BigCommerce, a leading e-commerce platform with currently 43,386 live stores, is one such tool that is designed to support businesses at any growth stage. It lets you create and manage online stores without needing any expertise in web development or e-commerce.
The solution offers a wide range of features to establish and expand your online store. It’s more than just a platform to sell products, it’s a powerful ecosystem where you can manage different aspects—store design, product inventory, SEO, marketing, and whatnot all from a single place.

What sets BigCommerce apart is its flexibility and scalability, allowing you to handle everything from single-front stores to complex multi-storefront e-commerce setups all while offering lower transaction fees than most leading players today.
This article is the most complete manual you’ll find out there for getting started with a BigCommerce multi-storefront, covering features, benefits, setup, and a loooooot more.

Having mentioned single and multi-storefronts, first, let’s see how they differ.

Single storefront Vs. Multi-storefront

A single storefront is a traditional e-commerce setup where you operate one online store under a single domain. This means all your product listing, branding, and interactions happen from a single domain which is consistent for all customers, regardless of their location, preferences, or other factors.

For example, a clothing brand with a single website where all customers shop, regardless of their country, and find the entire product catalog on the same site.

On the other hand, a BigCommerce multi-storefront (MSF) allows you to manage multiple online stores or storefronts from a single BigCommerce account. This is perfect for businesses that want to target different markets, product lines, or customer segments.

Each store can have its unique domain, design theme, categories, web pages, social media links, price lists, and email templates, all controlled from one central dashboard.

For instance, the clothing brand mentioned previously could have one website specifically for men’s fashion and another for women’s.

Below are the key differences between the two storefronts:

Key features of BigCommerce multi-storefront

Coco Republic, a 45-year-old furniture retailer switched from a leading platform to a BigCommerce Multi-Storefront for scaling their operations. Below are the MSF features that growing companies across the globe find useful. 

1. Centralized inventory management

Inventory management is challenging enough for a single store, let alone for multiple stores.

However, BigCommerce MSF makes it easy by bringing inventory across multiple websites to one single dashboard. This eliminates the back-and-forth of tracking inventory on multiple sites and gives you insights into restocking, promotions, and inventory allocation. 

You can easily change inventory settings for each storefront and stay updated with notifications on stock levels. 

Unified reporting dashboard

BigCommerce offers a combined reporting and analytics dashboard that acts as the brain of your multi-storefront operations. 

With a consolidated view, you get to keep a close watch on the entire e-commerce ecosystem including all your different stores. You can also set up web analytics to analyze and compare the performance of each store, discover patterns, and make your decisions based on solid data. 

In short, multi-storefront makes everything readily accessible in one location –from tracking sales metrics to customer behavior. This saves you time and lets you align your multi-store activities towards one common goal. 

Integrated order management

The ultimate purpose of putting different processes in place is to fulfill customer orders on time. MSF centralizes orders, shipping, and customer information from all your storefronts, giving you an organized picture. Plus, each order is tagged by its originating storefront for easy management. 

The consolidation allows for quick order processing, easy tracking, and seamless communication with customers across all your stores. This way, you can create a high-quality customer experience regardless of which store the order originated from.

Customizations for each storefront

While you can manage everything from a single BigCommerce account, you don’t have to be stuck with the same look, feel, and experience for all your stores. 

Customize each storefront for its specific market or audience. Customizations go far beyond logos, color schemes, and aesthetics, touching every aspect of the customer experience. 

You get pricing flexibility, where you can set custom prices for a particular customer group. In addition, you can choose to have different currencies, payment gateway, shipping, product discovery processes, filters, templates, and localized content for each of your stores. 

At present, BigCommerce MSF offers maximum customizations covering everything from theme designs and widgets to social media integration and transactional emails. All this translates into unique shopping experiences for all your stores. 

Advanced marketing tools 

As you expand, you need to create awareness about your new stores and put in marketing efforts.

BigCommerce MSF can integrate with a range of advanced marketing tools such as Yotpo, FavSEO, and TikTok. These integrations let you execute coordinated marketing strategies across stores while still optimizing messaging and other elements for each.

E-commerce primarily relies on e-mail and SMS for customer communications. Using integrations with email marketing tools like Smartrmail, you can quickly create customized email campaigns for each storefront, manage newsletter subscriptions, and set up automated flows such as abandoned carts, welcome series, and post-purchase follow-ups.

Why should you choose BigCommerce Multi-Storefront?

A native storefront works well up until your initial growth phase, but as you plan for expansion, your business demands different things. Here’s how a multi-storefront can help. 

1. Global and wider reach 

BigCommerce Multi-Storefront allows you to create localized stores for different regions, each with its own domain, language, currency, and content. 

This means you can target customers in different countries, adjusting your offerings to local preferences. Plus, narrowing down your audience based on customer attributes also increases your conversion rates. 

For instance, you could have a .com store for the US with payment currency as USD and a .co.uk store for the UK with payment currency as GBP, all managed from a single platform.

