An Eye on BigCommerce

BigCommerce is a hosted shopping cart solution from the folks at Interspire that promises to make it easier for clients to market across multiple channels.

Each week, I try to present you with what I call a showcase. It is supposed to provide positive inspiration for your own design work. So below, you will find a list of several aesthetically pleasing examples of sites running on the BigCommerce platform. Yet, I have added a bit more, because the experience of preparing this showcase was rather different.

As I was seeking a topic for this week's showcase, I came across a somewhat negative ad on Google. It implied something disparaging about a particularly popular ecommerce platform and pointed folks to BigCommerce. I followed the link, and once on the BigCommerce site, I discovered that the company had quoted Practical Ecommerce, with which this site is affiliated.

Shows BigCommerce site

The way that BigCommerce had used Practical Ecommerce seemed to indicate that the publication was endorsing BigCommerce's interface. The exact reference read, "A much more intuitive interface than others."

shows detail of the quote

It turned out that the quote actually came from Cyndi Pedrazzi a BigCommerce customer who the company had arranged for a Practical Ecommerce staff member to interview. Pedrazzi had said, "BigCommerce provides a much more intuitive admin interface than many other ecommerce platforms, and that’s important when you are the admin." (I added the italics for emphasis.)

Shows the source of the phrase

Although I was a little annoyed, I know that honest people make honest mistakes. In fact, in the mistake category, I am the supreme and eternal leader. So I decided to check out the other quotes on the BigCommerce home page.

BigCommerce said that TechCrunch had described it as a solution that "powers everything related to an online storefront," which, it turned out, was essentially true, but again not properly quoted.

Show the detail of the TechCrunch quote on BigCommerce

If I have identified the proper source of the quote, then TechCrunch writer and experienced journalist Leena Rao did in fact write, "BigCommerce helps small businesses power anything and everything related to an online storefront from search to inventory to online payments to marketing and SEO," in a March 24, 2010 post. (I added the italics for emphasis.)

Shows the quote from TechCrunch

This was a weighty endorsement from a trustworthy reviewer, but again it had been improperly quoted, however slightly.

The next quote I followed up on came from Forbes, who, according to BigCommerce, said that the platform was "a high-tech spin on an old school business."

Shows the detail of the Forbes "quote"

With this quote, I was also very interested in the context, since I wasn't exactly sure what it said. Searching the complete phrase (wrapped in quotes) turned up no results on the Forbes site.

A search for the term, "BigCommerce," returned one article from April 2010 that did not seem to mention the company at first. Eventually, I figured out that the BigCommerce reference was on page two of the article, but not until after I had listened to a 15 minute audio interview with BigCommerce co-founder Mitchell Harper that had been published on Forbes.

Here is what Sramana Mitra, the article's author, actually wrote in Forbes.

"These are a few examples of how a high-tech spin is being put on a quintessentially old school business. Providing the high-tech spin are companies like Austin, Tex.-based BigCommerce."

Shows phrase on Forbes website

This was hard to explain away as an honest mistake. BigCommerce's marketing folk had paraphrased what the Forbes article said and packaged it as a quote. Perhaps, I am being too picky.

The final home page quote came from Internet Retailer. In this case, the quote was, in fact, a verbatim reproduction from a July 30, 2010 post. To repeat, this example was perfectly quoted.

Shows detail of Internet Retailer quote

As I reached the end of my journey, I had gone from being annoyed by what might have been a possible mistake to being suspicious that BigCommerce's marketing did not exactly know what a quote was.

Of course, telling you about my experience shines some light on the BigCommerce marketing, which is a really good thing, since they do seem to have a good product, quotes aside. (Wonder if "a good product" will show up on their home page?)

Now, we can look at some very nice looking sites, built on the Big Commerce platform, starting with Pedrazzi's Yubo.