40 Million Reasons to Love E-Commerce for SMB’s: An Austin tale

Recently, I had the opportunity to speak with Ryan Roch who is a member of the partner team at Bigcommerce. This firm just made headlines recently by raising an additional $40m in venture capital. Bigcommerce has its headquarters in Sydney and runs its US operations out of a brand new facility in Austin, TX. Of course, the BIA/Kelsey SMB Digital Marketing conference event is scheduled for Austin from September 11-13, and we’re happy to highlight a major player in the space that has its American roots in the capital of Texas.

Bigcommerce currently powers e-commerce for nearly 40,000 businesses around the world including some brand names everyone would recognize. Its flexible templates are also used by many, many SMB’s to power their e-commerce and a significant percentage of their customers fall into this important business classification. In addition, the company has hundreds of design partners that use Bigcommerce’s offer as part of a larger bundle of services to business owners. These partners use the dynamic nature of the Bigcommerce platform to craft highly customized solutions particular to whatever the merchant desires. The e-commerce platform Bigcommerce has created also has capabilities to help with demand generation and content marketing, invaluable features given how important the latter is to the SEO challenge.

Knowing that web marketing can present a new series of challenges for business owners, Bigcommerce has a special team that works with local businesses to help them navigate through the e-commerce world. Dubbed the “Success Squad,” these resources help business owners with training, integration, strategies for growing traffic, tips and tricks, plus suggestions on how to save those consumers that abandon their carts during shopping.

SMB’s can also implement a chat feature on the platform to help customers looking for assistance. Some merchants that are afraid of e-commerce having a negative impact on foot traffic can offer coupons to help increase store visits. Bigcommerce also works to help the SMB understand the process for upselling customers that come to the site.
Of course, consumers come to SMB websites on a multitude of devices. The Bigcommerce platform has mobile-optimized design built into it to make sure that the consumer has a consistent experience no matter the device.

As Bigcommerce looks to expand its footprint across the business community, it will be looking for more design partners that are eager to help local businesses expand their sales on the web.