Migrating to BigCommerce’s enterprise-grade ecommerce platform promises immense upside for brands looking to scale online sales. However, the journey has pitfalls if not adequately planned for upfront. Costly mistakes around integrations, customizations and data can derail both budgets and timelines while minimizing ROI.
This post will overview frequent errors committed by first-time BigCommerce adopters and how to sidestep these missteps by partnering with an experienced implementation provider like Anchor Group.
BigCommerce Mistake #1: Over-Customizing the Platform
The flexibility to tailor BigCommerce’s catalog, checkout and design to unique business requirements lures many new users into over-configuring the platform. However, this complexity gets costly and hinders upgrading to benefit from latest features.
The Fix: Favor native functionality over custom builds unless absolutely necessary for core operations. Leverage certified BigCommerce developers.
BigCommerce Mistake #2: DIY Data Migration
Attempting self-service when transferring catalog SKUs, inventory, orders and customer details from other systems into BigCommerce often corrupts essential information.
The Fix: Enlist experienced data migration resources with ETL tools to ensure complete, accurate transition of all historical records.
BigCommerce Mistake #3: Poor Integrations Planning
Connecting other apps like email, fulfillment and accounting tools often gets tackled late lacking proper planning around requirements and change management. Supporting outdated legacy systems won’t scale.
The Fix: Map all necessary integrations upfront during discovery to build future-proof ecosystem.
BigCommerce Mistake #4: Underestimating Design Complexity
Believing site theme customization works like configuring simple website builders leads to underestimating needs around information architecture, creative assets and technical considerations.
The Fix: Set realistic expectations for storefront design process encompassing strategy, information architecture, visual branding, templating and engineering.
BigCommerce Mistake #5: Lacking Content Strategy
Focusing solely on catalog data transition without migrating or optimizing existing site content assets to align with modern marketing results in thin, ineffective stores driving few conversions.
The Fix: Resource content production and SEO migration to carry over and improve pages, blogs, guides, policies and multimedia.
BigCommerce Mistake #6: No Performance Baselines
Absence of quantifiable metrics on traffic sources, sales volumes, conversion rates, margins and marketing costs from existing systems prevents accurately measuring BigCommerce ROI post-launch.
The Fix: Establish detailed performance dashboards covering key metrics early to benchmark against and demonstrate site improvement.
BigCommerce Mistake #7: Spotty Testing
Minimizing quality assurance and validation of site functionality, design compliance and data accuracy across devices before launch frequently results in errors visible to customers upon go-live.
The Fix: Build in extensive user acceptance and beta testing timelines before making sites publicly visible.
Finding an Implementation Partner to Avoid Pitfalls
As outlined above, migrating to BigCommerce introduces risk if not carefully orchestrated across people, processes and technology. Most merchants lack specialized in-house talent covering technical build, design, content, analytics, testing and program management.
Seeking an implementation partner like Anchor Group mitigates missteps through expertise gained launching 100+ successful BigCommerce stores. Our certified solution architects and developers steer clear of common mistakes by taking proven best practice approach to integrations, customizations, data, creative and launch readiness.
We know what functionalities align to particular business models, where brands overspend on custom capabilities unnecessarily, and how to scale seasons store demands based on deep platform expertise. This experience delivers smoother migrations, faster time-to-value, higher adoption and ultimately superior ROI.
Let our team guide your BigCommerce rollout and avoid unfortunate yet widespread errors hampering results for newly onboarding merchants. Contact Anchor Group today to make your platform transition seamless.