2. Centralized management

With MSF features, you can oversee all your online stores from one intuitive dashboard. Easily update product information, manage inventory, and process orders for different websites simultaneously. 

There’s no need to log in and out of multiple systems, saving you time and reducing the risk of errors. 

3. Well integrated with your tech stack 

Using BigCommerce’s powerful API and large partner network, you can easily integrate the multi-storefront with your existing tech ecosystem. 

Whether you’re using CRM, ERP, or marketing automation tools, you can connect these to all your storefronts at once. The integrations ease the data flow, automate processes (post-purchase emails, lead capturing, etc), and let you operate without any app hopping.

4. More SEO opportunities 

Each store in the multi-storefront model is built for its targeted market giving you the opportunity to add local keywords and create market-specific meta tags and content. 

This helps improve your search engine rankings, domain authority, and search visibility across regions.

5. Better security

Managing multiple stores generates a large amount of critical data, and protecting it is important to maintain your reputation and customer trust.

BigCommerce MSF secures both your and your customer’s data with its advanced security measures. This includes SSL certificates, PCI compliance, and regular security updates to keep your data safe from any kind of threats.

6. Cost-effective expansion

Imagine the multiplied costs of building and maintaining separate stores on different platforms. But, this is not the case with BigCommerce MSP as you get the ability to launch new storefronts in no time (more on this later). 

You can simply add more stores to your existing setup and pay only for the extra features you’d use. This way, you don’t need to spend on building and maintaining independent stores, making MSF a more affordable option for expansion.

7. Flexible customizations

Each storefront can be built for a specific market or audience while maintaining brand consistency. You can customize themes, product displays, checkout processes, and more for each store. 

This flexibility allows you to adapt to different cultural preferences, showcase region-specific products, or create entirely different store experiences.

8. Quick scalability

A multi-storefront makes it easy to scale up your business across new markets, categories, or customer segments without the hassle of lengthy development. This empowers you to respond to market opportunities or test new ideas right on time.

9. Easy to migrate 

Migrating from your existing e-commerce platform to a new one involves complex data movement.

BigCommerce offers tools and support to make migrating both new and existing stores to the Multi-Storefront platform straightforward. 

Whether you’re combining multiple stores from different platforms or moving a single store to a multi-storefront, the migration process is pretty smooth and doesn’t disrupt your everyday processes.

Who can use BigCommerce multi-storefront?

BigCommerce multi-storefront can be used by businesses of different shapes and sizes, each with unique expansion goals.

• Multi-brand companies: If you manage different brands or product lines, multi-storefront can be the right choice. It lets you run separate websites with different brand identities but centralized backend operations.

• International businesses: For companies growing globally, multi-storefront can be used to create region-specific stores with complete localization of the shopping experience. This includes separate domains, local currency payments, payment methods, shipping options, and even products. 

• Hybrid sellers: Many businesses sell to both individual customers (B2C) and other businesses (B2B). A multi-storefront allows them to build different stores based on the type of audience and create seamless experiences for each.

• Franchises: Franchise businesses can use a multi-storefront to give each franchisee their own online presence while maintaining central control. The parent company can then manage all franchisee stores from a single platform.

• Large-scale retailers: Retailers with huge product catalogs can use Multi-Storefront to create shopping experiences for different customer segments. Instead of forcing customers to go through thousands of unrelated products, they can create stores for each category.
• Marketers: The multi-storefronts can also be used by marketers as microsites focused on product launches or marketing campaigns. These microsites make your marketing strategies even more impactful.

How to set up Multi-Storefront with BigCommerce

Using BigCommerce, you can launch multiple storefronts or websites in a few simple steps.

Step 1: Create an account and choose your plan 

First, sign up for a BigCommerce account, Then, choose a plan that suits you the most. Ask yourself a few questions 

• How many storefronts will you require? 
• What are the required features?
• How many products do you plan to sell?
• What is your expected traffic volume?

Step 2: Do the initial storefront setup

Start by setting up your main storefront. Enter essential business details such as your business name, logo, and contact information. Then, add currencies, shipping options, and tax settings for your target market.

Step 3: Add your additional storefronts 

After setting up your primary storefront, go to the “Store Setup” section in the BigCommerce dashboard. Select the “Add Storefront” option and follow the instructions to create additional storefronts. Change store settings and make them unique to the market or focus of the website.

Step 4: List your products and build your inventory  

Next, upload products and start managing your inventory. You can have a central dashboard to manage inventory or have different products for each store. BigCommerce offers features that make managing products across storefronts easy and simple.

Step 5: Design your theme and customize each storefront   

Now, this is the fun part as you get to design your store. 

Explore the vast theme library of BigCommerce or choose a custom design for your stores. After choosing the theme, add a touch of your branding to each. Finally, design the stores based on the unique preferences of the store audience. 

Step 6: Assign and configure domains    

Now, assign unique domains to each store. Configure the domain settings within BigCommerce for proper mapping. This will ensure that customers easily find the right website based on their geographical location.

