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Importing and exporting files on Big Commerce can seem like a daunting task at first but with the steps and video listed below you should be able to import and export with ease. 

 To import and export on Big Commerce you will need access to a program like Excel, Numbers, or Google Sheets that supports CSV and XML files. CSV is recommended due to the fact that it is needed if you plan to import exported data back into Big Commerce. The CSV requires certain fields for import. Creating new products requires:

Image files that are either JPEG/JPG, GIF or PNG.

For other common issues visit the Big Commerce 

 Big Commerce provides two export templates. 

 (recommended) - This template allows you to skip steps in the import process since it prefilled headers that are the same as the ones Big Commerce uses. 

 - this template only has basic fields like name, weight, description, and price. You can make your own 

 and decide which export fields to include. 

Optional- Check Save export to the server for later download (this will save progress in case any interruptions happen while exporting

Check the box next to Bulk Edit Re-Import

Edit the Link Import Fields to match the headers in your CSV spreadsheet (if you used the Bulk Edit option this isn’t necessary)

Options will come up click More Information to check for any warnings found during the import process

 When adding a new product there are some things that are required. Required fields for a new product:

Leave this field blank otherwise the product will not upload correctly

To ensure import runs smoothly do not import more than a couple hundred items and use the Bulk Edit CSV if possible. 

 To create product variants tied to product options, you will need to add sub-product SKUs or Rules with those attributes. The easiest process is to create the base product first, export it, then add the SKUs or Rules. 

 As mentioned above images have requirements they are:

Image file names are restricted to a-z, 0-9, - and _.

Image file names cannot contain any spaces or special characters.

Image file types must be JPEG/JPG, GIF or PNG. They cannot be TIFF, BMP, or PDF file formats.

The optimal size for your product images is 1280 x 1280 pixels. Other product images (like thumbnails) will be created from the original image you upload.

If the image is already on the Internet you can use the URL to import them using the image path in the CSV file

If you’re uploading photos from your computer it’s recommended to upload them using WebDAV

Find the column in your CSV for product images. If you’re using the Bulk Edit template, this column will be called Product Image File

If you are importing new products, be sure to leave the Product Image ID column blank.

To upload multiple images for a single product, create a new column with a heading of Product Image File - # (increasing the number each time you make a new column)

To include any of the other information for that image (such as descriptions), make a new column with the appropriate heading and the same number as the corresponding image.

Once these steps have been completed import your items. If you are using a template other than Bulk Edit, match the Product Image field to the correct column on the Link Import Fields step of the import.

 folder. Then drag and drop the images from your computer into the 

In your product CSV, locate the column for product images. If you are using the Bulk Edit template, this column is called 

If you are using a template other than Bulk Edit, match the 

 There are three ways to export specific products. They are selecting individual products, export products based on search or view, export products belonging to a certain category. Here are the steps to export select individual products:

Click the checkbox to the left of the product or products you want to export

How To Import And Export On BigCommerce

Being able to manage orders and respond to messages is an important part of running a BigCommerce store. The steps below will help you understand and use the actions and different types of correspondence on your BigCommerce site.

To view order actions go to the View Orders page and on the far right side of the menu, there will be an Action button. Click that to view all actions such as editing the details of the order, shipping the products, and refunding a payment, just to name a few.

Performing actions on an order will change the 

 of the order, but manually changing the order status will not perform an action. For example, if you want to refund a customer’s order, you will need to use the refund action in this menu. Just changing the order status in the drop-down menu will not refund the order.

 will give you a rundown of order management. At 2:28 it talks about the order actions menu.

Here is a list of all actions you can see in the Order Actions menu:

Edit Order — Edit the billing address, cart contents, shipping address, shipping method, payment method and discount charges on an existing order.

Print Invoice — Print a paper or PDF invoice containing pertinent order information. See 

Print Packing Slip — Print a paper or PDF packing slip containing pertinent shipment information. See 

Resend Invoice — Send a copy of the invoice to the email address associated with the customer.

Send Message* — Send an order message to a customer.

View Notes* — Add and see any Order Comments and Staff Notes about the order. Order Comments are visible on invoices; Staff Notes are only viewable in the control panel and are not seen by customers.

Refund — Allows you to partially or fully refund an order. This action will only appear if the order was placed using a compatible payment gateway.

