Posts Tagged ‘Bigcommerce Development’

BigCommerce Dropshipping Guide for a Novice

August 18th, 2021

Dropshipping has become a rage in the e-commerce industry for any online store owner that does not want to deal with the hassles of inventory management. With manufacturers in China and other eastern nations manufacturing products at scale at a fraction of the cost that they are made in the US, it’s become easy for sellers in the US to partner with them to sell their products to the American market via their e-commerce sites. BigCommerce dropshipping is one of the best ways that anyone can start their own online dropshipping business in a few quick and easy steps. In this blog post, we will inform you about what dropshipping is and how even a novice can set up their business online using BigCommerce.

What is Dropshipping?

Dropshipping in the simplest of forms is selling products to customers online without actually storing or shipping the products to the customers. You get an order on your website for a product and then you forward that to your supplier, who is most likely in another country but that is not always the case. Your supplier then ships the product directly to the customer’s given address without it ever coming through you.

In a way, you have become a facilitator between the supplier and the customer with your e-commerce store being the storefront through which the products are stored. It is also your responsibility to market and promotes the products on your website to get more sales. Since there is no handling of inventory, you do not need a large warehouse for your business or even a big office. You can run this business from your home if you want.

What are the advantages of BigCommerce Dropshipping?

  • Mobile-friendly Platform

Over 50% of traffic to e-commerce stores comes from mobile devices. This is why it is important to create your online store on a platform that is built keeping the mobile-first mindset as a priority. One of the best things we love about BigCommerce is that it is the only e-commerce platform till now to have a mobile-optimized checkout experience. It makes completing purchases online using mobile devices a breeze.

  • Exclusive Payment Gateway Integrations

BigCommerce is also the only e-commerce platform till now to integrate with PayPal One Touch as well as Apple Pay. This further improves the customer’s mobile e-commerce experience. With more payment options and easier checkout facilities, using BigCommerce for Drop shipping is an easy choice to make.

  • Insights Based on Analytics

BigCommerce provides you with e-commerce analytics that gives you a deep understanding of your store’s performance and your customer’s behavior. These insights help you create a better marketing strategy and create an improved customer experience or user experience. In the e-commerce analytics of BigCommerce, you get a dashboard with information like total sales, conversion rate, sales channels, and more.

  • International Selling

BigCommerce is one of the few e-commerce platforms that allow you to sell your products globally. This lets you truly make your dropshipping business global and reach customers across different markets. You get native language support as well as support for payments made in international currencies.

How to Set Up BigCommerce Dropshipping?

BigCommerce is considered one of the best platforms for dropshipping. It offers various incentives for drop shippers as well as makes the entire process very convenient. It also offers the lowest cost of ownership as compared to other platforms. Let’s see how you can set up your BigCommerce dropshipping.

Building Foundation

The first step you need to take is to design and customize your store as per your business’s needs and as per the theme of your products. There are many templates and themes you can work with or choose an option to go for customization. BigCommerce provides you with various tools to accomplish this innovativeness. You can also hire a BigCommerce web design company to design the perfect BigCommerce store for you.BigCommerce offers a secure experience for the customers and also for the drop shippers.

Adding Integrations

BigCommerce’s SaaS services offer various third-party integrations that make your dropshipping setup easier. These integrations help boost your conversions and profitability. These integrations also add flexibility to your customer’s online shopping experience. Choose the right integrations and customization options in terms of payment methods, shipping options, currency options, and more. In BigCommerce the website’s presentation layer is decoupled from the backend eCommerce functionality for an even more seamless experience.

Expand Your Business

BigCommerce lets you sell your products to international markets. Due to this, your business will flourish internationally. Being able to sell to international customers is considered a huge achievement, as it leaves a good impression on your future customers. When your business is going well, you would want to analyze its progress. BigCommerce provides you with all the analytical tools that help you monitor and better understand your store’s performance. It gives you a dashboard to help you view your data at any given time. This gives you the intelligence needed to make better decisions and strategies for your dropshipping business.

Conclusion

BigCommerce Dropshipping is easy to set up and once you have your BigCommerce store ready and a supplier in place, there is nothing that will be stopping you from running a successful business from anywhere in the world. You can contact Clap Creative to know about our pricing for our BigCommerce development services.