Step 7: Integrate payment gateways

Next, choose the payment gateways that are most suitable for each website. You may want to select different gateways based on the region or customer preferences. Also, set up the payment methods for each. BigCommerce offers many different options including credit cards, debit cards, PayPal, and other options to accept international payments as well. 

Step 8: Test your stores 

Before you finally launch, preview each storefront and see if everything appears as expected and functions correctly. Test the shopping experience, including product searches, checkout processes, payment methods, and promotion codes (if any). 

Step 9: Launch the storefronts and keep monitoring 

Once you’ve reviewed and tested all the websites, you can go live with them. Post lunching, monitor performance, and adjust as needed based on customer feedback and analytics. Track key metrics like traffic, sales, and customer behavior across all websites.

Must-have BigCommerce multi-storefront integrations

Integrations play a key role in building a cohesive user experience. They ensure that a particular platform adapts to your business processes, so you don’t have to go the extra mile to make the platform work for you.

Here are a few must-have BigCommerce integrations for various functions as you go live with all your stores.

1. Gorgias, for customer success

Being there for your customers at every step of their buying journey is important to resolve any issues and ensure they return to shop from you again. Plus, returns and exchanges are inevitable in e-commerce.

Gorgias, a leading help desk and live chat solution, is designed specifically for online stores, making it easier for you to offer reliable customer support across all channels. The Gorgias integration lets you connect your BigCommerce MSF to a helpdesk in seconds, 

The platform gives a single view of all your support requests so that you can respond to queries quickly. This responsiveness creates delightful customer experiences and increases loyalty.

What can you do with this integration

• Centralize customer communications across socials, emails, and phone 
• Add your Facebook, Messenger, and Instagram accounts to respond to comments from posts and ads
• Write template answers and create rules for common and repetitive questions to lower the response times
• Detect customer intent in their messages like shipping updates, refund policies and set up automatic replies or route the tickets with tags

2. Smartrmail, for email and SMS marketing

SmartrMail is a valuable tool for multi-storefront merchants to maintain constant communications with their customers. 

With powerful features like ready-to-use email automations, a newsletter builder, and migration support, the SmartrMail integration makes it easy to launch SMS and email marketing for all your stores. You may automate different touchpoints by setting up welcome emails, abandoned cart reminders, or thank you messages in just a few clicks. 

With access to 100+ customizable email templates and expert design support, your emails look stunning and perfectly align with your brand resulting in high open rates.  

What can you do with this integration

• Easily automate emails and SMS with pre-made workflows including winback emails, thank you emails, etc. You may create your own series of email automations as well. 
• Send emails, SMS, and newsletters with free email templates automatically generated from your store’s theme and products
• Drag-and-drop editor for creating pop-ups, website sign-up forms, landing page sign-up forms
• Overall account analytics including opens, clicks along with the subject line, and sending time A/B test
• Free and hassle-free migration from existing email marketing tools like MailChimp, Klaviyo, Omnisend, etc

3. Flockler, for social media aggregation 

If you own a business and are not on social media, you’re missing out on selling to a major chunk of your customer base. 

Flockler is the perfect solution for BigCommerce merchants to tap into the power of social media and user-generated content (UGC). 

By aggregating branded social media feeds and creating stunning social walls, Flockler’s integration helps you display engaging content on your websites. You can easily convert social proof into sales, allowing customers to shop directly from the content they love. 

Flockler also lets you collect and showcase customer reviews, images, and ratings while managing UGC rights and tracking social media mentions from one single platform. 

What can you do with this integration

• Display social content with unlimited layouts (single channel or a mix of multiple channels) 
• Link social media content with your product pages to increase first-time buys and repeat purchases
• User-generated content management including asking for content rights to use in your ads, advanced analytics, etc
• Social media analytics to collect and display customer reviews, images, and ratings for building social proof 

4. Fomo, for social proof

New stores need to build trust to attract and retain customers, and Fomo is a powerful social proof tool to help you gain that trust.

Fomo lets you display real-time notifications of recent orders and product reviews on your website. Prospective customers can see that others are actively purchasing from your stores, nudging them to buy. This improves your on-page sales conversions. 

With Fomo integration, you can showcase recent transactions and reviews, making your stores feel alive and popular. You get the option to filter notifications by order value, region, and more.

Getting started is simple—just add a line of code, and you’re ready to boost trust and your sales.

What can you do with this integration

• Display notifications of every order, only some orders, or even just orders from a certain period. 
• Connect with Google Analytics within the Fomo app to track goal completions and revenue earned through Fomo notification clicks
• Create using Fomo’s library of built-in notification themes or your own custom CSS. Modify fonts, colors, spacing, sizes, and more.
• Advanced language options, geotargeting, device control, page rules, and more to optimize user experience
• 50+ integrations with other tools 

That’s not it! Learn how different BigCommerce marketing apps can help spread the word about your multiple stores in this article. 

Ready to make the big move?

I’ve walked you through all the essential steps for setting up and managing a successful multi-storefront with BigCommerce. 

You are thorough with the differences between single and multi-storefront setups, the key features of BigCommerce Multi-Storefront, and why it’s the ideal choice for businesses looking to expand their e-commerce business. 