Void Transaction — Will cancel the order and release any funds that may have been authorized. This action will only appear if the order was placed using 

an authorize only compatible payment gateway

Ship Items — Create a shipment which specifies a carrier, service, tracking number, and shipping notes.

View Shipments* — View details, update tracking numbers, and print packing slips for order shipments. This action will only appear if the Ship Items action has been used.

View Order Timeline* — View timeline events pertaining to the order such as when the payment was authorized, the amount that was captured, or past refunds.

Some actions you’ll likely see more than others. It’s important to know as much as possible about these actions as possible. These actions are the 

Customers can send you messages from their Account page if they have signed up. These messages will be sent to the email of your choice. This email can be reviewed or changed in the Order Notifications. When you receive a message they will be displayed in the View Orders page.

Clicking the message notification will take you to the 

 button. In the control panel, the sender of the order message is the user’s email address, unless it's the Store Owner user, in which case it appears as 

 provides details about an order's transactional history. Here you will find tax calculations and notifications of when payment authorization or capture took place, as well as the specifics of past refunds.

Orders will display this icon to indicate a timeline is available:

The View Notes option allows you to add order comments or staff notes to an order without having to go through the edit an order workflow. Comments are visible on invoices while Staff Notes are only visible in the control panel and are not seen by customers.

Orders will display these icons to indicate a staff note or comment has been added:

The View Shipments option will only appear if the 

 action has been used. View Shipments allows you to see the details of the shipment, update the tracking number, and print a packing slip — all without the need to visit the View Shipments page.

Skip to the 4:07 timestamp to learn more about the Ship Items action.

To perform a bulk action, check the box to the left of each desired order, then select the action from the 

How To Manage Orders On BigCommerce

There are times you may have to go into a placed order to change some details. The most likely occurrence is when a customer reaches out to change an aspect of their order, whether it be a simple typo or a different shipping address these can all be easily adjusted in the control panel by the store owner or those with the right credentials to access that information.

When editing an order, the following details can be changed:

Once payment is approved you cannot go back and add things. If a customer would like to add more items you’ll have to create a new purchase order and if they would like to remove items a refund will need to be issued.

To edit an order that has already been charged:

The Edit an Order screen is broken down into four parts:

 — the customers billing information including their email address

 — the order summary and the area where a discount or coupon can be entered

The Customer Info section is where you will make corrections to an order's email address or billing information. When editing a guest order, the 

. If you are editing an order created by someone with an existing customer account, the 

. When editing an existing customer's order, keep the default setting to ensure the changes are saved to the correct account.

Editing an order from an existing customer

 section, you can choose to save the new changes to the customer's address book via the 

 checkbox located at the bottom of the page.

A returning customer may accidentally check out as a guest. They will not be able to view that order in their history.

To resolve this, edit the guest order and change the 

. Enter the customer's name, email address, or company name in the new Search field and select them from the list of customers that appear.

If the rest of the order is correct, click 

 until you reach the Finalize step and click 

 to save the changes. The order will now be linked to the returning customer account.

The items section is where you will go to adjust items that have been purchased, as long as you’re not adding additional items after payment has been authorized. The items section could be utilized for example if a customer ordered the wrong shirt size or color. You would manually go in and adjust this so their order gets fulfilled correctly.

The shipping section is where you will make adjustments to shipping details should a customer need that. A situation in which this will be required is if a customer put in the wrong shipping address or needs to split an order into two separate delivery destinations.

When viewing the shipping method, the original choice will be labeled as Use Existing Quote.

If you need to add a shipping charge, change the shipping method, or split the order to send it to multiple addresses (which will adjust shipping costs), a new order will have to be created. You will not be able to capture funds or authorize a new capture using the same order.

If you select None, this will remove any previously selected shipping and not assign any new shipping method. This is useful when updating an order from a paid shipping method to a customer pick-up method, where you won't be charging for any shipping costs. When downgrading the shipping method, as in the above example, use the Refund action to provide a partial refund or provide a store credit to the customer's account.

This section is where you can view any changes and information associated with the order such as Customer Billing, Cart, or Shipping Details. If you are editing an order that has already been charged, you will see the payment option that was used, the transaction ID, and the payment status.