2018’s Highlight: BigCommerce Plugin for Your WordPress Site

August 29th, 2018

When it comes to seeking solutions for e-commerce websites, both BigCommerce and WordPress offer completely different services. The key here is to understand which platform will work best for you depending on your expectations from your business. For example, WordPress offers the best option if you plan to build your online store on the foundations of blog posts and other content marketing whereas BigCommerce becomes a better choice when you rely on plenty of external marketing for running your e-commerce store.

Summing together, where one offers the world’s most popular content management system, other excels with the world’s best cloud commerce solution and by somehow linking the two platforms in their respective menus, you will not only gain the ability to build and manage e-commerce experiences directly on the WordPress but also be able to improve storefronts performances and streamline e-commerce management tasks as well.

Though you can manage both these platforms side by side the biggest hurdle you will face is having to handle both the sites from different administrative dashboards, not to mention the hassles of hosting both the elements on separate domains as well. The solution? A BigCommerce WordPress plugin that will assist millions of merchants to grow and customize their store like never before. How? by combining the robust e-commerce engine of BigCommerce with the flexibility of the WordPress platform.

Diving further in, let’s look at some of the benefits the integration of this new BigCommerce WordPress plugin will bring to your e-commerce business. First of all, without ever compromising site content or user experience, you will get complete access to all the industry-leading e-commerce capabilities necessary to grow a successful online business.

Secondly, you can quickly and easily scale the functionality of your e-commerce store up and down according to the market needs along with enjoying the overall experience that is not impeded by back-end bloat once you transfer the commerce elements from WordPress to BigCommerce admin.

Thirdly, web developers with the help of BigCommerce’s large robust ecosystem of apps along with its sizable catalog of fully integrated shipping and payment methods can easily incorporate end-to-end e-commerce capabilities in your WordPress site order to build an e-commerce store that is custom tailored to your business needs.

And last but not the least, installing the BigCommerce WordPress plugin to your WordPress site will guarantee a secure and PCI compliant checkout process which will further enable you to deliver a high-quality website experience to your users without ever having to worry about maintaining PCI compliance.

At Clap Creative, our expert team of BigCommerce developers highly recommend this plugin. Since it’s very easy to install and costs just a meager amount. All-in-all, installing this plugin is nothing but a win-win situation for your e-commerce store.

BigCommerce Development Tips for Starting Out Your E-Commerce Journey

June 14th, 2018

When it comes to e-commerce stores, design plays a crucial role regardless of the platform you use. It should be something that makes your site look visually appealing but should also hold the potential to lead in prospects and turn them into loyal customers. Though there are plenty of e-commerce platforms in the market to choose from, BigCommerce is the one you will find standing taller above everything else, all thanks to its attention to detail and dedication towards creating a superior design custom build for improving conversion rates.

How? Well, when you see your customers navigating your site without any difficulty, easily finding products that they seek, later on quickly adding those products to the cart and at last, finishing their checkout procedure without any complications, you will realise that you have made a website that will drastically improve your chance of staying ahead of the conversion game. And to help you out I have mentioned seven such tips for starting out your BigCommerce website, follow these and you will be off to a great start.

Get a Professional Looking Logo

To begin with, if you are selling products online without having a brand name, it can easily set you several steps behind your competition. It’s highly crucial that you look professional even in your starting days. Getting a professional looking logo at this point will greatly help your customers gain confidence in you.

And it doesn’t even have to cost you arm and leg, services such as DesignCrowd and 99designs can easily get your logo done within a week and at an affordable price.

Adjust Your Favicon

For those who do not know, a favicon is a small icon that appears on the tab of the browser of your website. Now the by default favicon on BigCommerce is the ‘B’ icon but you should create your own custom icon that represents your brand. Just keep in mind to make it a shorthand version of your logo and get it made while designing your logo.

Follow these steps to upload a custom favicon in BigCommerce-

  • Go to Design and click More > Favicon
  • Click Browse and Select the Favicon Image
  • Click Upload Favicon

Ensure Social Media Icons Open Up

Forgetting about social media icons is one of the most commonly ignored thing store owners do in the beginning. You should ensure that these icons must open in new tabs, also check if they open in the same window or simply redirect the visitor because in this case, visitors tend to get distracted no matter what social media icon they clicked thus, it serves as a surer way of sending them away from your e-commerce store.

Also, put interesting and up to date content on your social media page to engage users that click on these social media icons.