You also have the practical steps to get started—from creating your account and setting up your stores to integrating must-have tools and customizing each to meet the target audience’s needs. 

So, what’s the wait for? Go ahead and set the stage for the growth of your eCommerce business. 

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Q. What is the difference between a single storefront and a multi-storefront?

A single storefront is a native online store with one domain and product catalog, while a multi-storefront setup allows you to manage multiple online stores under one BigCommerce account, each with its own domain and product offerings.

Q. What are some of the key features of BigCommerce multi-storefront?

Key features of BigCommerce MSF include centralized Inventory management, a unified reporting dashboard, integrated order management, customizations for each storefront, and access to advanced marketing tools.

Q. Why are the benefits of choosing BigCommerce Multi-Storefront?

BigCommerce multi-storefront offers global reach with the ability to manage multiple stores from a single platform, centralizing operations. It integrates well with your tech stack, provides more SEO opportunities, and ensures better security. It is a cost-effective option for expansion, allows for flexible customizations, and offers quick scalability. 

Q. Who can use BigCommerce multi-storefront?

BigCommerce Multi-Storefront is ideal for multi-brand companies, international businesses, hybrid B2B and B2C sellers, franchises, large-scale retailers, and even marketers.

Q. How to set up a multi-storefront with BigCommerce?

To set up a multi-storefront, start by creating a BigCommerce account. Choose a suitable plan and set up your main store with essential details. Then, add additional storefronts, upload products and inventory, customize themes, assign domains, and integrate payment gateways. Finally, test thoroughly and launch.

Q. What are some of the must-have BigCommerce multi-storefront integrations?

Must-have integrations for your multi-storefront include Gorgias, for customer success, Smartrmail, for email & SMS marketing, Flockler, for social media aggregation, and Fomo, for social proof.

The post BigCommerce Multi-Storefront explained: What, why, how, and more appeared first on SmartrMail Email Marketing Blog.

For e-commerce businesses hosted on the BigCommerce platform, integrating essential tools can simplify operations, improve marketing strategies, and boost customer engagement and sales.

By using the right tools, eCommerce merchants can create a strong and efficient marketing stack. This not only improves marketing efforts but also makes day-to-day operations easier, leading to increased customer engagement and sales. The following sections will dive into each tool, providing simple and practical tips for effective integration and use.

What should the marketing stack of an ecommerce store hosted on BigCommerce look like?

1. Email Marketing: 

Building a robust email marketing strategy is essential for engaging with customers, promoting new products, and nurturing leads. Tools like SmartrMail integrate seamlessly with BigCommerce to automate email campaigns and personalize communication.

2. Social Media: 

Leveraging social media platforms is critical for brand visibility and customer engagement. BigCommerce integrates with tools like ‘Social Boost’ to manage and schedule posts across multiple platforms efficiently.

3. Marketing Automation: 

Automating repetitive tasks can save time and improve efficiency. Platforms like SmartrMail offer marketing automation features that can be integrated with BigCommerce to streamline workflows and enhance customer interactions.

4. Customer Reviews: 

Positive customer reviews can significantly influence purchasing decisions. Tools like Yotpo or Trustpilot integrate with BigCommerce to collect and showcase customer reviews, building trust and credibility.

5. Customer Service: 

Providing excellent customer service is vital for retaining customers and resolving issues promptly. Integrate tools like Gorgias or Zendesk with BigCommerce to manage customer inquiries and support tickets effectively.

6. Analytics: 

Understanding customer behavior and tracking marketing performance is crucial for making data-driven decisions. Google Analytics and BigCommerce’s native analytics tools provide valuable insights into sales, traffic, and customer interactions.

7. SEO/Content Marketing: 

Optimizing your store for search engines and creating valuable content can drive organic traffic. Tools like FavSEO or Ahrefs help with SEO strategy, while platforms like WordPress or BigCommerce’s built-in blogging feature assist with content marketing.

8. Referral Marketing: 

Encouraging customers to refer others can be a powerful growth strategy. Integrate referral marketing tools like Smile.io or Refersion with BigCommerce to incentivize and track customer referrals.

9. Supply Chain Management/Inventory Management: 

Efficiently managing inventory and supply chain operations ensures that products are available when customers want them. Tools like ShipStation or TradeGecko integrate with BigCommerce to streamline inventory management and order fulfillment.

By integrating these essential marketing tools, eCommerce merchants on BigCommerce can create a comprehensive and efficient marketing stack. This approach not only enhances marketing strategies but also streamlines operations, leading to increased customer engagement and sales. The following sections will delve deeper into each tool, providing actionable insights and best practices for effective integration and utilization.

12 Must-have ecommerce marketing tools for your BigCommerce store

1. SmartrMail

SmartrMail is a powerful email marketing tool designed to help eCommerce businesses increase sales and improve customer engagement. Specifically built with online stores in mind, SmartrMail integrates seamlessly with popular eCommerce platforms like BigCommerce, Shopify, and WooCommerce. It offers a range of features that simplify email marketing, making it easy to create, automate, and optimize email campaigns.

