Our App Store is full of so many great new apps right now that I’m already back with more to share.
Our App Store is full of so many great new apps right now that I’m already back with more to share.
Our App Store has hundreds of industry-leading business integrations, and we’re adding new apps each week to help you sell more. Here are a few of our newest and most popular.
Our App Store has hundreds of industry-leading business integrations, and we’re adding new apps each week to help you sell more. Here are a few of our newest and most popular. Read the rest of this entry »
You may remember that last year we started a $2 Million Integration Fund to help finance developers who wanted to build apps on the Bigcommerce platform. The fund is closed now, and after hundreds of submissions, we funded a number of apps that will help you sell more. Check out our press release for more information on the process and how it turned out, plus quotes from some of our integrators.
Here are a few key numbers from the fund:
So what apps did we fund? Here are some of the most popular:
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You can find a full list of powerful e-commerce apps in our App Store. And if you’re a developer who wants to create apps for Bigcommerce, our Developer Portal is a great place to start.
Our App Store has hundreds of industry-leading business apps, with more coming in every day. Below are a few of our newest additions that can help you sell more. And speaking of industry-leading apps, have you tried Lexity Quick Chat yet? It lets you chat with visitors on your site and see what they are seeing in real time. And now they’re offering 5 free chats per day! Check it out and see how it can help increase your conversions and customer satisfaction.
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We have a ton of excellent apps coming into our App Store right now in addition to the hundreds we already have. Here are just a few that we think you’ll find helpful for your business.
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This guest post is written by Adeel Vanthaliwala, CEO of Incentivibe.com, a shared-giveaways site that pools businesses together so they can offer big contest prizes (e.g., a $500 gift card) by sharing a fraction of the prize cost (e.g., $19.99) with other businesses. You can integrate Incentivibe with your Bigcommerce store through our App Store.
The holiday season is heating up. And it’s about to get sizzling hot. Businesses are now pouring huge amounts of money into advertising and chalking up huge discounts, all in an effort to drive more sales. But in this crazy hustle and bustle, business owners are missing out on a golden opportunity to increase sales and marketing throughout the year.
The opportunity lies in converting more of your online visitors into leads (email subscribers, fans and/or followers) who you can market to for free throughout the year. Since 95% of your online visitors won’t be ready to buy on their first visit, turning even a small percentage of visitors into leads can really move the dial on your sales in the long run. Numerous studies have shown that people are more likely to buy from companies who they subscribe to via email, like on Facebook or follow on Twitter.
Giveaway contests with big prizes are a great way of converting visitors into subscribers, fans and followers. Marketing experts such as Marketing Sherpa, HubSpot, Chief Marketer and others have detailed the awesome results of running giveaway contests to increase your leads so you can drive more sales throughout the year.
I’ve outlined four ways that giveaways help you get more leads, along with specific case studies that help you understand the power of giveaway contests with big prizes. And if you are on a tight budget, then you can use Incentivibe’s service to hold giveaway contests with big prizes at a fraction of the cost.
1. Increase email subscribers
a. The Sugar Trade Association ran a $200 Visa Card giveaway promotion along with grand prizes of a laptop and tablet computer. This added 3, 000 more email addresses to their database, an increase of 368%!
b. Expedia CruiseShipCenters added more than 100,000 email subscribers to its database by holding a month-long contest for a pair of cruise ship tickets.
2. Increase fans
a. Digitech doubled its fans from 4,000 to 8,000 during its two-week contest.
b. ProClip USA held an iPhone accessory giveaway that increased its Facebook fans by 30%.
3. Increase followers
a. Moosejaw increased its Twitter followers by 45% during its contest where they gave away their own products to the winner.
b. Kobo increased its Twitter followers by 43.5% during its 10-day contest for 3 Kobo e-readers.
4. Increase referral traffic to get more leads
a. Grove held a month-long giveaway contest with various Apple accessories serving as the prizes. It increased its Facebook referral traffic by 114%.
b. The Martha Stewart Show held a giveaway promotion where contestants were encouraged to share the giveaway to get additional entries into the contest. This brought in an additional 1,626 contestants and an increase in Facebook fans by 20%.
Everyone gets different results from their giveaway campaign. The most important thing to do is have a single goal that you would like to accomplish by the end of a contest. I’ve listed some tips and valuable resources below to help you get the most out of your giveaway contest this holiday season. If you have any questions you can reach out to me via Twitter (@adeelv) and I’d be happy to help you.
Many of our clients do all their customer support themselves via email, which is usually the easiest way to help customers when you’re just starting out. But as your business grows, it gets harder and harder to provide great support this way. Even before you have dedicated support reps, using email can lead to miscommunication and a whole range of support problems you can’t afford.
That’s why we’re happy to announce our new partnership and integration with Zendesk, the leading cloud-based customer service software. Their intuitive, super-fast interface allows you to efficiently help your customers with whatever they need, from resetting passwords to tracking orders.