Simplify the Checkout Process

Long and complicated checkout process has been listed as one of the biggest reasons for high cart abandonment rate. Fortunately, BigCommerce already comes with a one-page checkout that’s as simple as they get. You can further allow your visitors the freedom to check out as guests. Another way to simplify the checkout process is to ask the customers only for required information and nothing more.

Display Large Product Images

Many people do not know but large product images can actually increase your conversion rate by 9% when compared to smaller images. And it seems reasonable as well. For e.g. when you browse through an actual store, you can do a close inspection of any of the products present on the shelves. Having large product images give your online visitors a similar feeling of closeness.

Add Product Reviews

Enabling the product previews or quick view is another great way of improving the shopping experience for your customers. By simply clicking on any product, users can instantly view all the product related information such as description, price, images etc. This saves an ample amount of time on the customer’s part especially if they are in a hurry and want to quickly check out the products or deals you have to offer.

Summing It Up

By now, you already must have realized how crucial BigCommerce development is for converting visitors into buyers. It not only helps you establish a brand and build trust but also let your customers have a smooth shopping experience throughout the time they spend on your website. so, use these above-mentioned tips to create an amazing BigCommerce store.

13 Stunning BigCommerce Apps to Boost Conversions and Sales

April 11th, 2018

BigCommerce provides a fantastic platform for you to build and run your e-commerce store, all thanks to its various features such as an easy-to-use dashboard, no transaction costs, round-the-clock customer support and much more. Apart from a solid build in marketing features, BigCommerce Web Design also provides tons of marketing apps and extensions to make the conversion and sales process much easier and streamlined. But before diving into that, let’s take a look at what BigCommerce apps can accomplish for you in the long run.

  • Most Affordable Platform for immediate and long-term goals.
  • Automated Accounting System that saves lots of your time.
  • Template Based Structure can be up and running in no time.
  • Gain more Insights into your customers’
  • Easy and User-Friendly for developers, retailers, and customers.
  • Improves Customer Service which helps repeat customers.

But with thousands of apps present in its app store, it can get both tricky and time-consuming choosing the right ones. So, on your behalf, I have taken the liberty of reviewing the BigCommerce App Store to present 13 amazing apps to help you smoothen out your e-commerce sales journey.

  1. Sweet Tooth

Sweet Tooth provides a loyalty-based solution for BigCommerce users by building a point-based loyalty program to reward points to customers based on their behavior (in this case, profitable actions). Apart from the multi-option loyalty program, it offers 6 themes and also helps in segmenting your customers based on their loyalty.

  1. ShipperHQ

Retailers mostly don’t pay much attention to shipping but if left unchecked, this is where you may lose a lot of your potential customers. Using ShipperHQ can help you calculate shipping costs globally (by using the IP address of customers), so your customers don’t have to pay any additional (and unexpected) shipping costs.

  1. Retail Tower

Retail Tower is another powerful app by BigCommerce that helps you make the advertising and promotion process a lot more simpler and easier by using just one interface to upload your product feed to multiple shopping comparison engines.

  1. JustUno

JustUno is all about free email marketing. It provides an email capturing system that allows you to capture email addresses (including discount codes, exit intents, welcome mats etc.) through pop-up messages. And that’s not all, you can even run A/B tests to help determine the effectiveness of your BigCommerce store.

  1. Sales Pop

Build from the concept of encouraging new customers to start buying from you, this BigCommerce app provides a great help in building trust and authenticity on your brand by showing recent sales notification popups (with flexible customization options) in order to create the sense of a busy store.

  1. Compass

We are all prone to making bad business decisions when we don’t have enough contextual data to work on. Compass helps you make sense of your data by incorporating a comprehensive report of all your analytics metrics such as Customer Acquisition Costs, Refunds, Repurchase Rates etc. into 1 dashboard for easy access.

  1. Boost Sales

Boost Sales is a great app that uses upselling and cross-selling (of relevant products one might be interested in) along with Sales Gamification feature to help increase the average order value, in order to earn more profit (by selling more) on each order. It even provides a large collection of themes esp. for the holidays season.

  1. AfterShip

AfterShip is another brilliant app that allows your customers to check in on their order status along with sending SMS and emails delivery updates to them. Your customers will also love you for keeping them updated as well as not sending them to 3rd party sites for payment or not letting them deal with couriers.

