The Ecommerce Blog

Click the image above to watch the BigCommerce 5.6 sneak peek video

Hi everyone. As we wrap up our testing for BigCommerce 5.6 I wanted to share a video with you in which I demonstrate the new features. You will have the option to upgrade to BigCommerce 5.6 some time next week, depending on how long our final stage of testing takes.

While this is technically a minor update, there are still some big features which were all, of course, requested by you. Ever since we started we’ve always asked for what you want us to build in our software and we’ll continue to do so. We know you can choose from a myriad of ecommerce offerings and we appreciate the opportunity to incorporate your feedback into our software.

In parallel to working on version 5.6 we’ve also made excellent progress on BigCommerce 6 which doesn’t have a release date yet but is looking great so far.

New features:

• Take your store down for maintenance – You as an admin still have full access to your store so you can make and preview design changes, add/remove products, etc all without your customers seeing. You can specify your own custom message which will be shown to store visitors.
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• Set the starting order number – Let’s face it, no one wants to receive an email saying “Your order ID is 1″. In BigCommerce 5.6 the default starting order number is 100 but you can change it to whatever you like from Settings -> Miscellaneous.
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• Block the shipping dimensions message – When you add/edit a product with no shipping dimensons you see an alert message telling you that you didn’t enter them. You can now tick “Don’t show this message again” and it will be gone forever. This is a per-user setting.
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• Tracking numbers and links in emails – This is the most popular feature request on our community page and it’s coming next week in 5.6! If an order has a tracking number and you change its status to shipped or completed, your customer will get an email automatically with their tracking number and a link to track their order on the shipping provider’s website.
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• Import and export formats are now synched – We’ve created a new “Bulk Edit” template which you can use to export and then re-import products. No more missing out on editing certain fields or mapping fields manually – everything is included and automatic.
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• 301 redirects – If you’ve switched to BigCommerce (which over 25% of you have) and want to maintain your search engine rankings then you can easily create your own 301 redirects from your store’s control panel – no more emailing us a spreadsheet manually. You can also bulk import in a variety of formats too, including CSV and Google sitemap.
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• Update your own DNS settings – Right from the Tools menu you can add, edit and delete your own DNS records.
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• Surprise feature – I wont tell you what it is, but it’s related to marketing and will drive a boat load of new traffic to your store for free.

A big “well done” to our engineering team for getting this release completed in record time. We’re just finishing up our testing and are hoping to give you the option to upgrade some time next week. If you have any questions please feel free to leave them below!

P.S. We regularly post design wireframes and screenshots from features we’re working on for BigCommerce 6 on our Facebook fan page so feel free to become a fan and share your feedback with us!

It’s another great day for everyone on the BigCommerce team – we’ve just gotten word that BigCommerce has been nominated as a finalist in the 2010 Codie awards for best software as a service offering! You can see our nomination details on the Codies website here.

If you’ve never heard of the Codie awards before, here’s a little blurb about them:

The CODiE awards is a yearly award issued by the Software and Information Industry Association for excellence in software development the software industry. Since its inauguration, the CODiE Awards program has attempted to showcase the software and information industry’s products and services and to honor excellence for corporate achievement and philanthropic efforts. It is the only peer-recognition awards program of the software industry, providing the opportunity for companies to earn the praise of their competitors.

Being nominated as one of five finalists in the software as a service category alongside companies like Eloqua and YouSendIt really shows not only how well BigCommerce is doing in the market but also how software has evolved over the last 10 or so years. Previous winners in this category include SalesForce.com and Google, so we’re in good company.

The nomination process is quite lengthy and involves multiple rounds of judging and product demonstrations over a period of 6 or so months, so we’re glad the judges were able to see what an important contribution BigCommerce has made to SaaS as a product category.

The winner will be announced shortly, so stay tuned – we’ve got our fingers crossed!

You can read the press release here.

Introduction

As we continue to add features in version 6 of our ecommerce software BigCommerce, we’re also reworking our tax system from the ground up to deal with more complex tax issues such as international, stacking, etc.

In this post I’d like to share our design mockups and ask for your feedback. We’ve decided to redesign tax settings in an almost identical way to shipping – in that there are now tax zones. Each zone has multiple tax rates and each product has a tax category which has tax rates applied to it.

We’ve played with various use cases for everything from simple local tax settings to complex international settings and each scenario was able to be implemented using our new tax zones system.

Please take a careful look at the mockups and if you see something we’ve missed please reply to this thread. Also if you have general suggestions or feedback we’d love to hear that too. Again, please reply to this thread.

Our Tax Zone Wireframes

Configuring general tax settings

Creating tax product classes

Creating a tax zone (step 1 of 2)

Creating a tax zone (step 2 of 2)

Creating a rate for a tax zone

Editing a tax zone

Listing all tax zones

Feedback? Suggestions? Please reply to this thread.

