Building a successful e-commerce website requires the right tools and a platform that can support your business as it scales. BigCommerce is a leading choice for businesses looking to create robust, flexible, and scalable online stores.
Whether you’re starting from scratch or migrating from another platform, understanding how to effectively use BigCommerce is key to launching a site that meets your needs and exceeds customer expectations.
This full guide will take you through each step of building a BigCommerce website, from setting up your store to customizing its design and optimizing it for success.
What Is BigCommerce?
BigCommerce is a powerful e-commerce platform designed to help businesses create and manage their online stores with ease. It offers a range of features, including customizable templates, integrated payment gateways, and advanced marketing tools, making it a versatile solution for both small and large businesses.
With its user-friendly interface, BigCommerce allows entrepreneurs to focus on growing their business rather than getting bogged down by the technical aspects of running an online store.
Whether you're selling physical products, digital goods, or services, BigCommerce provides the scalability and flexibility needed to succeed in today's competitive online marketplace.
Building a BigCommerce Website
Sign Up
To start building a website with BigCommerce, first visit their official website and click on the “Request a Demo” option. You will have to wait for them to get back to you. However, if you want to sign up directly, you can visit this link.
This leads to a sign-up process where you'll enter basic information such as your email address, store name, and a few details about your business.
Select a Template
After signing up, you’ll be directed to the dashboard where you can choose a template. BigCommerce offers a variety of responsive templates sorted by industry.
You can preview these templates and select one that best suits your business’s style and needs, ensuring a seamless design experience right from the start.
Start Editing
The Top Bar
Within BigCommerce's page editor, the top bar is central to customizing and previewing your store's appearance.
Here's what you'll find:
- Design Tab: This is where you can make changes to your store's layout and visual elements. You can adjust colors, fonts, and other design settings to match your brand.
- Preview Tab: After making changes, you can switch to this tab to see how your store will look to visitors. This helps ensure your design choices align with your vision before going live.
- Device Previews: Icons for desktop, tablet, and mobile allow you to view how your store appears on different devices, ensuring a responsive and customer-friendly shopping experience across all platforms.
- Save and Publish Options: Once you're satisfied with your edits, you can save your changes or publish them directly. Saving lets you continue working later without affecting the live site, while publishing updates your store immediately.
- Page Selection: A dropdown or menu to choose which page of your store to edit. This allows for specific customizations on different pages, like the homepage, product pages, or contact information, providing a tailored editing process.
The Sidebar
In BigCommerce's website editor, the sidebar is a versatile tool for customizing your store, featuring several key tabs
The Widgets Tab
This tab is essential for enhancing your store's functionality and aesthetic. It allows you to drag and drop various widgets onto your pages, such as image galleries, text blocks, product carousels, and social media links.
Each widget can be customized and positioned to fit your design needs, making it a powerful tool for building engaging and interactive pages.
You can drag and drop your widgets directly to the page:
And further edit them by choosing them first, for example, here’s the “Text” widget:
The Layers Tab
The Layers tab acts as an organizational tool, providing an overview of the elements on the current page. It allows you to see the structure of elements like headers, footers, and content blocks.
You can select, hide, lock, or reorder layers directly from this tab, offering precise control over the layout and ensuring elements are layered correctly for optimal page design.
The Theme Styles Layout
This tab gives you control over the global styling of your site. Here, you can adjust the overall look of your theme by modifying colors, fonts, and other design elements. These changes apply universally across your store, ensuring consistent branding and design aesthetics.
This tab is key for quickly implementing a cohesive visual identity throughout your online presence.
The Dashboard
The BigCommerce dashboard serves as the nerve center for managing your online store. With its intuitive interface, you can easily navigate through various tabs and sections that cover all aspects of your business, from order processing and product management to customer engagement and marketing strategies.
Each section is designed to provide specific functionalities, ensuring that you have complete control over your store's operations, performance analysis, and growth opportunities.
This dashboard is your one-stop shop for overseeing and optimizing your ecommerce activities efficiently.
Orders
The Orders tab in the BigCommerce dashboard is where you manage all aspects of customer orders. It includes tools to view, update, and track the status of each order.
Whether it’s processing payments, handling refunds, or updating delivery statuses, this section ensures you maintain efficient control over your sales transactions.
Products
The Products tab is the hub for managing your store's inventory. Here, you can add new products, edit existing listings, set prices, and organize products into categories. This section also allows for the adjustment of stock levels, integration of product reviews, and management of product-related features like variants and options.
