Transitioning to a new ecommerce platform like BigCommerce can be an exciting yet challenging time for online businesses. With its robust features and scalability, BigCommerce provides immense opportunities for growth. However, new users often stumble in areas like site design, integration, and marketing. By understanding some of the most common mistakes new users make, you can avoid pitfalls and set your business up for success.
Rushing the Design and Launch Process
Eager to get their new store up and running, many merchants rush through the site design and development process. However, taking shortcuts can lead to a poor customer experience rife with issues. Some common mistakes include:
- Not conducting in-depth competitor research and analysis to inform design
- Selecting a generic, cookie-cutter theme without customization
- Skipping A/B testing of the checkout process and other key pages
- Not optimizing images properly or paying attention to page speed
- Neglecting aspects of ADA compliance and accessibility
- Launching before comprehensive testing across devices
Slow down, take the time to analyze your niche, ideate, iterate, test rigorously, and perfect your branding and UI/UX across platforms. Your patience will pay off with higher conversions at launch.
Lacking a Content Strategy
Many new users fail to realize the pivotal role content plays in the customer journey. Without blogs, videos, product descriptions, and other owned media tailored to each stage, you lose out on traffic and sales. Developing a documented content strategy tied to business goals helps avoid common issues like:
- Thin or missing product copy that fails to connect, inform, excite
- Little or no foundational content to attract and guide ideal buyers
- Content that lacks consistency in messaging and branding
- Failure to promote content amplification and sharing
- Unable to demonstrate subject matter expertise and thought leadership
Take time upfront to map out ongoing content needs and production workflows. Align these with sales funnels and traffic goals to turn content gaps into leverageable assets.
Not Mastering Key Platform Capabilities
While migrating to BigCommerce, merchants often focus purely on replicating an existing site vs unleashing built-in capabilities. Core features left untapped include:
Marketing Automation: Abandoned cart and browse campaigns can recover significant lost revenue yet often go overlooked initially. Start these on day one along with signup incentives.
Reporting: Underutilizing the analytics and business intelligence tools causes you to lack crucial insights. Monitor key metrics like traffic sources, conversions, margins, etc.
Mobile Experience: One-third of store sessions now happen on mobile, yet new users rarely polish these experiences sufficiently early on, costing them customers.
Apps and Add-Ons: Expand what’s possible by leveraging the vast BigCommerce app ecosystem. Integrate leading tools for payment processing, accounting, automation and more.
Master these areas out of the gate to amplify the platform’s advantage.
Expecting Immediate Traction
New BigCommerce merchants often expect an instant boost in sales and traffic simply from launching a site. But without addressing foundational elements first or allowing for a ramp-up period, results usually disappoint. Before driving paid traffic, first focus on:
- Technical optimization: Page speed, mobile readiness, unified search
- SEO foundations: Keywords, metadata, link building, content velocity
- Social media: Channels, engagement tactics, community building
- Retention campaigns: Email, SMS, popups, referrals
Lay this groundwork of content and media momentum so traffic converts once sent. Be patient and work this plan before questioning ROI.
Overlooking the Post-Purchase Experience
Merchants pour endless energy into getting the initial sale then drop the ball on post-purchase. Don’t! This high-intent phase presents opportunities like:
- Reviews, testimonials, visuals for social proof
- Cross-sells and upsells to existing customers
- Warranty and support communication touchpoints
- Retention and loyalty program enrollment
Lack of follow-up irks customers and loses their lifetime value. Structure campaigns and metrics around solidifying repeat business.
By learning from these common mistakes of new BigCommerce merchants, you can instead start off smarter. Let’s reinforce the platform’s strengths while proactively troubleshooting areas that often trip users up. With the right strategic approach, your brand can leverage BigCommerce to sell globally at enterprise-level scale.
Why Choose Anchor Group for BigCommerce Implementation?
As you embark on your BigCommerce journey, a web design agency well-versed in ecommerce can provide invaluable guidance. Anchor Group offers full-service BigCommerce implementation tailored to the Australian market. Here’s why leading brands trust us as their agency of record for managing, upgrading, and scaling their BigCommerce presence.
Unmatched Platform Expertise
With over 10 years as a BigCommerce Gold Partner Agency, our team brings together commerce experts across development, design, conversion optimization, migration, and marketing. We’ve performed every facet of builds from headless enterprise integrations to multi-site B2B setups. This 360-degree capability gets clients flawless outcomes faster through our methodology honed over 1000+ successful projects.
Laser focus on BigCommerce
As a dedicated BigCommerce partner, the platform’s capabilities remain our sole focus vs being one of many technologies we support. We perform ongoing training as functionality evolves so clients benefit from features other agencies might overlook. Staying on the pulse of latest updates also lets us guide merchants through changes smoothly.
Tailored Guidance & Support
We recognize no two client needs are identical when selecting features to enhance their stores. Through discovery and planning workshops, our strategists define bespoke roadmaps aligned to your business priorities and audience. Ongoing account management provides options as your goals adjust while our local support reacts nimbly.
Seamless Design & Development
Through Agile sprints, our project managers coordinate everything from information architecture to visual design to custom code. Our UI/UX practices produce interfaces navigable for every user while adhering to modern conventions. Backend engineers then power seamless headless or headful builds leveraging BigCommerce APIs.
Holistic Management
Rather than just executing technical tasks in a silo then disengaging, we provide continuous store oversight as an extension of your team. From health monitoring to marketing automation to conversion rate optimization, we help merchants reach their online business vision through data-led decisions.
Is your brand ready to succeed globally with BigCommerce? Partner with the agency solely dedicated to realizing the platform’s immense potential – Anchor Group. Our strategic guidance has helped leading enterprises unlock record growth, and we’re excited to do the same for you in this next chapter. Reach out today to schedule your free consultation and site assessment.