Now that Zendesk is integrated with Bigcommerce, your support reps can easily pull up order details and history to better help your customers. Just by entering the order number, your team will have all the details they need to quickly address any issues.
They’ll also have better insight into who they’re communicating with so they can provide the appropriate level of service. That gives them the ability to recognize regular customers and make a great first impression on new ones.
When you integrate Zendesk with your Bigcommerce store, you’ll get:
Why did we choose Zendesk? Their service helps provide support to more than 65 million people around the globe, and their clients have positive ratings for over 86% of their support interactions. That’s a very impressive number in the customer service industry.
It’s also a really flexible platform, works in every support channel you could want (email, phone, chat, web portal, Twitter, Facebook), and is easily scalable as your business grows. In fact, they’ve worked with Groupon from the start, growing with them from a small support team to one of the largest in the world. And their robust reporting and analytics let you see where your support process needs work so you can make improvements.
So if you’re looking for a help desk solution to integrate with your Bigcommerce store, try Zendesk for free. It’s simple to set up, and will enable you to provide world-class customer support in no time.
Today I want to share some great news about a partnership that makes it even easier to connect your Bigcommerce store to QuickBooks. We’re happy to announce that Webgility’s eCC is now our preferred way to integrate your Bigcommerce store with QuickBooks.
So what is Webgility, anyway? Good question. It basically makes it easy to connect your Bigcommerce store with any edition of Intuit’s QuickBooks software so you can sync your orders, products, inventory and more between your store and your accounting software.
We’ve worked with the good folks at Webgility to put together discounted packages for both new and existing clients. If you’re just starting out and want to tie your Bigcommerce store to QuickBooks using Webgility, it’s just $6.95 per month for up to 50 transactions. Learn more here.
If you’ve been using QuickBooks for a while and get hundreds of orders a month, Webgility also offers packages that support unlimited transactions, multiple users, shipping automation and more. You can see their plans here.
All Webgility plans include a 15-day trial, and the special pricing shown on their website is exclusive to Bigcommerce clients through December 31, 2012.
We’ve also published a step-by-step guide on how to set up Webgility, as well as some FAQs and other useful information. And, as always, our customer support team is available via email, phone and chat to help out if you need them.
If you’ve already integrated your Bigcommerce store with QuickBooks using our built-in integration (under the Tools -> Accounting menu), then you’ll receive an email from us in the next week or so with more information on how to switch to Webgility. If you use other accounting software such as Xero, Peachtree or MYOB with your Bigcommerce store, then it’s business as usual for you and there are no changes.
As you probably know, we have hundreds of apps you can add to your Bigcommerce store to integrate with the software you use to run your business, drive more traffic or get a better understanding of how people shop in your store.
There are apps from heavy hitters like Mailchimp, Constant Contact, Hubspot and Google Analytics, as well as amazingly useful apps from up-and-comers like SumAll (analytics), StitchLabs (inventory management) and Ordoro (dropshipping).
If you’re a developer, make sure you check out our $2M integration fund for building an application or integration with the Bigcommerce platform. We’ve already given away almost $500,000 to developers who have built more than 100 apps, for everything from inventory management integration to social media loyalty programs and analytics!
Here are some of our newest and most popular apps that you may find useful.
New/Popular Apps
Purchase Sharing lets your customers easily share purchases with their social networks. After buying, they’ll get an order confirmation page where they can share products on Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest. You can even incentivize your customers to share by giving them coupons or rewards points. Built-in metrics show you exactly how well it’s working.
Drive sales by adding a bar that displays a promotional offer to your customers on every page of your site. You can schedule promotions months in advance and Daily Deal Bar will automatically update your site and social media accounts on the pre-configured days/times.
Time2Buy helps convert browsers into buyers by monitoring their behavior on your site and displaying time-sensitive offers that encourage them to purchase. You can target different shopper segments with unique promotions and manage offers in real time to maximize your results.
Transitioning to Google Shopping from Google Product Search is easy and painless thanks to Lexity Google Shopping. You’ll get daily listing updates, automated bid management, detailed reporting and automatic syncing with your catalog.
E-commerce Fact: only 2% of visitors to your site will end up buying on their first visit. Lexity Retargeting helps you recover lost sales by displaying your ads on other sites. It takes only minutes to create professional, personalized ads to draw prospects back. The app includes automatic bid management and detailed reports.
Ordoro helps you manage your inventory across multiple storefronts and online marketplaces, automating tasks that would normally take you hours. It also lets you order dropshipping or restocking with just a few clicks from your control panel and streamlines shipping label printing from all the major carriers.
Shopalize Purchase Sharing
Daily Deal Bar
Time2Buy
Lexity Google Shopping
Lexity Retargeting
Ordoro