From automated product recommendations and advanced segmentation to abandoned cart recovery and detailed analytics, SmartrMail simplifies email marketing and helps online stores boost sales and customer engagement. With easy-to-use templates, automation workflows, and customizable pop-ups, SmartrMail empowers merchants to create effective email campaigns that drive results.

Best Features of SmartrMail

1.Easy Integration

SmartrMail is designed to integrate smoothly with leading eCommerce platforms such as BigCommerce, Shopify, and WooCommerce. This seamless integration ensures that your store’s data is automatically synced with SmartrMail, eliminating the need for manual data entry and reducing the risk of errors. 

2. Automated Product Recommendations

One of SmartrMail’s standout features is its ability to generate automated product recommendations using advanced AI technology. This feature analyzes customer behavior, purchase history, and browsing patterns to suggest products that are most likely to interest each individual customer. 

3. Abandoned Cart Recovery

Shopping cart abandonment is a common challenge for eCommerce businesses, with many potential sales lost at the last minute. SmartrMail addresses this issue with its automated abandoned cart recovery feature. When a customer adds items to their cart but fails to complete the purchase, SmartrMail automatically sends a series of reminder emails to encourage them to return and finalize their order. 

Other SmartrMail Features

1. Ready-to-use Email Automations

   Enable key email automations in a few clicks with pre-built series of emails and SMS.

2. Lightning Speed Newsletter Builder

   Drag, drop, and add products quickly or let SmartrMail select the best products for you.

3. Beautiful Forms and Pop-ups

   Convert visitors into subscribers with customizable pop-ups and forms.

4. Free Custom-designed Email Templates

   Get professional email templates tailored to your brand for free.

5. Pro Plan Setup

   Have your email and SMS marketing automations designed and set up by specialists.

6. SMS Marketing

   Boost sales with high-converting SMS marketing.

Pricing for SmartrMail

Free Plan (15-day free trial)

The Free Plan offers a 15-day free trial, providing 5 emails per contact, 10 free Back in Stock notifications, and chat support.

Annual Plan Options:

Essential Plan

$9.80/month ($117.60 per year, 30% OFF)

Pro Plan

From $69.30/month ($831.60 per year, 30% OFF)

2. Fomo

Fomo is a powerful social proof toolkit app designed to increase conversions by displaying recent orders and product reviews on your storefront in real-time. This creates the online equivalent of a busy store, encouraging prospective customers to make a purchase when they see that others are buying your products. 

With over 11,000 active websites using Fomo, it has proven to be an essential tool for eCommerce businesses across various categories, including health, beauty, wellness, style, fashion, business, furniture, and beverages. 

Key features:

• Fomo offers extensive customization options to suit your business needs. 
• By connecting Google Analytics within the Fomo app, you can monitor goal completions and revenue generated from Fomo notification clicks. 
• Fomo provides a library of built-in notification themes and the option to use custom CSS, easily controlled within the app’s theme builder. 
• Advanced customization options like language settings, geotargeting, device control, and page rules to optimize user experience.
• Install Fomo quickly with a simple line of code and connect integrations like BigCommerce, Yotpo, and Typeform in minutes.

Pricing for Fomo: Simple and Scalable Plans for Your Business

Starter Plan: $25 per Month

Business Plan: $75 per Month

Pro Plan: $149 per Month

Advanced Plan: $250 per Month

Unlimited Plan: $499 per Month

3. Social Boost

Social Boost is a comprehensive marketing tool for running giveaways, contests, refer-a-friend programs, and more. Currently available for BigCommerce merchants at $99/month (billed annually), it promises to beat any competitor’s price by 10%. 

Key Features

• Run unlimited referral programs, instant win campaigns, viral share promotions, giveaways, and sweepstakes.
• Access an expanding list of entry methods and referral schemes.
• Integrated with MailChimp, Aweber, Campaign Monitor, ConstantContact, Yotpo, and Judge.me.
• Automatically create coupons for winners to boost sales opportunities.
• Protect your campaigns with an anti-cheat algorithm.
• Display campaigns anywhere, including your BigCommerce store and blog, with 100% mobile compatibility.
• Select start and end dates or keep campaigns open, ideal for instant win promotions.

Pricing for Social Boost

Basic: €19 per Month

Plus: €49 per Month

Premium: €99 per Month

4. Flockler

Flockler is the premier platform for managing social content, designed to boost engagement and drive sales effortlessly. Businesses can showcase unlimited social content and user-generated content (UGC) on their websites or digital services, significantly enhancing their marketing impact. 

With Flockler, you can embed social media feeds from Instagram, Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), and more, on any digital platform to increase site engagement and conversion rates. By selecting specific hashtags, usernames, and pages, you can curate a unique and dynamic feed that combines content from multiple social media channels into one cohesive display. 