  1. Printful

Printful is an awesome dropshipping app that not only let anyone with the designing skills to upload his design and start printing on selective items be it pillows, mobile cases, t-shirts, coffee mugs or anything but also allow them to push these items directly to your BigCommerce store.

  1. Sellbrite

Sellbrite uses a single interface where you can simultaneously print discounted labels as well as ship all your orders. It also prevents overselling by automatically syncing the central inventory in real time. Plus, you can list your inventory by bulk from the central catalog to various other online markets.

  1. OneSaas

Any Web Development Company Los Angeles or elsewhere will claim that OneSaas is the best automation app when it comes to accounting, inventory management, marketing, fulfillment and shipping along with syncing data between sales and CRM. It even scales with your business and is compatible with the majority of software.

  1. The Cart Closer

This Cart Closer app provides a unique solution to the ‘cart abandonment’ problem faced by most e-commerce stores today. It tries to save the sale by offering a freebie or discount whenever a customer is about to leave your shopping cart page.

  1. PayWhirl

PayWhirl is everything that you can ever ask for in a recurring billing model be it wholesale programs or payment plans or layaway programs or subscriptions or pre-orders or literally anything. And that’s not all, this app even lets customers log in and manage their billing information and make changes accordingly.

Closing In:

And that’s our list of some of the best BigCommerce apps that we found in the App Store from our own research, hope you liked it. So, which of these apps are you planning to use? Do let us know in the comment section.

Magento vs BigCommerce: Which to Choose in 2018

January 22nd, 2018

2018 is here with new hopes and possibilities. Maybe it’s time to start that new online store you have been thinking of since last year or maybe you are already running an online store but unhappy with the results, want to switch to a new and more profitable e-commerce platform. Whatever your plans for this year are, start working on them now because time is money.

If you fall anywhere between the two above categories, then look no further, this article is for you. We understand how choosing the right platform for your online store can mean the birth or death of your business (or maybe your dreams), that’s why we are here to discuss the best of two e-commerce giants, Magento and BigCommerce and help decide which is more suitable for your business.

Before moving through the list, let’s learn a bit about these two e-commerce giants.

Magento is an on-premise, open source platform which comes in two editions namely Community Edition which is free of cost and Enterprise Edition which is a paid feature. Being open sourced, its software must be licensed and installed on your computer to run.

BigCommerce, on the other hand, offers a SAAS (software-as-a-service) platform which is a paid service. It is cloud based which enables you to access your webstore on any web browser anywhere across the globe and on any device available via internet connection.

Both Magento and BigCommerce come loaded with various features to help you grow your business, let’s compare and find out which one better serves your needs.

  1. Magento vs BigCommerce’s Software

The primary difference lies in their software itself.

  • Since Magento is an open source platform which is free, it provides a ‘build from scratch’ model which allows you to customize the website yourself (provided you have the required knowledge), if not, then either have an in-house IT team to operate or a Magento development company.
  • BigCommerce, on the other hand, provides an out-of-the-box solution with its ready-made store application which one can customize himself with minimum knowledge required but since it’s a SAAS, you must buy a plan and pay monthly rents accordingly.
  1. SEO friendly tools

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is a process of generating traffic by ranking the site high on search engines.

  • Magento is considered extremely SEO friendly with its access to Google content API and Google Sitcom along with its ability to make search engine friendly URLs and meta info for products and categories.
  • In addition to all the above features, BigCommerce provides txt file with product-specific SEO keywords along with Google Shopping support and 301 redirects.
  1. Social media compatibility
  • Magento development provides various apps and integrations which facilitate sharing and selling on social media but unfortunately doesn’t come with any in-built
  • BigCommerce facilitates selling on Facebook by providing a Socialshop program but unfortunately, Twitter and Pinterest connections are not included.
  1. Themes and designs
  • Magento holds the upper hand here with a variety of free themes to choose from, (thanks to its open source platform) along with highly responsive designs.
  • BigCommerce store design is also highly responsive but with one minor setback, its limited availability of 42 paid and 16 free themes to choose from.
  1. Expenses
  • Magento is free to download however setting it up and maintaining it will require IT experts which may cost a little along with extra hosting fee since it doesn’t provide hosting of its own.
  • BigCommerce comes with a monthly subscription fee which ranges from $29.95 to $199.95 per month but since its out-of-the-box solution, no extra cost is added and it’s self-hosted as well.
  1. Easy Integrations
  • Magento integration is slightly more complex because of its open source platform and lots of customizable options.
  • BigCommerce provides a relatively easy integration due to its API which integrates well with other systems and fewer customization options.
  1. Security features

 Every e-commerce platform must provide its customers with a safe payment option or in other words, be a PCI compliant hosting provider.

