This month’s town hall included company updates from Brent Bellm, Holiday Tips from Tracey Wallace and of course updates from the BigCommerce product team.

Check out our recap below. Don’t have time to read the recap? Watch the recording here.


From Brent Bellm, BigCommerce CEO, we heard about innovative new BigCommerce merchants.

They include:
• Sony Canada
• Gentle Giant
• Goose Creek Candles
• Schnee’s
• Berlitz
• Jackson Galaxy

We’re proud to share that Jackson Galaxy was built by EYStudios and we’re thrilled that it’s now live! You can read about the new site launch here and visit the new site here.

Brent also mentioned that as they grow nearer to the holidays, focus will be on getting the platform ready to handle the increased traffic, and they plan to have 100% uptime throughout the holiday season.


From Jimmy Duvall, BigCommerce CPO, we heard about the Innovation Awards.

The grand prize for winning is $10,000 in cash from PayPal and BigCommerce, as well as a trip for 2 to a conference of their choice.

The 2017 Innovation Awards Finalists fall within 4 main categories:

Customer Experience
• Bob Johnson’s Computer Stuff
• Glory Cycles
• Ironlak
• Sam’s Furniture
• Seriously Silly Socks
• Silvery Jewelry Club
• Restaurantware

Product Innovation
• Andie Swim
• Dutil.
• Rollie

Marketing Innovation
• Beer Cartel
• Neon Poodle

Agency Innovation
• Autograph Folaiges (Brand Labs)
• Berlitz (iMedia Inc.)
• Flip Flop Shop (Silk)
• Freund Container (American Eagle)
• Naturally Curly (Arizona Solutions)
• Pruvit Gear (SUCCESS Partners)
• Sorority Specialities (Atmosol)

The winner will be announced November 13th.


From Tracey Wallace, BigCommerce Editor in Chief we heard about Holiday Tips.

Surveyed 1,018 BigCommerce merchants about:

1. Which channels are producing the most revenue for them.

The Result? Facebook Advertising and Email Marketing were the top two channels.

2. The best discounts & promos to use

3. Helpful tools you can use

Read more about this @ bigcommerce.com/blog/holiday-ecommerce/

Holiday eMail Marketing Tips

REMEMBER: Your goal is to increase holiday sales, prolong holiday customer lifetime value.

Use mailcharts.com to see what other people are doing

3 must-have streams:
• Welcome email stream
• Promotional stream
• Abandoned cart stream

Tools people love:
• Klaviyo
• Happy Email
• SpringBot
• Mailchimp

Keys to success:
• Capitalize on people’s FOMO or Fear of Missing Out.
• Use the idea of Scarcity: you might run out of product!
• Focus on your brand’s differentiators – why should a consumer order from you?
• Utilize promo deals: percentage discounts, BOGO, free shipping, etc.

Find more @ bigcommerce.com/blog/holiday-email-marketing/

Holiday Facebook Advertising

REMEMBER: Your goal is to increase sales and increase return on ad spend.

• Bundle products
• Use videos & testimonials in ads
• Match your product page to offering (use psychological triggers)

Product Page as a Landing Page

Why bundle?
• The Perceived value always wins over discounts, so more money for merchant.
• Bundling 2 or 3 products into one is the quickest way to increase conversions and revenue.
• Use BigCommerce Insights to see what you should bundle (re: products most often bought together).

Everyone does: free shipping
Not everyone does: product bundling and flash sales

Tracey has a workshop where she outlines:
• Building cash flow with pre orders
• Bundling products to maximize ROI & conversion rates
• Engage with your audience to turn fans (and haters!) into (free) advertisers
• Automate your way to HIGH customer lifetime value (LTV) and return on ad spend (ROAS)


From Troy Cox, Tim Crepeau and Rahul Pruthi, we heard about BigCommerce product updates.

PayPal Credit – Allows merchants to extend financing to their customers.
Benefits:
• Increases Average Order Value
• Attracts new customers
• No risk for merchants – PayPal pays you up front
• Includes advanced fraud protection
*Available exclusively in the new optimized one page checkout.

Visa Checkout
Benefits:
• Provides customers with a secure, wallet based payment solution.
• Speeds up the checkout process by giving pre-fill options (especially helpful on mobile).

*Available exclusively in the new optimized one page checkout.
Upcoming Beta Opportunity in Jan 2018: Customers will have the option to optionally store their credit card information. Register to be part of this beta program at community@bigcommerce.com.

Vantiv Payments – payment gateway now available for Enterprise Level merchants.
Key Features:
• Industry leading reliability
• Dedicated onboarding team
• Fraud protection
• Chargeback management
• 24/7 support

*Available exclusively in the new optimized one page checkout.

eBay
• Merchants now have the ability to map their options to eBay’s terminology. Saves lots of time and gives you the ability to keep your channels separate.
• Shows merchants required fields for each category and subcategory.

Amazon
• The ability to list to your existing Amazon listing is in BETA.
o If a SKU match is found with your seller central product, BigCommerce will link the products.
o Choose to send [Price & Inventory] or [All catalog content]
Register to be part of this beta program at amazonbeta@bigcommerce.com.

Facebook Shop
• Now have the ability to switch between Facebook pages.
• Manage page visibility directly from BigCommerce.
– Hidden vs. Published
• Start advertising on Facebook
– Within Facebook channel manager settings

Optimized One Page Checkout
• Reduces clicks in checkout by auto-selecting a default shipping option.

Fallback Shipping Options
• New business continuity feature for all merchants using advanced shipping rules (i.e. Shipper HQ)
• Ensures shipping quotes can be displayed to shoppers within checkout in the rare instance they cannot be retrieved.
• Available now for all merchants using Advanced Shipping Rules


Want to learn more about what EYStudios and BigCommerce can do for your business? Call us at 888-429-4803 or email us at BigCommerce@eystudios.com.

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