Step-by-Step Guide to Start Selling on BigCommerce

Step 1: Sign Up for BigCommerce

  • Visit the BigCommerce Website:

  • Create an Account:

  • Fill out the sign-up form with your name, email, phone number, and business information.
  • Click Continue to set up your account.
  • Choose a Plan:

  • Select a plan that suits your business needs. BigCommerce offers a 15-day free trial to get started.

Step 2: Set Up Your Store

  • Access the Dashboard:

  • Log in to your BigCommerce account to access the control panel or dashboard.
  • Complete the Setup Wizard:

  • Set up your store with your store name, address, and default currency.
  • Configure Basic Settings:

  • Go to Store Setup > Store Profile to fill in details like store address, contact information, and tax settings.
  • Set up shipping methods under Store Setup > Shipping.
  • Configure payment gateways under Store Setup > Payments.
  • Select a Theme:

  • Navigate to Storefront > Themes and choose a theme that fits your brand. Click Customize to further customize it.

Step 3: Add Products

  • Go to Products:

  • From the dashboard, go to Products > Add.
  • Enter Product Details:

  • Fill out the product name, description, and SKU.
  • Set pricing and stock levels.
  • Add images and assign categories.
  • Configure Product Options:

  • If your products have variations (e.g., size, color), go to the Options section and create the necessary options.
  • Save and Repeat:

  • Hit the Save button and repeat this process if you want to add more products.

Step 4: Set Up Your Storefront

  • Design Your Store:

  • Go to Storefront > Theme > Customize to modify your theme’s appearance, including colors, fonts, and layout.
  • Create Pages:

  • Go to Storefront > Web Pages to add essential pages like About Us, Contact Us, and FAQ.
  • Configure Navigation:

  • Adjust your navigation menu by going to Storefront > Navigation. Organize links to key pages and categories.

Step 5: Set Up Taxes and Shipping

  • Tax Settings:

  • Navigate to Store Setup > Tax and configure your tax settings according to your business location and where you sell.
  • Shipping Settings:

  • Go to Store Setup > Shipping. Set up shipping zones, methods, and rates.

Step 6: Configure Payments

  • Choose Payment Gateways:

  • Go to Store Setup > Payments and select the payment gateways you want to use, such as PayPal, Stripe, or Authorize.Net.
  • Enter Payment Details:

  • Follow the instructions to connect your payment accounts and configure settings.

Step 7: Test Your Store

  • Place a Test Order:

  • Navigate to your store and place a test order to ensure everything works, including the checkout process, payment gateways, and shipping options.
  • Check Email Notifications:

  • Verify that order confirmation and shipping notifications are sent correctly.

Step 8: Launch Your Store

  • Go Live:

  • When you’re ready to start selling, go to Storefront > Domain Name to connect your domain.
  • Promote Your Store:

  • You should promote your store with marketing strategies through social media, email marketing, or paid advertising to attract customers.

Step 9: Manage Orders and Inventory

  • Order Management:

  • Go to Orders in the dashboard to view and manage customer orders, including processing, shipping, and refunds.
  • Inventory Management:

  • Keep track of your inventory levels by going to Products > View and updating stock as needed.

Step 10: Analyze and Optimize

  • Use Analytics:

  • Navigate to Analytics to review sales data, customer behavior, and site performance.
  • Optimize Store Performance:

  • Use insights from analytics to make the right decisions about marketing, inventory, and customer experience improvements.

Additional Tips

  • SEO: Optimize your product descriptions, titles, and meta tags for better search engine ranking.
  • Customer Service: Set up a customer support system, such as live chat or a help desk.
  • App Integrations: Explore BigCommerce’s app marketplace for tools that enhance functionality, such as marketing automation, reviews, and shipping solutions.

By following these steps, you can successfully set up and start selling on BigCommerce. Make sure to continually monitor and improve your store to increase sales and provide a great shopping experience for your customers.

BigCommerce Tools and Resources

Building and optimizing an eCommerce store involves utilizing a range of tools, plugins, templates, and resources. These elements enhance product listings, manage inventory, boost product promotion, and enable performance analysis.