Key Features

• Flockler allows you to create unlimited Walls, Grids, Carousels, and Slideshows, all customizable to match your brand’s look and feel. 
• You can set up rules to gather and display content automatically from platforms like Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), and YouTube. 
• Flockler provides powerful moderation tools to control what content is displayed. 
• Display content by username, company page, mentions, or hashtags across various social media platforms.
• Pause and reuse live-updating sources for new campaigns without losing previously displayed content.
• Automatically updates content to keep feeds current and engaging.
• No limits on the number of views for the stored content displayed across digital services.

Flockler pricing

Lite: $51 per Month (When paid annually or $60 paid monthly)

Basic: $110 per Month (When paid annually or $129 paid monthly)

Business: $195 per Month (When paid annually or $229 paid monthly)

Pro: $325 per Month (When paid annually or $379 paid monthly)

Premium: $540 per Month (When paid annually or $635 paid monthly)

5. Yotpo

Yotpo is a powerful tool for BigCommerce businesses, helping to generate product and site reviews, photos, videos, Q&A, and other user-generated content to drive traffic, boost conversions, and increase sales. 

It’s easy to set up, taking only 3 minutes, and offers a basic free version with premium features available at an additional cost. Yotpo integrates seamlessly with popular platforms like Google, Facebook, and Instagram, and supports over 150,000 stores worldwide.

Yotpo Key Features

1. Generate More Product Reviews: In-mail forms allow customers to leave reviews directly from email requests, increasing review volume.

2. Increase Conversion Rate: Customizable widgets on product pages can lift conversion rates by 30-120%.

3. Optimize For Mobile: Mobile-friendly features ensure users can leave reviews and interact with content seamlessly on mobile devices.

4. Social Curation: Turn customer Instagram photos into marketing assets to drive traffic and sales.

5. User-Generated Photos: Collect and showcase customer photos for a robust visual marketing strategy.

6. Full Social Integration: Share 5-star reviews on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

Pricing for Yotpo: Customizable Plans

Starter: $79 per Month 

Pro: $169 per Month 

Premium: $699 per Month

6. FavSEO

FavSEO is a comprehensive SEO tool designed for store owners to efficiently manage and optimize their website’s SEO elements. With features such as bulk title and meta description editing, advanced SEO auditing, keyword suggestion tools, and rank tracking, FavSEO simplifies the SEO process. 

FavSEO Features

1. Title/Meta Description Editor: Edit titles and meta descriptions for products, categories, and pages in one place, with an SEO score display.

2. SEO Audit: Analyze the SEO score of all products and identify factors causing low scores to optimize them easily.

3. Rank Tracker & Keyword Finder: Discover new keywords and track their positions on Google after connecting with Google Webmaster Tools.

4. Bulk Title Editor: Change titles for hundreds of products with a single click.

5. Sitemap Submitter: Submit sitemaps and find crawling errors to improve website ranking.

6. SEO Score Card: View the overall SEO score of your store’s home page and identify areas for improvement.

Pricing for FavSEO

Standard: $799 per Month 

Business: $1299 per Month 

7. Gorgias

Gorgias is a premier help desk and live chat solution for online stores, trusted by over 30,000 support agents daily. It centralizes support requests from all channels, allowing businesses to answer faster and transform customer support into a profit center. 

Integrated seamlessly with BigCommerce, Gorgias provides a comprehensive customer view on support tickets and enables live chat on your site. 

Key Features of Gorgias

1. Ticketing System: Centralize all customer communications from various channels into one helpdesk.

2. Social Media Integration: Respond to comments from Facebook, Messenger, and Instagram posts and ads in one place.

3. Macros: Create template answers for quick responses to common questions.

4. Auto Responder: Automate responses to frequent inquiries like “Where is my order?” using rules and macros.

5. Intent and Sentiment Detection: Use machine learning to detect customer intents and sentiments for efficient ticket routing and automatic replies.

6. Customer Details Display: View customer details and order information next to support tickets for faster resolution.

7. Live Chat: Provide instant responses and engage with customers in real-time.

Pricing for Gorgias

Helpdesk ProPrice: $300 per Month

8. PayHelm 

PayHelm is a powerful analytics platform designed to streamline business data management and reporting. By offloading data tasks to PayHelm, businesses can create robust, reliable reports with ease. With a dedicated engineering team, PayHelm offers free custom reports, allowing businesses to access crucial information efficiently. 

Key Features of PayHelm

1. Products Reports: Analyze total sales, orders, avg. price, gateway fees, product cost, and profits.

2. Customer Reports: Identify top customers and their purchasing behavior over the past five years.

3. Tax Reports: Break down taxes paid by country or state and trend them over time.

4. Marketing Performance: Evaluate the effectiveness of referral and paid search campaigns.

5. Advanced Filters: Filter data by linked accounts, product options, custom fields, and more.

Pricing for PayHelm: Annual Plans with 20% Off

Free Plan: $0 per Month

Pro: $20 per Month

Business: $40 per Month

Enterprise: $60+ per Month

9. Smile.io

Smile.io is the leading loyalty platform that helps businesses transform first-time customers into lifelong advocates. With over 100,000 businesses leveraging Smile.io, it simplifies the creation and management of loyalty programs designed to scale. Smile.io’s features include points, VIP programs, and referrals that seamlessly integrate to boost repeat sales. 