Further down the page, there will be a summary section. This is where you will apply any coupons or discounts.

*Note- Even though you can apply a discount or coupon to an order that has been charged, it will not automatically return the difference to the customer. If the amount charged is incorrect, we recommend canceling and refunding the order, and then either you or the customer would create a new order for the proper amount. You cannot edit gift certificates once they are applied to an order.

Near the bottom of the page, you will see boxes for Order Comments or leave a Staff Note. Comments are visible on invoices, while Staff Notes are only visible in the control panel and are not seen by customers.

If you need additional guidance, Big Commerce has a video tutorial on how to 

How To Edit BigCommerce Orders

There’s no doubt that Instagram started as a simple photo-sharing app and has now become one of the largest social media platforms out there. It’s one of the best tools for businesses to reach their target audience. In this blog, we discuss why you should be on Instagram, how to set up your account, what to write in your bio, and how to set up call-to-action buttons.

Instagram boasts some impressive statistics that are advantageous for businesses when the proper steps are taken.

200 million Instagram users visit at least one business profile every day

 of accounts follow a business on Instagram.

Instagram has a huge share of different demographics

One of Instagram’s appeals is that people can choose to follow a brand, unlike other forms of advertising you can reach your audience without being intrusive. Thus, they are more likely to receive your message and convert to customers.

How To Set Up An  Instagram Business Account

Make a non-business profile (it will be changed to a business account)

Tap the three-line icon in the top right corner of your profile

At this point, you can attach your business’s Facebook page so your Instagram posts will automatically publish to your Facebook

Add your business category and contact information

Make An Impression With Your Profile Picture And Bio

Choose your profile picture. Most businesses use their logo. You will want this photo (like all the other photos you post on Instagram) to be of high quality.

Craft a unique bio. Ask yourself these questions when drafting your bio:

Instagram has call-to-action buttons and it’s highly recommended you use at least one. Here’s how to 

Instagram only used to have four options: Call, Text, Email, and Directions. They have since added new action buttons: Book, Buy Tickets, Start Order, Reserve. Determine which call to action buttons would be best for your audience and add them to your profile. You can reference these buttons in posts and stories for extra traction.

How To Set Up A Business Instagram Account

Google has shared their vision for what the next 

 will look like. In doing so, Google also discussed how their systems work today.

It is in this part of the article that they reveal a very interesting piece of information that both supports my previous quality raters hypothesis (raters can help or hurt site rankings), but also sheds additional light on a key aspect of the ranking process.

The major call out from this article is that the author, Ben Gomes (VP Search, News, and Assistant), identifies one way that Google uses its quality raters. Quality Raters are Google employees who look at search results and provide search quality rankings. Those rankings are then used to guide the algorithm. For a long time, I've believed that Raters have the ability to rank a site based on pre-defined 

, and that this ranking results in either promotion or demotion of the site in Google's search results rankings.

I've often likened this to turning the volume of your site up or down, like audio volume on your TV or radio. Raters can lower the volume, raise the volume, or even possibly mute your site's "voice" entirely (although Google's Danny Sullivan said "

" in a tweet). Even if only one page of your site is reviewed by a rater, that rating (probably) sticks with your entire site, although the weight may dissipate based on many factors (total number of pages, proximity of reviewed page to home page, site hierarchy, depth of content, etc.).

In Google's The Keyword blog post today, Mr. Gomes says that "

This statement provides additional insight into how the quality raters choose which sites to review. If your site falls within an experiment, and appears within the top 5-10 results, your site might be lucky enough to get a quality review. Previously, it was unknown how sites might fall within the cross-hairs of quality guidelines raters. It is important to remember that this is just one way that raters can find your site and impact your search rankings. There may be, and probably are, quite a few more ways that raters can find your site.

Given this insight into the algorithm, or, more accurately, a major component that shapes the algorithm, a focus on overall site quality is becoming more important than ever before. Twenty years ago, we could easily use a technique, today it's called "keyword stuffing," to affect the search results and drive our clients into the number one spot. We were overnight geniuses. Then, when this technique no longer worked, we migrated over to inbound links. When Google determined that this didn't work either, and Google got smarter, we made the shift to quality content and awesome user on-site experience (site usability via awesome design and content).

