The BigCommerce Blog

BigCommerce 5.5 Upgrade Available to All Stores

Published on January 19th, 2010 by Mitchell Harper

Please note: If you created your BigCommerce store on or after 16th December 2009 then you’re already running version 5.5 so please ignore this post. It only applies to stores which were setup before 16th December 2009.

Hi everyone. Over the last few days we’ve been rolling out the BigCommerce 5.5 software update to all existing stores. If you login to your store’s control panel you’ll see a notice at the top of the page which looks something like this:

bc-55-upgrade-notice

When you click the link you’ll be asked to schedule a date for when the upgrade will take place:

bc-55-schedule-popup

The upgrade process is automatic, takes around 30 minutes to complete and because some files will be changed, your store may down for all or part of the upgrade process.

If you’ve modified your template or CSS files either using the browser-based QuickEdit tool or via FTP, you will need to make some small changes to maintain compatibility with the 5.5 update, but don’t worry – the upgrade guide PDF steps you through everything, complete with screenshots. If you’ve only used design mode to change your store’s layout or text then you don’t need to make any changes after you’ve upgraded.

Just to recap, the 5.5 software update is a major release. It was specifically built to give you more merchandising tools so you can increase your conversion rate and increase the number of people who buy from you. For me the stand out features are SuperZoom photo zoom, YouTube search and embed as well as Google Website Optimizer integration.

I know from experience that GWO can significantly boost your conversion rates and that seemingly small changes (such as changing the color of your checkout button from blue to green) can have a massive impact on your bottom line, so I’d love to hear your experience with GWO once you’ve upgraded.

This blog post talks more about the 5.5 software update in detail, but here are the new features you’ll be able to enjoy once you upgrade:

  • Google Website Optimizer Support – Test different versions of site-wide items to see which results in more sales. For example, test different “Add to Cart” buttons while also testing different checkout buttons, product names, category descriptions and more. In total there are 18 different tests you can run – more than any other e-commerce platform provides.
  • Image Thumbnails, Zoom and Custom Sizes – We know from your feedback that images are the most important part of your online store, so we’ve added the ability to display thumbnails on the product page. There’s also image zoom on rollover and custom (configurable) image sizes for different sections of your online store.
  • YouTube Search and Embed – Search for videos on YouTube right from your “Add a Product” page and have them display in a beautiful video player on your product pages. Easily find (or upload) video reviews for products you sell, add them to your product page and watch your order rate increase.
  • QuickBooks and StoneEdge Two Way Sync – Easily sync your orders, products, customers and more to/from Intuit QuickBooks or StoneEdge Order Manager with just a few clicks.
  • Change the Store’s Header Graphic – You can make changes to the existing header graphic in your store’s design or even download a plain version of the header graphic to modify as required.
  • Auto-Generated HTML and XML Sitemaps – The HTML sitemap will allow the search engines to crawl and index all pages in your online store, while the XML sitemap can be submitted using Google Webmaster Tools to get more details on crawling/indexing problems which you can then correct to improve how your online store ranks in the search engines.
  • Search Products, Categories, Brands, News and Web Pages – Your customers will be able to search more than just products in your store. They can search categories and brands by name and even content in news items and web pages you’ve created. Search results are separated into easily-accessible tabs and are fully configurable.
  • Accept and Process Payments When Taking a Phone Order – You’ll be able to take payment then-and-there when adding a phone order through your store’s control panel. No more processing payments manually after you take the order.
  • More Varied Store Designs – We’ve crafted over 15 additional store designs for a wide range of industries, bringing the total of over 60 store designs available to all BigCommerce store owners absolutely free.
  • Embed Videos Into Product Descriptions – Just paste in a link from YouTube, Vimeo, Metacafe or Megavideo and we’ll automatically create the HTML code and add the video to your product’s description.
  • Photo Gallery – All uploaded images are accessible from the new photo gallery, so if you want to use the same photos for multiple products you only have to upload them once. You can even use photos that have already been uploaded to other websites.
  • An AddThis Button on Product Pages – Take advantage of product recommendations with the AddThis button. In one click shoppers can easily share a link to a product in your store with their friends via email, Twitter, FaceBook and dozens of other social media services.
  • Abandoned Order Report – See a list of all incomplete orders along with shopper details so you can follow up and see why they didn’t complete their order. You can choose how many days these orders remain in your store’s control panel before they’re removed.
  • Sales Tax Report - Easily create a sales tax report filtered by date range which you can export into Microsoft Excel for further processing or to send directly to your accountant.
  • Various Improvements – Along with new features we’ve also improved existing functionality. A complete list of improvements will be included with the change log upon release.

