Delegate your Domain to BigCommerce

July 23, 2012 By

When you have completed your domain registration you will need to ‘point’ it to the BigCommerce servers. This will allow customers to find your store on BigCommerce’s platform, but using your own custom Domain Name.

‘Pointing’ your customers in the right direction means logging into your own domain Registrar and changing a minimum of 2 nameservers – the primary and secondary – so that BigCommerce is established as the delegated destination.

In this article, we have provided two sets of instructions – one for GoDaddy and one for Webcity. If you would like instructions created for your particular registrar, please email us, and we’ll include it in the next version, and provide you with a copy.

 

How to delegate your domain name from GoDaddy to BigCommerce

 

Step 1: Assuming that you have registered your domain name with GoDaddy go to www.godaddy.com

Step 2: Login using the details sent to you in the Welcome email from GoDaddy.

Step 3: Next to Domains, click LAUNCH.

Step 4: Select the Domain Name you want to modify.

Step 5: From Namesavers, select SET NAMESAVERS.

Step 6: You’re given 4 choices, but select ‘I HAVE SPECIFIC NAMESERVERS FOR MY DOMAINS’. Enter 2 namesavers in the format, ns1.bigcommerce.com and ns2.bigcommerce.com.

Step 7: Now you’re set, so just click OK.

 

How to delegate your domain name from Webcity to BigCommerce

This tutorial applies if you have registered a domain name with Webcity.com.au. When you registered your domain name you would have received an email Welcome letter. It will have contained your domain login information.

Step 1. Go to https://www.webcity.com.au/secure/domains/man.cgi

Step 2. Login using the details sent to you in the Welcome email from Webcity.

Step 3. On the page that loads, click the Nameservers tab:

 

Step 4. This will load the Nameservers management page. After you purchase your domain, it will be pointed to Webicty’s own nameservers; you will have to remove them. To do that, tick every check box to the left of each nameserver listed and then click the Remove selected nameservers button:

 

Step 5. The page will reload and confirm that nameservers have been updated. Now, you have to enter BigCommerce nameservers – ns1.bigcommerce.com and ns2.bigcommerce.com and click the Add Nameservers button:

Step 6. Once complete, you will see a confirmation page with BigCommerce nameservers listed. In a few minutes (in some rare cases – hours), your domain will be ready to load your BigCommerce store

Small Revolution

Katrina McKinnon is a Founder of SmallRevolution, and AusCommerce. Katrina is eCommerce Webmaster of Camping Central and Gazebos Australia. If you'd like to connect, head over to @smallrevolution

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How to Setup a New BigCommerce Account

July 4, 2012 By

Setting up a BigCommerce Account is a very quick, easy and straightforward process – quite the opposite to what many people have experienced before when setting up an online eCommerce solution. As soon as you have finished the setup process you will essentially have a ‘complete’ store that is nearly ready to push live. 

To complete this activity you will need:

  • Preferred contact details such as business address, email address, phone number to provide to BigCommerce.
  • Access to the email address you use, so you can retrieve further setup instructions.
  • Secure, reliable method or process for storing the username and password that BigCommerce provide. Don’t think you can just ‘remember’ the details!

14 Day Free Trial Gives You a Head Start

Perhaps the best feature BigCommerce offer is a free trial to newcomers, meaning you can use the software for 14 days before having to enter your credit card details. With our own stores, we use the 14 day trial period to set up the store so that once we start paying BigCommerce, we are able to push it live and start making money from it straight away. This gives you a good timeline to work within.

Start The Registration Process

Step 1:

Go to www.bigcommerce.com

Click on the TRY BIGCOMMERCE FREE button.

 

Step 2:

Enter your details as requested.

Use an email address that is easy for you to regularly access. BigCommerce will use this email address as the primary Administrative contact. You will receive their marketing promotions (which you can unsubscribe from) and also store orders. So, don’t use an email address that you don’t want anyone else seeing, if possible.

Choose a Shop Address name that is similar to your domain name. This will just be a temporary address that you can use before you have attached your own domain name (companyname.com) to the BigCommerce store.

Choose a password that is not used for any of your other tools or online services. For example, don’t use the same password as you need for your online banking. You will need to be able to share this password with other people such as web developers. Pick something sensible, not “password123″.

 

Step 3:

BigCommerce will automatically start setting up your store. Magic!

If Magic! doesn’t happen and your computer freezes, wait a few minutes and then check your email account to see if the store was created and it was just a glitch with your computer, before you try to make another trial account.

 

This is your first view of your BigCommerce Administration panel.

 

Step 4:

You will receive a Welcome letter to your email address. Keep this Welcome letter in a safe place, for future reference.

Write down your password in a safe place as you will need to refer to this every time you login to your store.

You have now completed the first, albeit very easy, step on your way to building your own online store. Well done!

 

Small Revolution

Katrina McKinnon is a Founder of SmallRevolution, and AusCommerce. Katrina is eCommerce Webmaster of Camping Central and Gazebos Australia. If you'd like to connect, head over to @smallrevolution

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Choosing BigCommerce for selling online

June 6, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Over the last 15 years we have worked with Shopify, WP-eCommerce, X-cart, Magento, Adobe Business Catalyst, BigCommerce, Paypal Carts, V-ASP Cart, Websphere and have even built our own in-house eCommerce software.

We’ve switched eCommerce solutions many times. Why? Because you don’t really know how the software works until you actually try to work with it and the technology has been maturing very slowly, until more recently.

In all this time I have only found two eCommerce solutions that I would personally use for my own online stores – BigCommerce and Shopify.