  • Magento provides a built-in SSL security support, meeting PCI compliance standards is the responsibility of store owners themselves.
  • BigCommerce, being in charge of hosting and maintaining, provides PCI compliant by default to all its websites.
  1. Payment getaways

 It is a merchant service that authorizes payments processing for e-businesses.

  • Magento offers several getaway options with ‘zero’ hidden costs.
  • BigCommerce provides its customers with more than 60 payment getaway options.
  1. Extensions
  • Magento offers a massive benefit to its clients by providing more than 15,000 extensions and add-ons.
  • BigCommerce, on the other hand, lacks behind by providing 60 extensions and add-ons on its BigCommerce app store.

10.Customer Support

Providing customer support to its clients help build trust and strengthens future relations.

  • Since Magento, being free, does not provide hosting to its websites, one depends on support forums run by the Magento community itself.
  • With BigCommerce, one gets a dedicated 24/7 support with tons of other customer support services via calling, emailing, chatting etc.

Conclusion

That sure is a lot of information to process and after comparing both, we still aren’t close enough to decide which is better among the two. If we look at the popularity ratio:

  • Research shows that Magento is popular among large enterprises and BigCommerce ranges from small to medium to large.
  • Magento and BigCommerce both claim to host approximately 2,00,000 websites.
  • Magento’s clients include some of the famous brands such as Vizio, Rosetta Stone, Nike etc. BigCommerce too bags some big names including Toyota, Camelbak, Travelpro etc.

I guess at the end it all comes down to your company’s requirements. Both have the potential to turn your dreams into reality. Choose the one that best suits your needs and see your business prosper.

Utilizing BigCommerce SEO Tips for Improved Rankings

January 11th, 2018

In today’s competitive market, one can never take enough steps to ensure success, there’s always seem to be some efforts lacking. What one can do, in fact, is constantly upgrade his abilities and knowledge to stay up-to-date in this ever-changing world.

This ever-changing world enabled businesses to move from real-world platform to online e-commerce platform, so they can generate even more cash-flow by targeting more people. After all, that’s the whole point in starting a business in the first place.

Today e-commerce industry stands at a whopping $7.7 trillion for B2B and $2.7 trillion for B2C as per Statista. This online industry works by providing e-commerce platforms for businesses to lay their foundations on and during the recent years, BigCommerce development has emerged as one of the leading e-commerce platforms.

But just building your website on BigCommerce won’t generate business on its own, you need traffic for business and that’s where SEO comes in. Using SEO effectively will place your site among the top searched options.

Below are some such tips to improve your SEO ranking:

  1. Create distinct product description

The product description is something that differentiates you from your competitors. Use this to your advantage, write unique product descriptions for every product available in your store.

I understand it’s a wearisome and time taking process but will definitely help you in the long run. You always have the option to hire a BigCommerce web design team to help you get the job done.

And do not under any circumstances try to copy your competitor’s content, it will get you busted if found out.

  1. Identify every image

This is a minor but mostly ignored way you can improve your rankings. Always add alt tags to any image uploaded to a product as search engines are practically blind to images and can only understand texts.

Whenever you upload a product image, include tag optimized keywords as this will enable search engines to associate the image with the given keyword.

Apart from that, change your image number (such as IMG_201801.jpg) to something more relevant (such as 2015-Maruti-Zen-Grey.jpg) to help shoppers and search engines to identify the product even if the image is unable to load.

  1. Create and maintain blogs regularly

Potential customers these days look out for the authenticity and credibility of your website way before diving in for products and blogs have the power to offer both.

Providing a constant stream of blogs for your website on a regular basis informing about new and existing products, current market trends etc. is the next best thing you can do for your company’s growth.

It also helps build the customers trust and provide legitimacy to your company. Search engines too seem to like websites that post blogs regularly and thus provide your website with a better SEO ranking.

  1. Special emphasis on keywords

BigCommerce being a popular platform hosts thousands of shopping websites. So how the shoppers are going to find you in such a haze? The answer lies in the careful selection of keywords.

