BigCommerce – Setting up your online shop – Part 2 – Changing the look and feel of your BigCommerce Online Shop

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BigCommerce – Setting up your online shop – Part 2 is all about changing the look and feel of your online shop.

If you have not registered your Online Shop with BigCommerce, please do so now.

If you would like more information on setting up your online store visit the BigCommerse – Setting up your online shop – Part 1 article.

When you access your admin panel of your Bigcommerce Online Shop you will land on the ‘hub’ of your site.  From there you can make the necessary changes.

If you have completed all the steps in Part one, you can click on “Choose a store design and optionally a logo.”

You will be redirected to this screen.

Choose a template of your liking and click on “Apply this template”

You will have to answer some questions.  Take special note of this.  We will have a discussion about ftp and custom templates at a later stage.  Alternatively, if you need a template custom made for you, you can get a freelancer to do it for you by visiting Freelance Express.

After you have confirmed their terms and conditions, you must click on “apply”

You will receive a message that the template has been applied.

Right Click on ‘Preview Site’ to see the changes you have made.

You will notice that there are products loaded into your store.  Do not delete them at this stage, as they will give you a good indication on how to add products to your store.

Lets move on to the logo creation.

For this exercise I am not going to fiddle with a new logo.  I am going to use the automated option by clicking on the “Create a new logo image for my store based on my store design” link.

 

You can play around a bit or upload your own logo.

After you have finished this step, the changes you’ve made, can by seen by clicking on ‘View Site’

Now comes the really fun part of customizing your BigCommerce online shop!

In your admin page, click on “Design Mode” and then on “Open my site in design mode”

Here you can move the blocks around to suit what you would like.

The next tab you should look at is the ‘mobile’ tab.  It is very important that you activate this.  This makes it possible that your clients can access your BigCommerce Online Shop via their smartphones.  There aren’t any step by step information for that.  You can just confirm that you want this feature.

The next tab is the ‘email’ tab.  These emails are emails that are automatically sent to your customers.  You can click on ‘edit’ for each one of them and change the wording to what you’d like.  But usually the defaults are more than adequate.

On the header tab, you will be able to change the header image of your BigCommerce Online store.  Make sure that your new image is the exact same size as the one shown under the tab.

The last tab is the template files.  If you do not know what you are doing, please DO NOT change anything there!

Now you have all the basics set up for your BigCommerce online store.  Next we will look at creating payment gateways.

When you have these ready, you can go on to creating your products on your BigCommerce Online Shop.

 

BigCommerce – Setting up your online shop – Part 1

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Starting an online business is not one of the easiest things to to – contrary to what other people would like you to believe.  Deciding on which platform to use can be even more daunting.  Luckily BigCommerce offers the novice and advanced user, an easy to setup, ecommerce system where you can start selling your products almost instantaneously.   You may be wondering why I say ‘almost instantaneously’ and my answer is simple.  You will only start selling after you’ve done some marketing for your store.  But more on that later.

BigCommerce offers you a huge opportunity to try it for fifteen days – absolutely free – and you don’t need a credit card at all to try this product.  This is a great feature as we are all weary of trying something new especially when we have to give information about ourselves that we deem to be private and/or dangerous to share.

Setting up your BigCommerce is very easy.  Access BigCommerce here and follow the step-by-step instructions.

Step 1 – Creating your BigCommerce account

Remember to fill in the correct information!  Pay special attention to your Shop Address (Please type the URL where you can copy and paste it later when you get your Google Maps API key).  Basically what this means that BigCommerce creates a subdomain for your online shop on their server.  This will also be the URL of your store where you will direct people to.  Make it easy so that people won’t need to think about how to get to you store.  Ease of use for your client should always be the nr 1 priority of your store.  Make sure that your password is kept in a safe place.  DO NOT use dates and personal sentimental numbers.  This is your store, so your admin access should be difficult to hack.  And don’t save it in a file called ‘passwords’ on your computer.  Give it a totally unrelated name.  Your email should be a legitimate email.  I would advise you to create a gmail email as well.  You will be needing this to add your Google Map key to your store.  This gmail email address will also enable you to create a google analytics, adwords and adsense account as well as giving you access to google webmasters.  All of these are necessary if you are really serious about making a success of your online business!!