List of Best Marketing tools for BigCommerce

Best Overall

Commerce Inspector is a lifesaver in the competitive industry of online commerce. It helps business owners understand what is popular and trending, which helps their companies expand. Commerce Inspector is a widely used web- based chrome extension tool that lets Shopify store holders fairly track and spy on other eCommerce stores. It provides competitive insights allowing you to see your contender’s top merchandisers, units vended, products uploaded, advertisement tracking, and sales trends. Commerce Inspector algorithms have the capability to find out what is trending, it achieves the same by looking at every Shopify store and matching them with data it earlier knows. Once it collects all this information, the Commerce Inspector breaks it down, and shows sales figures, and keeps tabs on how money is flowing in. It also has various tools that make it easier to monitor stores, analyse sales and product information, look at social media followers, and track visitor traffic.

Best Overall

Attentive is a BigCommerce SMS marketing tool that makes it easy to run tailored automated text message campaigns. It enhances customer experience by allowing companies to send out targeted SMS messages, all the while tracking their performance and optimizing their marketing strategies for better outcomes.

Best Overall

Justuno is a BigCommerce email and SMS popups tool designed to capture leads and drive conversions through targeted popups. It provides customizable pop-ups for email sign-ups and SMS subscriptions, helping businesses grow their customer lists and engage visitors.

Best Overall

SMSBump is a Bigcommerce text marketing tool where you can create SMS campaigns to engage your customers. It helps you generate, automate, and analyze text message marketing campaigns in an effort to boost sales and improve customer loyalty.

Best Overall

WiserNotify is a BigCommerce social proof app to improve trust and sales by showing real-time notifications of customer actions on your online store. It builds trust among potential customers by featuring recent purchases, reviews, and other such consumer activities.
List of Best Inventory tools for BigCommerce

Best Overall

Commerce Inspector is a lifesaver in the competitive industry of online commerce. It helps business owners understand what is popular and trending, which helps their companies expand. Commerce Inspector is a widely used web- based chrome extension tool that lets Shopify store holders fairly track and spy on other eCommerce stores. It provides competitive insights allowing you to see your contender’s top merchandisers, units vended, products uploaded, advertisement tracking, and sales trends. Commerce Inspector algorithms have the capability to find out what is trending, it achieves the same by looking at every Shopify store and matching them with data it earlier knows. Once it collects all this information, the Commerce Inspector breaks it down, and shows sales figures, and keeps tabs on how money is flowing in. It also has various tools that make it easier to monitor stores, analyse sales and product information, look at social media followers, and track visitor traffic.

Best Overall

Zoho Inventory for BigCommerce makes it easier to link the E-commerce platform with an inventory management system. Product syncing, order handling and stock level control are the key benefits.

Best Overall

Zaperp is a BigCommerce multi-channel inventory management solution which helps to track overstocking and understocking of items across different sales channels. It has tracking capabilities, order fulfillment and can be integrated with various platforms.

Best Overall

ConnectRetail is a BigCommerce multi source inventory tool that helps businesses manage inventory from different sources. It has features for syncing stock levels, handling orders and streamlining stock optimization through disparate channels, suppliers.

Best Overall

MyIntegrator is a BigCommerce multi-location Inventory tool designed to manage multiple warehouses and locations. It tracks stock in real-time, manages orders, and optimizes inventory based on location.

Best Overall

Inventory Planner is a BigCommerce inventory planner tool that helps businesses forecast demand, manage stock levels, and optimize inventory. It has provisions for the needs of demand forecasting as well as purchase planning and stock replenishment for efficient inventory management.
List of Best Design tools for BigCommerce
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List of Best Product photography for BigCommerce
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List of Best SEO plugins for BigCommerce

Best Overall

The BigCommerce Image Optimizer Tool will enhance the performance of online stores by optimizing their images to load quicker and gain better SEO. There are features that you can use to compress images without reducing their quality, this leading to a more convenient user experience.

Best Overall

By including rich snippets in your product pages, the BigCommerce SEO Rich Snippet Tool helps businesses to improve their search engine listings. Rich snippets are additional information that can be found in the search results and they make up for more appealing and informative listings.

Best Overall

SEOKart is a BigCommerce All-in-One SEO tool that comes with a wide variety of functionalities to help you optimize your online store’s visibility to search engines. It contains keyword research tools, on-page optimization tools and performance tracking tools which will in turn increase its visibility and drive traffic.

Best Overall

AI Copywriter is a BigCommerce AI Copywriter tool that deploys artificial intelligence in generating high-standard product descriptions, adverts and marketing content. They aid companies develop magnetic content that captivates consumers and get higher conversion rates.

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