Customers
The Customers tab provides a comprehensive view of your customer data. This section allows you to manage customer profiles, view purchase histories, and segment customers based on various criteria. It's essential for tailoring marketing efforts and improving customer service.
Storefront
Under the Storefront tab, you control the visual and functional aspects of your online store's front end. This includes managing themes, pages, and blog posts. It's your go-to for customizing how your store looks and operates, ensuring your branding is consistent and your messaging is clear.
Marketing
The Marketing tab is designed to support all your promotional activities. From here, you can create and manage discounts, coupons, email marketing campaigns, and other advertising strategies. This tab is key to driving sales and engaging with your audience.
Analytics
Analytics offers insights into your store’s performance. This section provides reports on sales trends, customer behavior, and site traffic, helping you make informed decisions about your business strategies. Monitoring these analytics helps optimize your operations and marketing efforts.
Channel Manager
The Channel Manager tab allows you to integrate and manage multiple sales channels from a single dashboard. Whether selling through online marketplaces, social media, or physical retail, this tab helps streamline your operations and expand your reach.
Apps
In the Apps tab, you can browse, install, and manage applications that extend the functionality of your BigCommerce store. From shipping and payment solutions to marketing and sales tools, apps can enhance your store’s capabilities and integrate external services seamlessly.
Settings
The Settings tab provides access to various configurations of your store. This includes payment gateways, shipping settings, taxes, and store information. Adjusting these settings is crucial for tailoring your store’s operations to match your business needs and regulatory requirements.
Also, here is where you’ll add your domain:
Account Settings
Account Settings allow you to manage the fundamental aspects of your BigCommerce account. This includes billing information, plan subscriptions, and user permissions. It’s important for maintaining the security and administrative control of your store.
My Profile
The My Profile section lets you manage your personal details and preferences related to your use of the BigCommerce platform. You can update your contact information, change your password, and configure other personal settings here.
Change Store
If you manage multiple stores under one BigCommerce account, the Change Store option allows you to switch between these stores easily. This feature is especially useful for users with different storefronts for various markets or product lines.
Publish
Once done, simply publish your store and you are good to go.
Enhancing Your BigCommerce Website & Taking It to the Next Level
Now you know how to build a BigCommerce website, we would like to offer a way to enhance it beyond its current capabilities — with Common Ninja.
Common Ninja offers an ever-growing collection of professional and reliable widgets that will help you save time and money and improve your website. Common Ninja’s widgets are free, fully customizable, perfectly responsive, and easy to use, so be sure to check them out.
Common Ninja — The Only Collection of Widgets You’ll Ever Need
Building a BigCommerce Website — Tips & Tricks
Once you are done building your BigCommerce website, you might want to consider following these tips and tricks to make your BigCommerce website truly stand out.
Design
Designing a website is no easy task. Choosing the right colors, fonts and other elements is not only an art but a science as well. There’s importance in setting up the font and color scheme for the entire website before constructing it. We recommend reading a little about color theories, font pairings, styles, layouts & accessibility guidelines before venturing into building your BigCommerce website.
Content
Before you start building your website, take the time to plan out your content. This will help you organize your website and create a better user experience for your audience.
Templates
BigCommerce offers a wide range of templates to choose from. Select a template that matches your website’s content and design needs.
High-Quality Images
While using high-quality, heavy images may seem counterintuitive if you are trying to optimize your website, many services can help you in reducing the size, as well as load the images gradually (lazy-loading) to make the loading speed faster. Using high-quality images will help make your website more visually appealing and engaging for your audience.
Simplicity
Avoid cluttering your website with too much content, images, or design elements. Keep it simple and clean, with a focus on your main message and call to action.
Testing & Previewing
Test your website on different devices and browsers to ensure that it looks and functions as intended. BigCommerce offers a preview function that allows you to see how your website looks on different screens.
Optimize
We’ve covered this before, but we recommend that you optimize your website, and use BigCommerce’s built-in SEO tools that can help improve your website’s visibility on search engines.
Conclusion
In conclusion, building a BigCommerce website provides a solid foundation for creating a thriving online store. This guide has covered the essential steps, from initial setup to customization and optimization, helping you leverage BigCommerce’s powerful features to their fullest.
By following this guide, you can confidently create a website that not only looks professional but also functions seamlessly, providing a superior shopping experience for your customers. With the right approach, your BigCommerce site can become a key driver of your business’s success.
