BigCommerce Growth Secrets: Proven Strategies from Top Brands

I talk to at least 3-5 multi-million dollar brands every week. That’s a big part of my job over here at BigCommerce –– to figure out what they are doing to succeed, if there’s anything I can do to help and ultimately work with them to share tidbits of information hard to find elsewhere on the web about how to be an online seller.

Why is good ecommerce advice so hard to find?

Because most growth-centered advice on the internet comes from Silicon Valley mindsets. That means most of the marketing advice you find about selling online is tailored for technology companies. And while some of those online business tips can work for ecommerce stores –– most of them don’t make any sense at all.

Someone who has spun up a billion-dollar technology company is not the same person who knows how to do the same for ecommerce.

Why? Easy:

This is a fundamental difference –– and why so many $20,000,000+ in annual revenue ecommerce brands will tell you this:

You aren’t a technology company. You’re a retailer. Stop building technology!

This quote references the technology debt so many online brands get themselves into when trying to build out solutions that out-compete the competition, but instead, just get them further and further behind the curve.

So, what is worth spending your time on? Well, that’s exactly what I ask the brands I talk to every single week. I want to know 2 things:

1. What strategies are working?
2. Is there anything BigCommerce does to make that easier?

And below 43 BigCommerce secrets come from BigCommerce customers and agencies that build successful BigCommerce sites. These are their favorite tools and features –– and also why they use BigCommerce again and again over any other platform.

The devil is in the details here –– and for these brands, BigCommerce’s biggest benefits are twofold:

1. Less time spent on development. More time spent on marketing (and thus, making more $$$).
2. Unlimited features that continue to add value at every stage of growth.

Here are the tools you probably aren’t using on BigCommerce –– but should be, and why.

The Power of BigCommerce APIs

John McCann, CEO, Spectrum Audio, & Co-Founder, B2B Ninja

One of our first quote requests we received turned into a $150,000 order!

We utilized the BigCommerce API to build our own quoting app, B2B Ninja. We built and used it in house for about a year before beginning to sell it in the BC app store.

We’re able to generate an enormous amount of leads we would normally only receive if the customer were to write us an email, call or chat us.

One of our first quote requests we received turned into a $150,000 order!

Needless to say, the tool has had a quite positive impact on our bottom line, so I have to say that the power of the BigCommerce API is its biggest growth secret.

Use John's App!

The BigCommerce API has enabled John to expand his skillset and resume. He is now both an ecommerce store owner and a technology company owner. Check out the app he uses to drive increased AOV and quotes from net-net B2B customers.

Get B2B Ninja for your store now.

Brendan Tracy, Manager of Marketing and Ecommerce, Greg Norman Collection

The biggest win for us with BigCommerce is their API, and how we are able to connect our ERP, Virtual Showroom (VSR).

VSR is really, really old technology, but the company’s been using it for years. We weren’t going to change our ERP for a website. We needed the website to fit in with our ERP.

With BigCommerce, we were able to match an inventory file that we had previously used for an iPad app that our sales reps use for wholesale. We now have live inventory syncing between all of our sales channels to our warehouse.

Setting up the back-end was so key to having this be successful. Now, if we have inventory in the catalog, that’s what goes up online. And when the orders come in, it’s so simple to see them and get them out the door ASAP.

Hooking everything up to work so well took about 6 weeks. I couldn’t believe it worked, but it did.

Why Golf Brands Kill It Online

Greg Norman Collection isn’t alone. Online golf brands are driving increased online revenue through strategic partnerships, campaigns and just plain good design.

Check out these golf brands growing online.

Kenny Kane, CEO, Testicular Cancer Foundation

The BigCommerce API is magic and works so well with anything I need to customize for my business.

For instance, BigCommerce and Zapier work incredibly well together. Every time I receive a new order, I’ve set up the two platforms to speak to one another so that it posts a message in an #incoming-money Slack channel with detailed order and customer info.

I love having the ability to search within Slack for old orders. It keeps me in one program and saves an immeasurable number of steps for myself and my team.

Give Back with BigCommerce

Tons of non-profit organizations use BigCommerce to sell merchandise, including The Testicular Cancer Foundation, Stupid Cancer and Care.org. Even BigCommerce uses BigCommerce to give back.

Donate to our Hurricane Harvey relief fund here. 

Earn 17% More Sales with Abandoned Cart Saver

Max DB, Founder, HeyMaxDB

I love that BigCommerce has an integrated abandoned shopping cart feature.

I feel like people are scared to use it because they see that as “spam” or annoying their customers, but the return on this kind of campaign is great.

It’s often not that they didn’t want to buy the items in their cart, but that they had 20+ tabs open in their browsers and forgot.

That email is often that last touch point customers need in order to convert.