It is the role of a website's chief marketing officer to ensure that the content on the site, the overall message, and the user experience all guide the Rater to giving at least a neutral score, but at best, a positive score.

Googling any of the concepts discussed here will certainly result in contradictory opinions about how Google uses their Quality Raters. it is important to remind ourselves of the black box that is "the algorithm." Google is so huge that no one fully knows exactly how search rankings are produced in every scenario, and this is by design as well as by necessity. Google itself points to the algorithm and constantly references Machine Learning and AI.

This discussion wouldn't be complete without at least a reference to 

 and how it interprets and replies to the 15% of never before seen queries that Google receives daily. With Google busy indexing the world's information, that leaves a lot of room for interpretation of how to best help your site rank in those search results for your desired keywords and phrases.

First, figure out the questions that your audience will be asking and answer them (

Then, be sure to answer those questions in a way that is easy to use and understand (

Then, never quit learning, searching, and thinking about how to make your site better for your users (

How Google Quality Raters Affect Site Rankings

Step 1 - Identify your niche (Who do you sell to?)

What is a niche and why should you care? A niche is defined as: denoting or relating to products, services, or interests that appeal to a small, specialized section of the population. For some, this seems counter-intuitive, why would I want to exclude potential customers?

Unless you’re looking to directly compete with Amazon and Walmart, you’re not really selling 

, right? Most likely you’re selling a certain type of thing, to a certain type of customer. If so, you’re already using niche marketing!

Smart business owners will write down (in a marketing plan) what niche they want to serve and how. Haven't written out your marketing plan yet? Neither have most of your competitors and other small to medium sized businesses across the US. Wouldn't it be great if you had an advantage over your competition? Start with writing your marketing plan.

Step 2 - Market Conditions (What is unique about you?)

The first thing to do is to scope out the conditions of your market. How many competitors do you have? Are there large competitors operating in the space? What kind of needs and pain points are being served? Is the market growing? Most of this information is easy to find online.

Google and Bing are your friends here. That's right - Bing too. You might be surprised at the quality of search results you get from Bing. Start by searching for major keywords and brands in your industry and see who pops up. In those results, what are you seeing? Are there tons of results from huge competitors, or are you seeing results from smaller players? What kind of issues are they addressing with their pages? Identify trends and opportunities as you're doing your research. Write them down! You'll need those notes when you're writing that marketing plan.

Step 3 - Grow Beyond Your Core (Thoughtful Expansion)

You’re improving your customer's life by solving a problem or fulfilling a need with your product. Now that they have trusted you with their credit card, what can you sell them next?

Amazon has found that by having a large catalog of products that are able to be delivered quickly, customers often think of them first when searching for a product online. Customers then buy from Amazon because they’re reliable, they have a huge selection of products, and they provide extremely fast shipping. Amazon solves those consumer “pain-points” and expands their market reach daily. Remember when Amazon was just selling books online?

Your goal should be to find those ways that you provide solutions to other customer needs. Maybe, instead of having the biggest selection and lowest prices, you have the highest quality and very specific products. This appeals to a different segment of your market who are looking for those things. Perhaps you don't have every single product in your category, and instead you focus just on the highest quality products. Would this develop more trust for your website as a brand?

Step 4 - Study your Competition (and build your brand!)

Look carefully and see if you can figure out what business model your competition is using. How are they getting customers? What language do they use in their marketing? Identifying these opportunities can give you insight into your market and help you differentiate yourself from the competition. Being the best at understanding the terms your potential customers use can definitely be an advantage (i.e. keywords and phrases rather than industry jargon).

Instead of competing directly, find out where your competitors are weak and become the best for that thing. The advantages to this approach are that you don’t have to butt heads with competitors and you don’t have to fight for the same customers. What you’re looking for is how you can help the people they don’t help. This sets you apart and gives you your own segment of the market, that you can help, that the competition doesn’t care about.

Imagine a situation where customers, while able to find the product anywhere, can’t easily find information on the best way to use your product. If you’re the only retailer that also provides well-made instructional videos with your products, you’re meeting a certain need for your customers and setting yourself apart from the competition. This is just one way of meeting unmet needs your customers have.