As a small business owner running online stores I just want software that works, straight out of the gate. Both Shopify and BigCommerce offer excellent small business solutions and are both worth a closer look. They are easy to use, inexpensive and have a well supported development base.

My final choice however has been BigCommerce, mainly for two reasons:

Reason 1 – Funding and Development Momentum

They have both have received considerable venture funding. Shopify received $7 million in late 2010 and BigCommerce has received $15 million in early 2011. However, I personally get the feeling that BigCommerce has considerable momentum in their business and therefore I want to use software that has a promise of ongoing development. My own online stores need cutting edge technology to stay ahead of my competition. BigCommerce appears to be in th best position to offer this consistent improvement to their software.

Reason 2 – Complexity that I don’t need, yet.

BigCommerce, last time I looked, has a more complete set of additional solutions built onto its core eCommerce solution than Shopify. Straight out of the box BigCommerce has exceptional Search Engine Optimisation built into the software. I can also manage 301 redirect from the Admin panel; I can control banner advertising; I can run email marketing campaigns; and I can automatically hook in Australia Post delivery. BigCommerce has exceptional customer service support.

Even now I am still discovering more components that BigCommerce offers that I can make use of, as I learn more about running my online store. So while I don’t need all of the complex functions offered by BigCommerce it’s nice to know that I can grow into them.

Why not build your own eCommerce software?

Building your own eCommerce software is difficult, expensive and requires ongoing maintenance/money.

It’s Difficult

It’s difficult because you need to ensure that the software and databases are totally secure. You are fiddling around with people’s credit card details and you don’t want to stuff that up (Like Aesop recently did!). Using a pre-built eCommerce software means you’ve outsourced tricky compliance issues such as website security, database integrity, PCI compliance and ensuring a hacker proof server. These become your headaches if you build your own eCommerce software.

It’s Expensive

Building your own eCommerce software can be expensive as there are many, many complex technical requirements. Not only do you have to cope with customer information but also product information and then marketing aspects.

Building custom eCommerce software for even just a simple online business can start at $10,000. You might get a lower quote from your developer but the software will be so simplistic that it won’t be able to adapt to your changing needs.

You might put your initial cost down to being an “investment”, but the problem is that this “investment” then needs more “investment” as software changes and breaks. Browsers and servers get updated constantly and this causes problems with software that doesn’t evolve. Your custom eCommerce store might break because the web host upgrades from PHP 4 to PHP 5. You then have to re-engage the web developers to rebuild parts of your software. Your initial “investment” doesn’t end up being a one-off cost.

If you build your own eCommerce software then you also need to manage your own hosting environment. Engaging a server technician to maintain a server is an additional cost and technical process that most small business owners could do without.

Ongoing Maintenance

eCommerce software is either offered as custom (see above why you don’t want to do this), one off purchase or leased.

If you buy the software outright it means you need to maintain the software upgrades and the server. Often a company will sell you a new software patch each year which fixes many technical issues. You still need to pay someone to install the patch for you, update the server and ensure that nothing breaks in your store as a result of the patch.

Making a one-off purchase is simpler and less expensive than devleoping your own solution, but it still requires technical, proficient maintenance and is best left to a web developer to handle.

If you lease the software then the provider will take care of software upgrades and server hosting for you. Leasing is usually constructed as a monthly payment and commonly referred to as Software as a Service. This type of software payment is getting more and more popular.

With a monthly payment from hundreds event thousands of customers the eCommerce developer is able to receive a guaranteed, reliable income that then allows them to continually improve their software. And you pay a low monthly amount for the eCommerce developer to take away a lot of worries and pain associated with maintaining software.

***

I have switched eCommerce software many times because I was never able to find one piece of software that I thought was easy to use for running a small online store.

A small online business needs software that gets out of the way and just allows you to service your customers and sell more product. In future a better eCommerce solution will no doubt come along but I believe that BigCommerce is an excellent solution for right now.

Small Revolution

Katrina McKinnon is a Founder of SmallRevolution, and AusCommerce. Katrina is eCommerce Webmaster of Camping Central and Gazebos Australia. If you'd like to connect, head over to @smallrevolution

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Why BigCommerce?

January 29, 2012 By

BigCommerce is a relatively new, but very promising do-it-yourself eCommerce platform. Since the McKinnon Group first started developing eCommerce software in the late 1990s the industry has evolved and matured considerably. In the beginning an eCommerce license from IBM’s WebSphere would set you back US$100,000 per year, and that was just the license, not the completed store!

The software industry has now evolved to a point where there are many reliable and accessible eCommerce solutions available to web developers (experts) and DIY-types (novices). BigCommerce is the first of a new breed of eCommerce solutions using Software-as-a-Service mechanisms to enable DIY-types to truly do-it-themselves.

BigCommerce is easy to use and if you do get stuck with a technical glitch the company has good customer service support and a free Knowledge Base with detailed instructions.

BigCommerce can be used to sell physical products (eg: t-shirts, tents, shoes) or digital products (eg: music, ebooks, digital downloads). It can be used to sell from any country in the world to virtually any other country, using many different currencies and delivery services.

For most online store owners running typical product-based businesses with less than US$5,000,000 in annual turnover BigCommerce will be just fine.

We use BigCommerce for our own online stores Camping Central (www.campingcentral.com.au) and Gazebos Australia (www.gazebosaustralia.com.au) and can confidently recommend the platform to others also wanting to sell online.

BigCommerce is available from www.bigcommerce.com

Small Revolution

Katrina McKinnon is a Founder of SmallRevolution, and AusCommerce. Katrina is eCommerce Webmaster of Camping Central and Gazebos Australia. If you'd like to connect, head over to @smallrevolution

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