We’re over the hill for 2017, and it looks like BigCommerce is gaining momentum every day! There has been a lot of great content on the BigCommerce blog, exciting 3rd-party apps released, new features announced and intriguing new beta programs on the way.
Read on to find out about all the news from BigCommerce in July.
Google Customer Reviews Now Available
In April, Google announced a new way to collect information from your customers after they have made a purchase in your store.
Once enabled, customers can opt-in to receive an email that requests feedback about their experience with your store. If they have opted-in, they may receive an email where they can leave a review and complete an optional survey.
These Google Customer Reviews all count towards your seller rating which appears in Search Ads, in Google Shopping and on an optional badge that you can display in your store.
In this way, Google Customer Reviews can have a positive impact on your conversions and can even work in conjunction with your existing reviews.
Now, BigCommerce has announced that they have directly integrated with Google Customer Reviews, so you can start gathering customer feedback today.
Learn more about the BigCommerce-Google Customer Reviews integration here.
New Apps Available in the BigCommerce Marketplace
BigCommerce apps can help you add new features to your store and drive more sales through the use of better marketing integration and rewards. Here are the new apps that were released in July.
dotmailer Email Marketing
The dotmailer email marketing platform allows you to set up advanced marketing tasks with an easy to use drag-and-drop interface.
This app syncs your BigCommerce data into dotmailer, so you can create powerful email marketing automation.
Source: dotmailer
Bulk Order & Wholesale for B2B
B2B customers don’t want to browse through products; they prefer having a bulk list of items that they can pick and choose from in the quantities they desire.
This app shows all of your products on a single page that can be customized to your liking. Great for wholesale and B2B stores.
Cashback Rewards
If you want to offer cashback to your customers for certain events, this app allows you to create rules to define when and how you will reward your customers.
However, at the moment, the details look a little sparse, and you will need some web development knowledge to get it up and running.
Deluxe Marketing Suite
To quickly gather information from your customers and input it into your VerticalResponse contact lists, Deluxe Marketing Suite lets you design and offer a signup form with all the fields you need.
All the information from this custom signup form is automatically added to your existing VerticalResponse contact lists to power your email marketing.
New Beta Programs Announced
At the July Townhall, BigCommerce announced several new beta programs. These programs are looking for stores to test out the new features and integrations that will potentially be made available to all BigCommerce stores.
Visa Checkout
To make online payments easier, safer, and faster, BigCommerce is testing an integration with Visa Checkout. Visa Checkout works by saving your payment and delivery info, which means you won’t have to enter this information in every time you make an online purchase.
Visa Checkout will work with any major card and on all of your devices. Their BigCommerce beta program will allow customers who have signed up to Visa Checkout to use the technology on your BigCommerce store – enabling them to check out faster.
If you’re U.S. based, using the Optimized Checkout, and using PayPal powered by Braintree, you can sign up to the program by emailing your name and store info to community@bigcommerce.com.
Amazon Sports & Outdoors Category
Exciting news if you’re selling sports and/or outdoors products (not including sports memorabilia): BigCommerce is trialing Amazon support for merchants in these categories.
These means your products will work with BigCommerce’s native Amazon integration, allowing you to list your products on Amazon directly from the BigCommerce dashboard.
You can learn more and sign up to the beta program by emailing amazonbeta@bigcommerce.com.
Save/Draft Orders
Draft orders allow you to create an order without actually committing the order and then send the finalized cart to the customer for them to complete the purchase. This opens up numerous possibilities for your BigCommerce store, such as the ability to:
Create a draft order that a customer can continue to add to over time until they are ready to purchase
Take a draft order over the phone and send it to the customer when complete
Create “quotes” for customers.
This program looks to be launched mid-August. If you are interested in being apart of it, email community@bigcommerce.com.
From the BigCommerce Blog
BigCommerce regularly publishes great content on its eCommerce blog. Here are all the articles they published in July along with a brief summary.
How to Build a B2B SEO Strategy That Will Put You Ahead of the Competition
If your business sells to businesses, there are some differences you need to know about for Search Engine Optimization (SEO). This article reviews some of the differences between B2C and B2B SEO, how you can build your own strategy and some of the industry best practices.
234 American Business Owners on Starting, Scaling and Staying Inspired
To celebrate July 4th, BigCommerce talked to 234 American business owners to learn more about their stores. Reasons for starting a business range from keeping family legacies alive, to recovering from drug addiction and illness, to simply filling a need in the market they found unmet. The article is also full of marketing advice and motivation.
How to Use Digital Wallets and Mobile Site Optimization Tactics to Stamp Out Cart Abandonment
With the prevalence of mobile shopping, you must understand where the friction is for people who are shopping with a mobile device.
This article reviews those pain points and discusses how you can use digital wallets like Apple Pay to improve the shopping experience for your mobile customers.
How to Turn Your Industry Expertise Into More Sales on Reddit and Quora
With the announcement this week that Reddit was raising $200 million on a $1.8 billion valuation, it’s clear that there is real potential for businesses to take advantage of this social media giant. Likewise, Quora is a younger site that some businesses are already finding success on by establishing themselves as a domain expert.
But if you’re new to either of these sites, it is very easy to tarnish your brand by posting the content people don’t want. This article is a great recap of how you can get started with two of the most exciting social media sites.
33 eCommerce Strategies for Growth from 12 $1M+ Brands [18 Must Have Tools Included]
This article is packed full of advice from 12 well-established eCommerce companies. Each company talks about a particular strategy that they use, such as video marketing, utilizing product photos in interesting ways and engaging specific audiences.
At the end of the article, there are 18 apps and tools that are mentioned by the brands throughout the article.
How 5 Online Businesses Already Increased Revenue Up to 96.44% – Just By Selling on eBay
As this article states, eBay is often overlooked in favor of marketplaces like Facebook and Amazon. But, as you’ll read, there are many notable success stories of businesses creating strong growth by selling through eBay with the BigCommerce integration.
A lot has happened at BigCommerce in July, and it looks like there are some more exciting things to come. Make sure you are subscribed to our blog for the next round of updates, and subscribe to the BigCommerce Town Hall to get an inside look at upcoming releases with the BigCommerce CEO, Chief Product Officer, and product team.
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