But how to decide which keywords are appropriate? Google provides a user-friendly tool to help you deal with this issue. It’s called the AdWords Keyword Planner, just fill in few necessary details and it will do the rest.

And always include keyword phrases which are basically longtail keywords. These phrases have a much higher chance of bringing in traffic compared to individual keywords.

  1. Use videos for brand promotion

One thing you cannot argue on, no matter how engrossing is the content, how descriptive is the specifications and how accurate are the guidelines, videos always have a special way of appealing to people.

Having someone showing you the products, familiarising you with every detail and demonstrating its proper usage to you will actually increase his chance of buying by 85% which is way more than any written text could do.

BigCommerce website design is extremely friendly to featuring promotional videos and will double your website’s chances of appearing on Google’s first page. Statistics too support this claim, stating that videos improve conversion rates by 80%.

  1. Know your competition

This golden rule can always be applied in every field esp. in e-commerce sector to improve ranking. One can never hope to gain an advantage over his competition without knowing who or what his competition actually is.

An easy way of doing it is searching on the Google bar for exact keywords you wish to target and view the result to list out your direct and indirect competitors.

Then analyse your competitors to know what strategies they are using that have placed them so high on the search list. Look out for terms related to the higher number of searches and use them accordingly and effectively in your keywords.

  1. Apply social-media skills effectively

One offbeat way of improving your SEO ranking is by working on your social media skills. I said offbeat because this actually has more to do with promoting your company on social media platforms.

The advantage of using social media is that it covers a much wider platform. Facebook alone accounts for over 1 billion monthly users which exceed far more than any e-commerce or any other sector ever hope for.

It won’t take rocket science to conclude the publicity your company will receive once it starts incorporating social media skills to its advantage. And guess what, advertising on social media is completely free of cost.

In this ever-changing world, choosing just BigCommerce for your business isn’t enough anymore, you need to improve your website’s ranking to make it appear on top search lists. The above-mentioned tips for search engine optimization or SEO will help you get the desired sales if you know how to utilize it effectively.

Top 10 BigCommerce Tips Everyone Should Know

November 9th, 2017

BigCommerce is a very popular platform for creating online stores. That is something that I am sure all the readers of this blog are well aware of. However, what you all may not be aware of are some killer hacks that you can use in BigCommerce that can make your life easier and increase the functionality of your e-commerce website.

Without further wait, let us jump right into our top 10 BigCommerce tips –

Tip 1. Displaying the “SOLD OUT” message

If you are out of stock for a particular product and want to display a “sold out” message, here is what to do. Simply go to Settings > Store Settings > Display and check ‘Show Inventory Levels’. Once the inventory of that particular product goes down to zero, it will display – ‘Current Stock: Sold Out’ on that product page.

Tip 2. Displaying the same logo on top of each page

This is a rather simple instruction to both impart and follow. If you want the same logo to be displayed on top of each page, you should select Design > Logo and upload your image. That is all.

Tip 3. Enabling purchase option without an account

If you want the visitors to your BigCommerce store to be able to make purchases even when they do not have an account created, this is how you can do it. Simply go to Settings > Checkout Settings and ensure ‘Yes, enable guest checkout’ is checked.

Tip 4. Hiding products from being displayed in your store

If you are out of inventory, you may want to temporarily hide products from your website’s visitors. Doing this is easy and here is how you do it –  Go to Products > View Products, select the product, click ‘Edit’, and on the ‘Details’ tab make sure that ‘This product cannot be purchased in my online store’ is selected.

Tip 5. Adding the free shipping option to products

Want to give your customers free shipping? That’s great. Here is how you go about doing it – go to Edit a Product > Details and check ‘Yes, this product has free shipping’.

Tip 6. Changing default product image size

When a customer clicks your product image, you can set the default image size when the product image opens up. If you want to change the default image size by going to > Settings > Store Settings > Images.

Tip 7. Adding new web pages

New pages to you BigCommerce site can be added in this manner. Go to Website Content > Create a Web Page. If you want the new page to be displayed in the store’s menu, just select –‘Yes, show this web page in the navigation menu’.

Tip 8. Know about all panels

If you want to know about all the panels of your site, then follow these steps – Go to Design > Template Files. If you see an orange arrow that means it has been edited by you. If you see a white arrow that means it has not been edited. A green arrow means that it has been recently created.