If you’re a savvy business owner looking to switch to a new e-commerce platform then no doubt you’ve spent a considerable amount of time researching your different options. You’ve probably compared features, price, ease of use – maybe you’ve even tried a few demos, but how can you be sure the e-commerce software you choose will be the best fit for your business?

Well one of the best ways is to hear from existing business owners who are already doing what you want to do. They’ve researched the market, have made the switch from one e-commerce vendor to another  and if everything went well, they’re enjoying the success of their revamped online store.

To help decide if BigCommerce is right for you, we asked some of our existing customers who switched to BigCommerce about their experience. We asked what they were using before BigCommerce, what they like about BigCommerce, why they’re calling it the best ecommerce software and why they switched. We then asked for their photos and links to their BigCommerce stores and put them on our new The Switch Is On page for everyone to see.

Our customers have switched to BigCommerce from a variety of offerings including hosted shopping carts, open source offerings and even messy websites built in Microsoft Frontpage! What matters though is that BigCommerce has made the process of selling their products online and attracting new customers easier and more affordable.

You can read their stories yourself, but here are a few of our favorite extracts from their quotes:

• “I am now a proud BigCommerce customer. Once I made the switch sales increased remarkably.”
• “Along with ease of use, I am also seeing more sales!!”
• “My sales increased 50% in the first 15 days”
• “… [my] site has generated more money in 2 months that I did in 8 months using my old software.”

The one thing these business owners have in common? BigCommerce has significantly increased their sales. Now I’m not saying you’ll have an increase in sales if you switch to BigCommerce, but it’s happening time and time again for our customers so it’s definitely something to consider during your research…

Petrol – Fuel for Dogs

Roy Oswalt 44

Kiri Kids

Yubo – Play With Your Food!

Jodi Arnold

Introduction

After releasing version 5.5 of BigCommerce in November last year (which did even better than we expected), we’re well under way developing the next major release: version 6. After talking with dozens of customers and partners via our GetSatisfaction page, in person and on the phones, I’ve locked in what I think is a release full of killer features which will help make you more money as a BigCommerce merchant.

More Innovation, Frequent Releases

Some say the e-commerce space is boring or stagnant. We laugh at that and don’t believe it for a second.

Our goal with BigCommerce is to out-innovate all e-commerce platforms on the market so you have not only the best e-commerce platform in the world but also all of the tools you need to successfully (and affordably – that’s a big one) drive thousands of targeted shoppers to your site so they buy from you. After all, what good is having a great online store if no one sees it?

We know the pro’s and con’s of every competitor in the space and our only mission as a company is to build BigCommerce into the most innovative, industry-leading e-commerce platform available so you can get the most out of your online store with the least amount of effort.

We eat, sleep, breathe, dream and think about our goal every minute of the day, and consistent, high impact releases are designed to do just that.

Anyway, I digress, although I do think it’s important you know where we plan to take the company (to the top).

The BigCommerce Version 6 Feature List

Here’s the list of features you can expect as part of BigCommerce version 6 around the middle of the year:

Disclaimer: The features listed below may be changed at any time so please don’t plan or build your business around them. While we will do our best to include every feature, one or more may not make it into the final release. The middle of the year is also an extremely rough release date estimate and can (and probably will) change.

• eBay selling integration – As identified in a survey we sent out in late 2009, the biggest problem for BigCommerce merchants is attracting new customers to their online store affordably. eBay selling integration will allow BigCommerce merchants to “push” some or all of their products to eBay, which would then appear in eBay search results and listings. You will then be able to process orders received via eBay just as you would those through your BigCommerce store. This will give you access to the tens of millions of people who shop on eBay every month at little to no cost.
  
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• Dropshipping and multiple warehouse support – Dropshipping will allow you to sell online without having to stock inventory or ship orders. When dropshipping is enabled, each product is assigned to a particular supplier whose details (including email address) are stored. When an order is placed, an email is sent to the supplier of each product in the order. The email includes the customer’s address, product, quantity, etc. The supplier then ships the item to the customer on behalf of the BigCommerce merchant, who typically pays each of their suppliers at the end of the month.In addition to dropshipping support, multiple warehouse support will allow larger e-commerce vendors to use BigCommerce. If you imagine an online retailer like Amazon who has at least 6 warehouses across North America, their apparel might be inventoried in one warehouse while their books in another, their appliances in another, etc. With multiple warehouse support, each product is assigned to a particular warehouse (and shelf location) so when a picking slip is printed for an order, it will include warehouse and shelf location details for each item in the order, making it easier and faster for the warehouse clerks to get an order into “ready to ship” stage or to split the order over multiple shipments if need be (which BigCommerce already supports).
  
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• Importer from Yahoo Stores – A Yahoo Stores importer will make it easier for current merchants using Yahoo Stores to switch to BigCommerce. They simply setup their BigCommerce trial store, start the Yahoo Stores importer, choose what they’d like to import and they’re ready to start selling online with BigCommerce.
  