Step 5 - Work Together (Choose the right team)

As a retailer, you most likely work with suppliers, distributors or other business partners and allies. Work with them! Remember, that your success helps them and vice versa. As for links to your website. Ask if you can contribute content that can be included on their websites with a link back to you. Many of them are looking for store owners like you to collaborate with on marketing, strengthening your ties and creating beneficial business relationships. Reach out and work as a team to expand in your niche.

You also need help with your day to day business operations. The list of tasks in a successful e-commerce organization are only beginning with shipping, merchandising, ordering, website maintenance, and marketing. As a business owner, it's important to identify when you have matured beyond the point of being 100% DIY (do it yourself). Did Amazon become Amazon because of only Jeff Bezos? When do you think was the last time he (seriously) picked/packed orders? Identify the tasks that you, the leader, should be doing and then hire out the rest of the tasks. Your business is ready to mature to the next level!

Niche marketing is a simple, yet effective tool available to you. Find out where you stand in your market, and find out who it is you’re serving and what needs they have. Don’t worry about selling to everyone, and dial down to focus on meeting the needs of your niche. You’ll get more quality customers and more revenue that way.

Marketing 101 - 5 Steps to Winning Online

Technology is constantly evolving. Long gone are the days when you could make a simple website, built for desktop, and tons of leads would come your way. Today, you have to build your site for both desktop and mobile visitors. In fact, you may even find that the majority of site visitors are on mobile devices, rather than desktops. Mobile versus desktop site usage varies by industry and website type, but the message is still the same... Your website has to be designed for mobile. For website owners, knowing how to tell if your site is truly mobile friendly is often difficult and time consuming. That's why it is important to find a great web design company that you can trust (hint hint, Ventura Web Design & Marketing).

While not everyone is a web design expert, we do believe that the more a store owner knows, the more successful the website will be. This doesn't mean that you should become the primary web designer for your site. If you did, you would never have time for your vendors, your customers, or your family. Nevertheless, the information below is presented in a "How-To" style so that you, the store owner, can understand what your web designer should be doing for you. I hope that these tips are easy to understand and help you to get the most out of your website design project.

Start from the Ground Up with Mobile-First Design

The best way to optimize your site for mobile devices is to start when your site is being built. You can approach your website build or redesign from a mobile-first perspective.

You might be wondering what the heck does "mobile first" even mean? It means to begin your design for the smallest screen possible. This approach may seem odd, but it has advantages over "traditional" design techniques.

The small size of a mobile device forces you to focus on what the most important features of the site are. This provides a solid foundation to build into larger sizes. Large display usually include all the bells and whistles. When you start with large screens, you have to strip away as you go smaller. You run the risk of losing features on mobile devices or making it feel like an afterthought.

With mobile-first design you can focus on content. This allows you to create a hierarchy of what's most important. An emphasis on user experience makes your site easy to use. Optimizing for speed allows more people to see your site. To truly have a site that's mobile-optimized, it needs to be built for mobile.

Design your site from the ground up for mobile devices

Build to larger size devices to expand on the core content and features

While all that is great, what do you do if your site was not built using a mobile first approach? Well, we've got some helpful tips to improve your mobile performance no matter how your site was built!

Let's talk about the elephant in the room: images! It's true, images are a huge contributor to heavy and slow loading websites on mobile. Technology continues to improve, many desktop displays are now 4k resolution or higher. This is great for the web, we can show so much more detail, and quality throughout websites. But, sometimes it's easy to overlook smaller devices, particularly mobile phones.

For example, let's consider two image sizes: a large desktop web hero image and a mobile hero image. Our example desktop version at full quality comes in at 923kb, while the mobile image is only 302kb (32.7%). Even then, you would be surprised how many websites don't change the image on mobile devices.

Image file types and quality have a lot to do with file sizes. For many images, it's possible to greatly reduce the file size. In the web design & development industry this process is called "optimization". Here's our example image sizes when optimized: Desktop = 207kb (-77.5%), Mobile = 68kb (-77.4%). That's a massive difference! Optimizing your images for mobile will have a huge impact on your site's performance.

Lastly, when it comes to image file types, the standard and most widely format used is the "JPG" format. JPGs are great for photos, textures & background images. They do lack the ability to be transparent. When you compress JPG files, it usually results in a slightly blurry or "fuzzy" version of the image. For this reason, they're not ideal for logos, crisp text or similar applications.