Tip 9. Removing panels

Removing panels from a page is not a difficult task. It can be done very quickly. There are majorly two ways that you can do it. The first is – Go to Design > Design Mode and clicking ‘Open My Store in Design Mode’. Right click on the panel you want to remove and select ‘Remove Panel’ from the popup menu. The second way is to directly edit the File in the HTML editor and uploading it to you sit using File Transfer Protocol.

Tip 10. Changing the footer of your email

By default, your emails will have an appealing footer that has a default message like “powered by BigCommerce”.  You can do by going to Design > Emails. Click ‘Snippets’. Then edit the file called EmailFooter.html.

By following these above tips, you can customize your BigCommerce site and improve its functionality according to your needs. If you need BigCommerce web design services by a team of professional BigCommerce web developers, contact Clap Creative today.

5 Apps that Help Boost Conversions for BigCommerce Stores

October 12th, 2017

In my previous blog posts, I have discussed why choosing BigCommerce platform for creating your online store is a good option. I have even discussed which qualities to look for when choosing a BigCommerce development company. In this post, I will be discussing the 5 best apps available today that can help your BigCommerce store increase its profits by increasing the conversion rate of their website. Let’s face it, the ultimate goal that any business has is conversions or sales. Without that, all the time and effort that went into designing and developing the e-commerce site is all wasted.

Sometimes minor adjustments here or there can make the difference in your conversion rates. However, using certain apps does make the process quicker and more effective. Below are the top 5 apps that help your BigCommerce site increase conversions –

Compass

Compass is an all in one analytics dashboard for your BigCommerce store. There is nothing else that gives you more insights into your website than analytics. Compass has over 30 metrics that are displayed on a single dashboard. Some of the details that are displayed there are – cost of customer acquisition, customer lifetime value, repurchase rate etc.

This tool gives you accurate reports on all the metrics that let you understand your website and its traffic so that you can make informed decisions that help improve your webstore.

You can get this app here – https://www.bigcommerce.com/apps/compass/

Yotpo

Yotpo is an app that lets users write reviews on your website for various products. Over 70% of all online customers check the reviews of the products online before making the decision to purchase the item. The best part about Yotpo is that it sends emails to customers that have made purchases, encouraging them to write reviews of the products.

These reviews can be used to bring more traffic onto the website and encourage new users to make purchases.

You can get this app here – https://www.bigcommerce.com/apps/yotpo-social-reviews/

Sweet Tooth

Sweet Tooth lets you create custom reward programs and membership benefits for your customers. If you look at any successful online store, they are offering reward points to customers or are running some sort of loyalty program to keep their customers returning back to them. This is a great technique for getting repeat customers, inspired by the brick and mortar stores loyalty cards.

You can award your customers when they complete various actions like registration, referring friends, completing purchases, sharing on social media etc.

You can get this app here – https://www.bigcommerce.com/apps/smile-io/

Sellbrite

Sellbrite lets you list and sells your BigCommerce products on various channels to expand their reach. It a cloud-based, multichannel platform that lets you control and manage your inventory, fulfill orders and provide you with multichannel reporting that gives you an overview of your online sales and activities.

Some of the sites where your listings can be published are Amazon, eBay, Etsy etc.

You can get this app here – https://www.bigcommerce.com/apps/sellbrite/

Boost Sales

Boost Sales app is an app that facilitates up-selling and cross-selling by generating pop-ups of related products when your customers make a purchase or are in the process of making a purchase. This app increases conversions by informing customers of related products that they can purchase along with their products. For example, a customer purchasing a smartphone will receive a pop-up of a screen guard or a matte finish back cover to purchase along with the smartphone.

You can get this app here – https://www.bigcommerce.com/apps/boost-sales/

 

Along with using these 5 apps, you should also think about re-doing your BigCommerce website design to make it seem more attractive to your customers and simple to use. You can keep watching this space to know about more developments in BigCommerce stores and their optimizations.

Using BigCommerce SEO Methods for Growing Online Business

October 7th, 2017

Your BigCommerce store is your online marketplace that is the hub of your company. However, there is no real point in having a marketplace if you get no customers entering your shop. Search Engine Optimization consists of methods that can help you gain relevant traffic on your site that helps your business grow its profits. BigCommerce SEO is as relevant today as it was before, contrary to what people had been saying for a few years ago. SEO is an evergreen method of generating organic traffic and leads which gives you a good ROI.