Key Features of Smile.io

1. Points: Reward customers for every order to encourage repeat purchases.

2. VIP: Offer exclusive perks and early access to your best customers.

3. Referrals: Incentivize customers to refer friends and earn rewards.

Pricing for Smile.io: Simple pricing, for everyone

Starter: $49 per Month 

Growth: $199 per Month 

Plus: $999 per Month

10. GA-4, GSC, Google PageSpeed Insights

Google Analytics 4 (GA-4), Google Search Console (GSC), and Google PageSpeed Insights are essential tools for optimizing your BigCommerce store’s performance and visibility. GA-4 offers comprehensive insights into user behavior, helping you make data-driven decisions. 

GSC allows you to monitor your site’s presence in Google Search results and fix issues affecting your search performance. Google PageSpeed Insights analyzes your site’s content and provides suggestions to make it faster. Integrating these tools with BigCommerce is seamless, providing a unified platform to track, analyze, and improve your store’s performance. 

Key Features

Google Analytics 4 (GA-4):

1. User-Centric Reporting: Understand user behavior across devices and platforms.

2. Event Tracking: Track specific interactions like clicks, purchases, and form submissions.

3. AI-Powered Insights: Get automatic insights and predictions about user behavior.

Google Search Console (GSC):

1. Performance Reports: Track your site’s search traffic, impressions, and click-through rates.

2. Index Coverage: Ensure your pages are correctly indexed by Google.

3. Security Issues: Identify and resolve security issues affecting your site.

Google PageSpeed Insights:

1. Performance Scores: Receive scores for mobile and desktop performance.

2. Optimization Suggestions: Get actionable recommendations to improve site speed.

3. Core Web Vitals: Measure key performance metrics like loading, interactivity, and visual stability.

By integrating GA-4, GSC, and Google PageSpeed Insights with your BigCommerce store, you gain powerful tools to enhance your site’s performance, visibility, and user experience. These integrations provide deep insights, actionable recommendations, and essential monitoring capabilities, ensuring your store operates at its best. rankings, and deliver a superior shopping experience.

11. Feedonomics

Feedonomics is a leading product and data feed management solution that enhances your customers’ shopping experience, driving significant improvements in metrics like Return on Ad Spend (RoAS). 

With advanced automation technology, 24/7 global support, and integrations with over 300 channels, Feedonomics provides a comprehensive, full-service feed management system. 

Key Features of Feedonomics

1. Expand Your Reach:  

List and optimize products across hundreds of marketing channels and marketplaces.

2. Fully Managed Service:  

Receive global, 24/7 support to optimize data feeds and go live quickly.

3. Drive Performance on Every Channel:  

Set pricing and inventory rules per channel and manage orders from all marketplaces on one dashboard.

4. Quickly Resolve Errors:  

Automatically receive data feed error alerts to avoid disapprovals and lost revenue, with solutions for common errors on platforms like Amazon.

Pricing for Feedonomics: Custom Plans
Contact Feedonomics for Pricing Details.

12. ShipStation

ShipStation simplifies the shipping and delivery process, allowing you to handle more orders efficiently while cutting costs. This robust multi-channel platform integrates seamlessly with numerous ecommerce stores and selling channels. It offers discounted shipping rates and automates your fulfillment workflow, saving time and enhancing accuracy. 

Key Features of ShipStation

1. Order Syncing and Order Edits: Centralize and manage orders from all channels, with real-time updates for refunds and cancellations.

2. Returns Made Easy: Create a branded returns portal for a seamless customer experience in select regions.

3. Custom Fields: Use custom fields like Fraud Risk and Customer Loyalty to automate shipping rules.

4. Transmit HS Codes: Automatically include HS codes for international orders to streamline global shipping.

5. Discounted Shipping Rates: Access up to 89% off shipping rates from major carriers including USPS, UPS, and DHL Express.

Pricing for ShipStation: Plans for Every Stage of Business

ShippingEasy (Free)

Starter: $9.99 per Month 

Bronze: $29.99 per Month 

Silver: $59.99 per Month 

Gold: $99.99 per Month 

Platinum: $149.99 per Month 

Enterprise: $299.99 per Month 

High-Volume: Quoted 

Wrapping it up

Running an e-commerce store, be it on BigCommerce or anywhere else requires the right mix of integrations and add-ons. E-commerce platforms on their own cannot serve everything that an online store requires. 

These BigCommerce marketing apps must help you manage your store efficiently and ensure streamlined operations.

The post 12 Marketing Tools To Maximize Your Bigcommerce Store’s Performance appeared first on SmartrMail Email Marketing Blog.

To help, the ecommerce experts at Expandly are here to give you the low-down on the 10 must-have apps for your BigCommerce store. 

The Best BigCommerce Apps for Your Store

1. Shogun Page Builder – polish your look

Shogun’s powerful drag and drop page builder enables you to quickly and easily create stunning landing, blog, and product pages, with no coding required. With more than 30 professionally designed templates, the ability to create your own custom page layouts, and the functionality to split test the results, you can increase your conversions without hitting your profits.  

