Open bars, drunk uncles and bad dancing to 80s power ballads — who doesn’t love a good wedding? So you’re hitting your early to mid-thirties and you’ve been to more than your fair share of nuptials, but you often find yourself thinking, “I can do this better.” Well our latest theme gives you the ultimate online showroom for your bridal wear and wedding knick-knacks.
You may be thinking, “Why read another post about a new exec at a software company?” Don’t. This post is going to skip most of the usual fluff and get right to the heart of the matter. For context, I recently joined Bigcommerce’s marketing leadership team to help reach more business owners and give them the tools and the knowledge to sell more online.
A growing number of workers are creating a second source of income by starting their own businesses while also working a full or part-time job, a trend known as “moonlighting.”
We sampled nearly 20,000 of our U.S. stores and found that roughly 30-35 percent of all activity took place between 6pm and 8am CT, with a surprisingly large amount occurring after midnight.
Looking at various segments of time throughout a given workday, our data shows that at noon — the peak time for activity on Bigcommerce stores — nearly 80% of online retailers were found to be working on their stores. At midnight, there were still more than 49 percent actively working. At 3pm, nearly half of online retailers were working, with 25 percent still burning the midnight oil at 3am.
Last week, we were honored that Bigcommerce placed sixth on the Austin Business Journal’s Best Places to Work list (up from 13th last year). There are a ton of great companies in this city, and to be singled out is a huge deal for us.
One thing we love about this award is that it’s based on surveys taken by our employees. Our HR team works really hard to build a great workplace, one that makes people actually look forward to coming in every day. We do it because we want to attract the best and the brightest to come work here, but also because we want to enjoy coming in to work every day.
How do we do it? By focusing on our employees and giving them everything they need to focus on our clients.
That whole iTunes thing has been done to death. Step aside Apple, and make way for the New Kids on the Block. With our latest theme release, the days of pawning your mix tapes on The Streets will soon be a distant Blur.
U2 may have noticed that The Darkness of this theme contrasts well with the neon highlight colours to give an edgy, contemporary feel. There’s No Doubt, the subtle background textures give the design a well rounded, organic finish that gives the theme an appeal that extends beyond the music industry. The four-column grid allows for larger category page thumbnails, which is ideal if you don’t have too many products to showcase.
Back in July 2012, we announced that we would be switching from the FTP protocol to Secure WebDAV for transferring files to Bigcommerce stores. We didn’t do a great job explaining the reasons for the switch, and for that we apologize.
I’m here to tell you exactly why we made this decision and how the process will work as we move everyone to the new protocol.
You’ve probably heard that product reviews are important for any online store. That’s why we built them into our platform. “But why are they so important?” you may be wondering. You are a keen asker of questions.
Let me overwhelm you with data:
According to Reevoo, reviews produce an average 18% increase in sales, and having 50 or more reviews on a product can increase its conversion by 4.6%
A MarketingSherpa study found that 58% of consumers prefer sites that offer reviews
iPerceptions claims that 63% of customers are more likely to make a purchase from a site which has user reviews
EXPO Communications found that consumer reviews are nearly 12 times more trusted than descriptions that come from manufacturers
Bazaarvoice says that visitors who read reviews have a 6% higher average order value than those who don’t
Think Burberry, Alexander McQueen, Prada — then you’ll begin to see the inspiration for our latest theme, Runway. The use of blacks and deep charcoal tints provides an elegant contrast against clean white space, giving this design the high-end look that your brand warrants.
The minimal, sharp styling is intended to put a greater focus on what’s most important — your product images. Subtle interactions and animations help add extra life and slickness to the design while giving your brand a polished, sophisticated look.
While this theme is intended for fashion and apparel stores, it would work nicely for a variety of verticals.
In the words of one of the world’s foremost international male fashion models, Derrick Zoolander, this theme is “so hot right now!”
We like to call ourselves the e-commerce operating system. They way we see it, Bigcommerce is not just your ordinary SaaS software. We are building it to be the kernel of e-commerce. This will be the next generation e-commerce platform, one that we believe will give our merchants and developers the best experience. But there seems to be a a bit of confusion with developers, merchants and even a few people inside our company. What is this platform? Define a platform. How does it change the world? Why is this important for us to spend effort on? I would like to use this blog post to share some of my thoughts on this and give some insights on how we are attempting to change the world.
We don’t use the term “platform” in the traditional sense. When we talk about platform, we talk about a core product that enables creation of success stories, and even magical experiences. When this core product offers a foundation on which our developers can get creative and build extensions and services that will greatly benefit our merchants, it becomes a useful platform. And when our developers and partners are able to build their own businesses by helping our merchants, it becomes a great platform. It becomes the kernel on which an entire e-commerce ecosystem can thrive. And slowly, with laser focus, we are working towards that.
The next stop in our grand tour of new design themes is Outdoors. Do you enjoy the splendour of nature, but also have a ton of shows to watch on your DVR? Well, now you and your customers can experience the best of the outdoors from the comfort of a couch.
Like getting your hands dirty? Then you’ll love the refined ruggedness we’ve introduced to the design through subtle, carbon-like background textures. Also like selling a ton of products? The Outdoors layout was designed with you in mind.
Edmund Hillary once said “It’s not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.” With this in mind, go forth and build a killer store with our latest creation.