Existing Clients: The BigCommerce 2010 Internet Retailer Survey Is Here!

Published on August 12th, 2010 by Mitchell Harper

About the Author

Mitch (@mitchellharper) is the co-founder and CEO of BigCommerce. Way back in 2007 he built what eventually became BigCommerce as you know it. Today he runs the company alongside Eddie and along with our 100+ team members, is passionate about helping businesses succeed with e-commerce. Mitch spends time between our Sydney and Austin offices and is giving the keynote at TechConnect 2012 in Sydney on April 19th.

It’s time for our 2010 BigCommerce Internet retailer survey! Last year we had a huge response and we think this year’s will be even better.

This survey is one of the bigger data points we use as a software company to try and figure out where we should take BigCommerce over the next 12 months, so if you want your opinion and goals to be factored into our development decisions then the survey is a great way to be heard.

If you’re an existing client, make sure you check your inbox for the link to the survey!

Try BigCommerce free for 15 days and see why it's loved by over 10,000 successful businesses.

Comments

Scott (August 12th, 2010, 8:41 pm)

Hey Mitch,

The Internet Retailer survey and results is a great idea, but I also think a more specific survey of key features should be trialled.

Perhaps you could take the top 20 ideas from the BigCommerce community site and solicit responses from the wider BigCommerce database?

[Reply]

Mitchell Harper Reply:
August 13th, 2010 at 12:15 am

Hi Scott. The community makes up a portion of decision over where BigCommerce will go – but not all of it. The old saying from Henry Ford of “if I gave people what they want, we’d have faster horses” applies to an extent, so we balance features voted for by the community with improvements and innovations we ourselves come up with. Of course, before we embark on building a new feature we put the idea on our blog for feedback and so far that’s worked quite well for us. Hope that explains things.

[Reply]

Patrick Reply:
August 15th, 2010 at 11:54 pm

I agree with this entirely. Customers (and in this case, me, as a customer of Big Commerce), are not often very visionary. We don’t know what we need until we have it for a while. We can’t see very far ahead of ourselves to imagine the true innovations that will help us.

Example. Mobile phones were available, although very large, in 1985. Who among us in 1985 said that we wanted a mobile phone that:
1. is cheaper – Yep!
2. is smaller – yes!
3. has voice mail – good idea!
4. has a camera – where will you put the film in?
5. gets email – what is that?
6. uses blue tooth – huh? I want white teeth!
7. sends text messaging – are you drunk?
8. has an MP3 player – you are drunk!
9. connects to the Internet – Interpol? Aren’t they in France?
10. has great reception everywhere – oops…still working on that one.

We (customers) would have asked for 3 or maybe 4 out of ten. Yet now that we have them, many of these are indispensable for each of us.

Anyway, please do keep developing, and surprising us with things that we don’t know that we need, because we need it!

[Reply]

Mitchell Harper Reply:
August 16th, 2010 at 10:10 pm

Couldn’t have said it better myself. Cheers Patrick.