storefront, the ease of online store building, and the ability to reach billions of people around the world.
Building with BigCommerce
Building your store with BigCommerce couldn’t be easier. They provide you with excellent tools that fit any skill level.
There are a few key features you want to incorporate in your store design, such as:
- functionality
- easy to navigate
- attractive to look at
- clean (don’t clutter your site)
- straightforward
- has beautiful pictures/images
- has a rich about page
BigCommerce even starts the first few steps for you, helping you take steps to build a successful eCommerce store right from your dashboard.
Customize Your Store
Customizing your store will take the most time, especially if you are new to the process, but you can follow six effortless steps to build your website in just under 30 minutes.
1. On your dashboard, you want to select the Storefront tab. This will take you to your design and layout. From there, you will be in the My Themes section. You can see your current them on the page. You can keep this theme or select another.
2. Head to the Theme Marketplace, which is the section right below My Themes, and you can browse through the free or paid themes to find what you like. When you find the one you like, click on it.
3. You can see the name and description of the layout. You can then preview the layout, view a demo, or you can add a theme to change your current theme. Click the add theme button to activate the popup.
4. You have now added the theme to your My Themes section. You can select the Apply Now button to make this your current theme. Select Confirm in the next popup. When you return to the My Themes section, you will see the theme has changed to your choice. Select the Customize button.
5. This is the editor. From here, you can select the options you wish to change on the left-hand side of the screen. At the top of the screen, you can change your viewing mode to mobile, tablet, and desktop. The areas with text and pictures will change as you edit those sections. You can clear all the changes you’ve made, save the changes, and publish your website.
6. Once you have saved your changes, you can then select the publish button. This will make your store live and ready for customers.
Add Apps
Integrating your apps makes your business run a little smoother. From your dashboard, select the apps tab.
Head to the marketplace to check on the apps available. If you want to select only free apps, make sure to change the filter at the top. You can also select which collection and category to look through.
Once you find the app you want to integrate, click on it. You’ll be taken to the installation page. Here you will see the app, the reviews, the install button, description, and screenshots. When ready, click the install button.
You’ll be taken to the confirmation page. You can see what the app has access to and doesn’t have access to. When ready, select confirm.
Next, you’ll have to log in to your app. I chose MailChimp, so all I need to do to authorize the app is to sign-in. Click the button to move forward.
The login screen will pop up, and you will need to type in the information the app asks you for. When finished, select login.
Now that you have installed your app, you can sync your mail, contacts, products, or anything else you want to.
Built-In SEO and Marketing
Having marketing tools on your store’s platform makes marketing a little less intimidating. BigCommerce offers the tools to market your products, provides help with SEO on product descriptions, and gives options to link with other advertisers.
Select the marketing tab on the dashboard menu. This will bring up all your marketing options. You can choose:
- banners
- coupons
- make cart-level discounts
- add your AdWords and yahoo search
- email marketing
- much more…
If you click on your Channel Manager tab on the dashboard menu, you will see all channels listed, which includes social media, selling platforms, and more. You can edit this to improve your brand and growth as you market and grow your business.
Import Products
Importing products makes it simpler to move your shop over from one platform to a different one. You can easily import your products to the BigCommerce platform in two ways!
First, you can choose to Import Products. You select Products on your main dashboard menu and then select Import. On this page, you will need to put in the Import Details and the File Details, then continue with the process until all your products are imported over.
Second, you can import your product SKUs. Before you do this, it is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED that you make a backup and read about your options first. With any importing – you can lose your data.
Once you are sure, select the import file and fill out the rest of the information. After that, select Next and continue with the information for importing your SKUs.
BigCommerce Makes Building a Store Easy
With the amazing features that technology has built for us, it’s amazing to see the tools we can use to build such elaborate websites. What used to take hours of coding and testing – can now be done in just 30 minutes.
Building your eCommerce store with BigCommerce will help you to grow your traffic and promote your products. BigCommerce provides you with the tools to succeed if you utilize them correctly.