When you need to display a logo, text, icon or similar small elements, the go to filetype is "PNG". PNG files use a lossless compression algorithm. Lossless compression means you don't lose colors or quality when the file is saved. They also include an "alpha channel" used for transparency. The downside is that PNG files tend to have a larger file size than their JPG counterparts.

Use the correct filetype for the situation

You may have heard the term "responsive design", but what does it mean? It's an approach to website design development in which the website responds to the user. The way that the site changes is usually based on screen size, platform, and orientation.

We build responsive websites using technology designed that responds to the user's device. From a practical standpoint, this has the advantage of allowing only one site to be built. Responsive websites support a huge number of devices. Without responsive design, we would need to build a site for each device.

Using this technology we can decide which images are seen based on the user's device. We can also change the layout and design styles as needed. This provides the most efficient version of the site for every device.

Create one website that works on a large number of devices

Optimize image delivery, layout and styles for each size device

Even with "mobile-first design", other factors can affect how efficient your site is. One major contributor is your site's code structure and scripting.

With so many plugins, apps & other features that can be added to your site, it's easy to go overboard. Sometimes those features can slow your site down and make it less efficient. That's especially true for less powerful mobile devices.

The best way to remedy this is to decide what features are most important to your site and slowly add one at a time. Keep track of your site's performance before and after the addition. As you add more and more you'll notice that it may start slowing down. Don't give it too many tasks (or the wrong tasks) to do when a user arrives at the page. Try to make your website do the least amount of work needed.

Remove excess scripts, organize and minify code, "turn off" scripts that are unneeded. For many owners, this needs a developer to optimize the site without breaking it.

Watch out for code bloat and unneeded scripting slowing down your site

When adding features, test, test and test again to make sure it's working as intended.

Remove or alter scripts as needed to improve performance

Optimizing your site for mobile is a great way to improve your user's experience. This affects all areas of the business, particularly if you run an e-commerce site. Customers are more likely to buy if your mobile site works well.

Optimizing for Mobile Web Design

Running a BigCommerce store is a great way to sell your products online. However, sometimes customers might add items to your cart, but never purchase them. Luckily, the BigCommerce platform keeps tracks of these "abandoned carts". They also offer a user friendly way to contact customers who have left their cart full via "Abandoned Cart Emails".

 people put items in their online shopping cart only to leave it without completing their purchase.¹

That's a lot of money on the table! What would it mean to you to get 1%, 5%, 10% or 20% of those "lost" sales? That's exactly what a proper abandoned cart campaign can do for you.
We've put together a How To Guide for store owners like you to activate and customize your abandoned cart emails.

Getting Started with Abandoned Cart Recovery

Before we begin, we're going to assume you have access to Abandoned Cart Emails via a "Plus" level BigCommerce plan at minimum. To learn more about the feature, see the 

BigCommerce Abandoned Cart Saver support article

Now then, to begin the process, log in to your BigCommerce account and access your store Dashboard. From here you'll want to find "Store Setup > Store Settings > Miscellaneous" Then scroll to the bottom of the page. You'll be able to activate the abandoned cart emails as well as make some choices about how often you will be notified.

Now then, to edit the emails, From the dashboard you'll want to find "Marketing > Abandoned Cart Notifications". On this screen you'll be able to activate or deactivate 3 different emails.

In order to edit an email from the Abandoned Cart Notifications screen, find the header "Action" and click the three dots corresponding to the email you want to edit. You'll be presented with the following screen:

From here you can change your Subject Line, Message, Coupon Code and Send Time. For most users, this is enough customization to add some personality and branding to your emails. Feel free to add your logo or other images and bring your emails to life!

How To Import And Export On BigCommerce

How To Manage Orders On BigCommerce

How To Edit BigCommerce Orders

How To Set Up A Business Instagram Account

How Google Quality Raters Affect Site Rankings

Marketing 101 - 5 Steps to Winning Online

Optimizing for Mobile Web Design

BigCommerce Abandoned Cart Emails - How To Guide

5 Easy SEO Boosts

Ecommerce Content Marketing

7 Lucky Marketing Tips for Friday the 13th

Importance of Branding in Web Design

How Do I Generate New Leads?

5 Reasons to change your Banners Regularly