After you have clicked on the ‘Create My Store’ button, you will be directed to this page.  DO NOT navigate away from this page or refresh the page.  It takes a little while for the store to be created.

If all went well, you will be directed to this page.

It is always a good thing to watch the instructional videos.  It makes it easier for you and easier to understand the platform.

On to …

Step 2 – Your BigCommerce online shop settings. (Do not click save until you’ve completed all the steps!)

1. Give your store a relevant name – this is what your store will be called and usually shows in big bold font in the header section.
2. Supply your store address.  You could use a postal address, but people prefer to know that there is a real person with a real address behind the store.
3. Always use a legitimate email address.  Use something that reflects the name of your store IE: mystore@gmail.com (don’t use a ‘free’ email, if you don’t have to.  Rather register a domain with your storename IE: www.mystore.co.za and make use of a setup email from there – admin@mystore.co.za.  I know it sounds like a lot of work, BUT if you are serious you should do it right from the beginning.  Don’t use shortcuts if at all possible.  If you would like to register a domain for your store’s emails, please send me an email to admin@freelanceexpress.co.za.  Cost of a .co.za domain with 5 email addresses is R100.00.
4. Ignore the ‘down for maintenance for now.
5. Complete your physical dimensions.  If you are planning a South African Store, please make use of kg’s and cm’s
6. Your homepage title is very important.  Make it relevant to the products you are planning to sell.
7. Keywords – these are also very important as these are the words you dedicate to your store with which people will find your store.
8. Do not change the redirect.

Language and Date settings

This is self explanatory.  Use English and don’t click on daylight savings as we do not use that in South Africa.

URL Structure

The URL Structure of you site is very important.  Always use SEO Optimized (long) as Google tends to show sites that have keywords in the URL’s first.  For instance, if you are selling books it will work like this:

First you get the category – Books and then subcategory – eBooks and then your product – Sell products online.

Your URL will read: http://mystore.mybigcommerce.com/books/ebooks/sell-products-online/  This means that you have two short keywords – books, ebooks – and one longtailed keyword – sell-products-online – in your URL.  The chances of your product showing up in Google search has just been multiplied!

Images

You can set your images as you prefer.  Leave it on default for the time being, you can always come back and change when needed.

Your BigCommerce online store display settings

1. Note – Captcha – this is a box that is provided where people should enter a code before they can proceed.  This is very important to combat spamming.  Always use this!
2. DO NOT enable auto approve reviews.  You are not always available and some people can make very damaging remarks before you can remove the remark from your site.  Always have control over what people may and may not do on YOUR site.
3. Social sharing is also very important.  Make sure you tick both the boxes in that tab.
4. Make use of all the product syndication tools.  You want your products to be sold and you need to make use of every tool that is available for you.

Search Settings

Here are no right or wrong answers.  You can set this as you wish.  Hover your mouse over the question marks for more information on each setting.

Miscellaneous Settings

I would like to draw your attention to the Google Maps API key.  Why is Google Maps important?  By using Google maps you increase your visibility in ‘area based searches’ and please follow the step by step instructions to get your Google Maps API Key for your BigCommerce online store.

1. If you do not have a gmail account, please register for one now by clicking here.  If you already have one, please keep it handy with your password.
2. Get your Google Maps API key here.

Click on “I have read and agree ….”, enter your BigCommerce Online Store URL here.

Click on Generate API Key.  If you aren’t logged in with your gmail address, you will be asked to log in or create a new one.  You will be redirected to your key after login/signup.

Copy the key and return to your online store and paste the key in the block provided.

You have done your basic BigCommerce setup and the final step is to click on the TOP save button.  This button saves all the changes you have made.

I the next post I will show you how to change the look of your BigCommerce Online Shop.