Mother’s Day is this Sunday, so we’ve put together a list of our clients that offer great gifts for moms.

Mother’s Day is this Sunday, so we’ve put together a list of our clients that offer great gifts for moms.

In case you haven’t heard the news yet, Google has selected beautiful Austin, Texas to be the next lucky recipient of Google Fiber.
Helpful reminder: Valentine’s Day is almost here. If you’ve slacked on buying a gift or are looking for something a little cooler than chocolates and roses, we have suggestions from some of our clients.

We’ve all heard the old adage nothing says romance like adorably miniaturized foods. Tiny Pies makes delicious hand-held pies, and they’ve got special options for Valentine’s Day like heart-shaped cherry pie and chocolate brownie pie with Red Hots.

Another sweet option is organic candy from Torie & Howard. They would make a perfect addition to a gift basket for your special lady or dude. It’s like I’m doing all the work for you.

If your Valentine is into jewelry, I recommend handmade BonBon jewelry from Micah Yancey that features specially selected semi-precious stones. I’ve personally heard the word “fabulous” thrown around a lot when people see her store.

For the gadget guy/gal with a sense of style, check out this line of vintage-inspired, handmade device cases from XHiBT. They make customized cases for the iPad, iPhone and Kindle out of traditional bookbinding materials and solid bamboo.

Travel Photography from Amanda’s Big World Adventure
Not independently wealthy? Few are. So if you can’t afford to spring for a romantic international trip, an excellent alternative is one of Amanda’s gorgeous travel photos. Plus you can enter her Be MINE! Valentine’s Day photo contest to win a unique piece of fine art that you create yourself through the MINE! project.
Robert Durkin wrote an interesting piece on Econsultancy last week called ”The high street and ecommerce: friends, foes or something in-between?” Here’s my video response.
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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We have a cool new service that we’re all really excited about. We call it the Success Squad — a handpicked team of e-commerce experts dedicated to helping you launch a successful store. The best part? It’s free to all Bigcommerce clients.
The idea originated from a member of our sales team, who was pondering the basic question that’s at the heart of Bigcommerce: what can we do to help our clients sell more? Her idea was to form a special group of people who know both e-commerce and the Bigcommerce platform inside and out, then have them work with clients who need a little help getting started.
Now that it’s up and running, the Success Squad is available to help you launch your store: from assisting with the initial setup and teaching you how to add products, to introducing you to our built-in marketing and SEO tools, to walking you through our analytics features. They’ll even teach you how to add apps to integrate your store with your favourite business tools.
Even though they’ve only been in existence for a few weeks, the team has already helped hundreds of clients, and has even been able to launch stores in as little as 30 minutes!
If you’re a recent Bigcommerce client, make sure you book an appointment. If you haven’t tried us yet, sign up today. The Success Squad will be in touch to make sure your expectations are blown away.

Dropshipping can be a massive benefit for online retailers, but it’s not the easiest concept to understand or put into place. That’s why we’ve teamed up with the shipping experts at Ordoro to launch MakeShipHappen.com, an online resource that explains what dropshipping is and how it can help your online store sell more.
And the best part is that Bigcommerce clients can try dropshipping from Ordoro for an exclusive price: just $9 per month for up to 25 orders!
So what is dropshipping? It’s a process that lets you partner with suppliers who fulfill your customers’ orders, allowing you to quickly and efficiently fill orders without the expenses and headaches of maintaining a physical inventory.
While gaining in popularity for e-tailers, dropshipping hasn’t traditionally been cost effective or easy to implement for smaller businesses. That’s why we’re so excited about this new partnership — it will open up a powerful tool to a whole new range of businesses.
How can MakeShipHappen help you and your business? Here are just a few ways:
We invite all of our clients to visit MakeShipHappen.com, see how dropshipping works and what it can do for your business, then give it a try for just $9. Let the pros at Ordoro take care of your dropshipping management, so you can concentrate on all the other aspects of growing a successful business.
Cyber Monday is just days away (Nov. 26, to be exact), which means it’s officially the holiday shopping season. We wanted to see how our clients were set up for the selling rush, so we sent out a survey to test the waters. After hundreds of responses (thanks if you were one of them!), here is some of the information we gleaned:
Speaking of Cyber Monday, it was the most important time of year for holiday shopping according to 9% of respondents. But 41% count on December for the majority of their holiday sales.

While the global economic outlook is still a little shaky, 82% of respondents said they expect higher Q4 sales compared to last year. Most attributed that to increased marketing (36%) and improvements made to their site (26%). Of those improvements, enhancing site design (27%) and SEO (24%) made the most impact.

Our respondents expected the good news to continue into 2013, with 65% predicting a substantial increase in sales in the new year. To help encourage that growth, many will be ramping up social media promotions (33%) and focusing on SEO and online marketing (32%).
We hope all of our clients have a wonderful Thanksgiving and an insanely successful Cyber Monday. Let the online holiday shopping frenzy begin!
Part of what employees love about the Bigcommerce culture is the focus on giving back to the community, which we do through our Hearts in Carts program. The mission of Hearts in Carts is: “To foster an environment that enables Bigcommerce employees to be change agents within the communities that we serve. We will use our finances, our platform and our hearts to make the world we live in a better place.”
This past weekend, the HIC team helped a homeowner in need renovate her house through the Hands on Housing organization. Nearly 40 Bigcommerce employees took part in painting, yard work and general home maintenance. Hearts in Carts team leaders Bridget Christopher-Walton and Chadwick Sapenter organized the event. “Bigcommerce goes above and beyond to create a great place to work,” said Bridget. “Participating in Hearts in Carts allows me to represent Bigcommerce and spread the AWESOME BC goodness to the community. And for that, I am grateful.”
“Each of these Hearts in Carts monthly events helps us grow closer as a family and be actively involved in the community,” added Chadwick. “All in all, these events are a symptom of the culture virus that has infected Bigcommerce from the beginning.” Thanks so much to everyone who participated last weekend! We’re already looking forward to next month’s event.
Happy Halloween from Bigcommerce! In the spirit of the holiday, here are some of our favorite scary stores.

Take your Halloween decorations to the next level with more than 6,000 professional-grade props, costumes and more.

Shamble on over for scary and less-scary toys, gadgets, pop culture gear, geek clothing, and, of course, plenty of zombie wares.

Eerily cool interactive shirts use your mobile device to create startling effects.

These toys and gadgets that harness the power of SCIENCE are perfect for scaring trick-or-treaters and co-workers alike.

Australia’s finest zombie-related shop caters to geeks, gamers and fans of general zombiery looking for clothing and gifts.