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• Shopping comparison export – Sites like Nextag, Yahoo Shopping, PriceWatch, PriceScan, Shopzilla, Pricegrabber, Shopping.com, MySimon and Bizrate allow people to compare prices amongst different online retailers – and these sites are used by tens of millions of people every week prior to buying online. They are, of course, an excellent source of traffic for online retailers, who can list their products on these comparison shopping sites for free. They only pay when someone clicks a link for one of their products, similar to Google AdWords.These comparison shopping sites typically require the store owner to import (or auto-sync) a simple XML file containing the details of the products they want to list. Along with eBay selling integration this is a fantastic way to drive hundreds or even thousands of new shoppers to a BigCommerce merchant’s online store for around 50 cents per click.
  
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• Pre-order/Back order support – Imagine for a minute that you sell books online. Your customers are waiting for the latest Twilight book and because you know stocks from suppliers will be limited upon release, you setup the ability to pre-order the book on your website before it comes out. You accept 1,000 pre-orders for the book (which might be all your supplier will send when it’s released) and when it’s released, you simply look up these orders and ship the books.Back order support allows you to continue selling a particular product even when its inventory dips below zero. You’ll be able to display a message to shoppers showing an estimated date when they will receive new stock and/or when their order will ship. When the new stock arrives, you can look up all back orders and ship them as usual, reducing your inventory count in the process. This is incredibly useful for merchants who experience seasonal variations in purchases or for those who under estimate demand.
  
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• Integration with Mailchimp – As we know from experience, email marketing is an affordable way to generate repeat business and build trust with customers. Mailchimp has a simple but powerful API which allows us to integrate newsletter subscribers, customers and even filtered lists of customers right back into the software, which BigCommerce merchants can then use to create, send and track their email marketing campaigns.
  
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• Printable shipping labels – FedEx, UPS and USPS all have their own branded, specifically designed shipping labels which make it easy for the shipping carrier to route the package to its destination electronically, simply by scanning a barcode on the shipping label. These labels are easy for us to design using the publicly available API’s through UPS Online Tools, Endicia (USPS), etc. You will be able to easily print a shipping label for an order through your label printer, place it on the box and have the shipping company do the rest. This can save 2-3 hours a day if you’re shipping a sufficient quantity of orders.
  
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• Integration with Outright.com – Small business accounting sucks. It’s complicated and the software is a nightmare to use. Outright.com is a SaaS approach to small business accounting and it makes it easy for BigCommerce merchants to track their spending and income. Integration with Outright.com will feed BigCommerce order details directly into the software and will help BigCommerce merchants prepare for tax time when the need arises.
  
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• iPad/iPhone template – As we all know, mobile is hot. People love to browse prices and products on their phones but why not let them buy right from their phones as well? The iPad/iPhone template will make it easy for BigCommerce merchants to sell to customers when they’re on the go, and if they enable one or more API-based payment gateways then the customer wont ever have to leave their BigCommerce store.
  
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• Picnik.com image editing – Think of picnik.com as an online version of Photoshop but with fewer bells and whistles. It’s free and is an excellent tool for making quick and simple image edits such as resizing, red eye removal, etc. From the control panel you will be able to edit any image simply by clicking on it. The image will be loaded into Picnik.com and changes will be pushed back to their BigCommerce store in real time.
  
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• 301 redirect support * - When switching to BigCommerce, the last thing a merchant wants to see is his hard-fought search engine rankings go down the drain. 301 redirect support will allow you to “tell” Google aboutyour new BigCommerce store and will preserve their search engine rankings as they switch platforms (currently supported, but requires our engineers to update the 301 records manually – this will allow you to do it automatically).
  
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• Ability to update DNS records * – This will allow you to manage your own DNS records.
  
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• “Down for maintenance” page * – Self explanatory. You can take their store down for maintenance and show a customized message during the process.
  
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• Improvements to the tax calculations and settings – Includes support for per-product tax rates, multiple tax rates per product, etc.
  
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• Being able to set the starting order number * – No one wants to see “Your order number is 1″. This will allow you to set the starting order number when you open their “virtual doors” for business.
  
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• “Customers who viewed this product also viewed” panel - A great online merchandising feature which will drive more page views in your store, which will result in more sales.
  
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• Match up the import/export data formats – Right now they’re not the same which is time consuming for bulk editing.

* These features will be included in a minor 5.6 release in or around April 2010 because they’ve been asked for the most and are easier to build

Conclusion

So there you have it – that’s the entire list of features we’re diligently working on for the next major release of BigCommerce.

As anyone who follows us knows, we’re all about transparency – both in showing you how we build the product (this blog post and various updates on Twitter) and also in our support efforts (via phone, email, our knowledge base, FaceBook page, Twitter account and GetSatisfaction page) – we don’t hide behind locked forums and we’ll even tell you when things go wrong (while we try to be perfect, it isn’t always possible).

Remember, we’re in this together for the long haul. We hope you’re as excited about the upcoming version 6 release as we are and we can’t wait to get it to you!

Over and out.