Comments

  1. 1.

    Craig (January 20th, 2010, 3:10 pm)

    To optimise conversions you should employ a web analytics provider such as clicktale to show you how your customers enagage eith your site. From the results fo the aggregate behaviours, real time videos and heatmaps you can mend any deficiencies and make it easier for visitors to your site to become buyers.

    [Reply]

  2. 2.

    shannon (January 25th, 2010, 12:13 pm)

    I am thinking about changing over to big commerce. I don’t see anything about a blog option on the site. is it possible to have wordpress as a subdomain and i install in and link to it. also can I use that template from big commerce.

    [Reply]

    Mitchell Harper Reply:

    Hi Shannon. BigCommerce has a blogging system built in so you can share news. You can create a web page which reads in content from an external blog’s RSS feed as well if that helps?

    [Reply]

    Sophie Reply:

    I have a similar question to Sharon’s. I want to know the optimal way to incorporate my existing WordPress blog into my BC business site.

    Ideally I would like to integrate WordPress into my site so that I can continue to use the WordPress software for blogging, and BC for all other functions. I understand there may be a way of setting the blog up as a sub-domain of my site, but I don’t want to do this as then my site doesn’t benefit from the fresh content of my blog, as it is treated as a separate domain by search engines. Is it possible to use the redirects function of BC, to put my WordPress blog on a subdirectory, so the blog content directly benefits my BC site?

    I understand BC has a ‘news’ page where posts can be pasted in one at a time, but this seems rather laborious, and I understand that pasting fresh content to a subdirectory of BC won’t have the same traction with search engines in terms of SEO, as blog platforms such as WordPress deliver, or so I’ve been told from several sources (please let me know if this is incorrect, and why).

    I also understand I can automatically put my blog content on my news page via an RSS feed. However I think that this changes the look and feel of the blog by changing formatting, making the blog look a bit ugly (correct me if I’m wrong). Is the content which is fed via an RSS feed ‘crawlable’ by search engines, and does using the RSS feed therefore mean all benefits of frequently updated content are gained by my site? Or is it merely treated as an external link between the blog and the BC site, and not as site content?

    [Reply]

    Mitchell Harper Reply:

    Hi Sophie. The easiest way is to go to Tools->DNS Records and setup a new CNAME record as a subdomain, such as blog.yourstore.com – that way you can use WordPress in addition to BigCommerce. The content fed in if you used RSS is crawlable by search engines, yes, as it’s presented as static content as part of the web page.

    Hope that helps!

  3. 3.

    Chris (February 6th, 2010, 3:44 pm)

    I’ve read over quite a few posts on the Big Commerce Get Satisfaction area that indicate some pain caused by this 5.5 upgrade. It seems that some issues were solved and others are still pending, but there apparently was an awful lot of scrambling following the 5.5 upgrade on the part of Big Commerce staff changing code to bring stores back up and customers making changes to templates, images, and admin options. Is there a summary or official response from Big Commerce as to the reasons behind the “scramble” and a current state of affairs? I’m considering Big Commerce, and although I would miss the issues of a 5.0 to 5.5 upgrade as I would start at 5.5, 6.0 is already on the radar and would be something I would have to contend with, if the 6.0 upgrade created the same stir as the 5.5.

    ??

    [Reply]

    Mitchell Harper Reply:

    Hi Chris. There were a few small bugs that were fixed the day of the release, but most of the problems were to do with design customizations. We try to make as few changes to the HTML templates as possible each release, but the 5.5 release included lots of useful new features (image gallery, zooming, etc) which did change the structure of the HTML. We do of course publish a design upgrade guide which was linked to everywhere the upgrade was mentioned (there is also a box you need to tick to confirm you understand you’ll need to make some design changes only if you’ve modified your HTML by hand) however not all merchants who customized their HTML read the guide. This is of course no one’s fault, however it did cause some problems where the HTML was extensively customized. Having said that we are also looking at ways to further simplify the HTML in our templates so even non-technical users can jump in and edit the HTML beyond what design mode offers.

    [Reply]

  4. 4.

    Steve (March 27th, 2010, 9:58 pm)

    SuperZoom – Is there a way to add some text – ‘mouse over to zoom’ or the like under the image so customers know this feature exists.

    Thanks
    Steve

    [Reply]

    Mitchell Harper Reply:

    Hi Steve. You could using design mode, but there’s nothing built in at the moment. Good idea though – I’ll pass it into our engineering team.

    [Reply]

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