Some of the key SEO methods you should implement for your BigCommerce website are –

  • Using Blog

A website blog is one of the best methods of engaging website visitors as well as generating new visitors or traffic on the website. A blog is an effective tool for SEO as a blog post can be used to rank a particular set of keywords quickly as blog posts are indexed quicker by Google as compared to website pages. A blog can also provide company and industry information that can engage your peers and help you connect with other e-commerce retailers. You have to ensure that you publish high-quality and unique content so that you get good quality traffic.

  • Capitalize on Social Media

Social media is a power that no business can ignore. Same goes for BigCommerce webstores that are trying to thrive in a competitive market. You need to create your company’s page of all major social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, and Google+. These platforms can be a gold mine for relevant traffic anyone that makes purchases online has a social media account on at least one of these websites.  There are various groups that you can submit your posts in to reach an audience that might be interested in what you are selling.

  • Start with On-Page SEO

No matter how much effort you put into your off page SEO tactics, it will not give you any positive result unless you have first done proper On-Page SEO. On-Page SEO includes adding keywords you are targeting to your various pages. Adding them in the title tags and meta-descriptions of these pages. Optimizing your page URL also plays a significant role in on page SEO.  Apart from optimizing for keywords, your page speed also matters. You must ensure your website’s loading time is fast so that your visitors have a positive experience.

  • Hiring an Experienced BigCommerce SEO Company

If you are a novice in the world of SEO, it is better to leave it to the professionals. You must hire a company to handle your BigCommerce SEO so that they can use their years of expertise to optimize your website and help create backlinks for it. By improving your keyword ranking and creating visibility on relevant websites, they can ensure that your BigCommerce webstore gets relevant traffic and converts into buyers.

Clap Creative offers you BigCommerce SEO and BigCommerce digital marketing services that help your online business increase its profits by generating traffic that converts into buyers. We use several white hat on-page and off-page SEO techniques to that make your website rank on search engines while following Google’s guidelines. Apart from SEO, Clap Creative also offers social media marketing and search engine marketing services. To know more about our services or to get a quote, contact us today.

Know the Qualities of a Good BigCommerce Development Company

September 29th, 2017

BigCommerce is a very popular platform for developing e-commerce websites for your online business. This platform has many benefits and can offer you features that help enhance the profitability of your e-commerce business. A majority of companies choose to hire a third party BigCommerce development company for creating their online store. With so many companies out there that claim to be the best, you need to know what are the qualities to look for in a good BigCommerce development company.

Total Experience

Check out how many years the company has been functional. Check their profile to see for how many years they have been developing e-commerce websites and whether they have developed sites on BigCommerce platform or not. Your online store is extremely important for your business so you must give its designing and development into experienced hands.

Review their Past Work

Look at the portfolio section of their website to see which companies have they worked for. There would be samples of the various BigCommerce websites they have created. You can check them out to see if they suit your expectations of the kind of work you want to be done for your online store.

Services they Offer

You never know what service you may be in the need of with your e-commerce business. You should look at the full range of services related to BigCommerce that the company may offer you. Services like BigCommerce digital marketing, BigCommerce customization, BigCommerce SEO etc would be an added advantage for your business.

Website Support & Maintenance

Let’s say you get your BigCommerce site developed and it’s running perfectly. However, there may come a time in the future that you may face certain issues with the site’s performance and that starts to hamper your business’s revenue. In that case, the company should offer BigCommerce support services that help optimize your store’s performance. These services should also help protect your webstore from malware as enhance its overall security.

Reviews and Testimonials

Check to see if you can find reviews of that company online on various sites like Yelp or Google reviews. See if most of those reviews are positive or negative and also read client testimonials. Testimonials are a very effective way of gauging the experience clients have had with that particular company and to know their level of satisfaction with their work.

Their Team of Developers

If available on their website, you can check out the members of their team, mainly the BigCommerce developers to know how much experience they have creating e-commerce stores on that particular platform. You can get to know their skill sets and the type of technologies they have worked on.

If you have not found a BigCommerce development company that is right for you, look no further than Clap Creative. Clap Creative is a Los Angeles based web design and development company that offers BigCommerce store design and BigCommerce development services to clients all over the U.S. We offer a bouquet of BigCommerce services like BigCommerce SEO, BigCommerce support services, BigCommerce customization and more.

To know more about our customized solutions or to get a quote, contact us today.