(Source: Shogun)

• Price: From $29 per month.
• Free trial: 10-day. 
• Find out more here. 

2. Justuno – incentivize your visitors

Now you’ve perfected your website’s look, you want to ensure that your visitors hang around. One of the best ways to keep customers engaged on your website is with the use of popups, and Justuno is just the tool. Justuno’s conversion marketing app provides an extensive library of professionally designed popups, along with the tools to create your own. Pre-empting the reasons for cart abandonment, you can offer discounts, coupons, and information to encourage users through the checkout while gathering their contact details to use if they don’t quite make it. 

(Source: Justuno)

• Price: From $25 per month.
• Free trial: 14-day. 
• Find out more here.

3. Sumo – gather email addresses

Another way to gather your customers’ email addresses (in case they abandon ship before converting) is by using the powerful and much-loved integration, Sumo. Used by more than 600,000 businesses, Sumo provides you with an array of tools to gather those all-important email addresses, including opt-in forms, banners, discount coupons, casino forms, and more. Plus, with no coding required, you can use Sumo in just a matter of clicks. 

(Source: BigCommerce)

• Price: From free.
• Find out more here.

4. SmartrMail – re-engage cart abandoners

What to do with your newly gathered leads from Justuno? Send them a personalized email, of course. Personalized emails have a 760% better revenue rate, and what better way to personalize than with curated product recommendations. SmartrMail’s automated product recommendation emails use a customer’s past purchases, browsing history, and email lists to make personalized product recommendations that engage and convert. 

• Price: From $29 per month.
• Free trial: 15-day.
• Find out more here. 

5. Yotpo Reviews – push social proof

Following the successful click-through from your cart abandonment email, you want to greet your website visitors with reviews, photos and other user-generated content that pushes social proof and encourages the subconscious mind to buy. Yotpo Reviews makes this easy with customizable widgets, in-email review gathering, and social curation. 

(Source: BigCommerce)

• Price: From free.
• Free trial: Yes.
• Find out more here.

6. LiveChat – talk to your customers

What if your website visitor has a burning question about a product, delivery, or return? Make finding the answer easy by implementing live chat onto your BigCommerce website. With LiveChat you can quickly install a live chat widget that powers you to initiate conversations, answer queries, send product recommendations, and create tickets. You can even install the application on your smartphone, enabling you to answer customers on the go. 

(Source: LiveChat)

• Price: From $16 per month.
• Free trial: 14-day. 
• Find out more here.

7. InStockNotify – send stock alerts

Hopefully, out of stock problems won’t be an issue (with the right inventory management software), but should you sell out of an in-demand item, you can retain customer interest by using InStockNotify. The BigCommerce app creates a field for customers to enter their email address and be automatically notified as soon as the product is back in stock. You can even use the tool to help identify your most popular items and aid your inventory planning

(Source: BigCommerce)

• Price: $18 per month.
• Free trial: 15-day. 
• Find out more here.

8. Easyship – access better shipping rates

Once your hard work has led to a conversion, it’s time to optimize your shipping with Easyship. Easyship’s BigCommerce application simplifies your shipping operation while saving you money. Access more than 100+ shipping carriers with one account – allowing you to find the fastest and cheapest shipping option for your products. Even better, Easyship customers benefit from preferential shipping rates that can save up to 70% off of domestic and international services. 

(Source: BigCommerce)

• Price: Shipping costs only
• Find out more here. 

9. Smile.io – reward your customers

You did it – you achieved your first BigCommerce sale conversion! But the hard work isn’t over; you need to get them back again. Customer lifetime value is the cornerstone to your eCommerce success – getting customers to return more often and spend more when they do. Smile.io helps you achieve this, with the tools to build a branded reward experience – incentivizing shoppers back to your website following purchases, referrals, social shares, and more. 

• Price: From free per month.
• Find out more here.

10. Expandly – multi-channel management

Finally, you need to manage it all. Running your BigCommerce platform alongside you other sales channels (Amazon, eBay, Etsy, etc.) is hard work, but made all the more manageable with Expandly’s multi-channel management software. Integrating your BigCommerce account with your marketplaces, shipping carriers and Xero accounting, you can list, manage orders, control your inventory, print shipping labels, and send sales orders to Xero from one platform. Simple. 

(Source: Expandly)

• Price: From $55 month.
• Free trial: 14-day.
• Find out more here.

BigCommerce is a powerful eCommerce platform – made all the more powerful with the right apps and integrations. Happy selling!

About Expandly

Expandly’s multi-channel management software directly integrates your BigCommerce platform with your other sales channels, shipping carriers, and accounting software to make selling on multiple sales channels quick, simple, and scalable. 

Book yourself onto a free demo to find out more. 

The post The 10 Best Apps for BigCommerce appeared first on SmartrMail Email Marketing Blog.

The post 5 Must Have Apps for Starting Your Bigcommerce Store appeared first on SmartrMail Email Marketing Blog.