The Next Big Thing August ‘24: 100+ Innovative New Product Features and Integrations

At BigCommerce, we’re committed to helping our customers succeed and grow their ecommerce businesses. That’s why we’re excited to announce the August release of The Next Big Thing. Our latest comprehensive product launch includes over 100 new features, software releases, and partner integrations — enabling brands and retailers to more effectively grow their customer base and stay ahead in today’s competitive ecommerce landscape.

“With our latest developments, you’ll be able to reach more customers globally, create stunning composable storefronts, boost your B2B business, harness the power of AI, convert more shoppers into customers, and unlock new developer functionality,” said Jordan Sim, VP of Product Management.

Here are a few of the highlights from The Next Big Thing:

Build high-performance, visually stunning composable storefronts

As an open SaaS platform, BigCommerce empowers brands to take a composable approach to ecommerce, allowing them to build high-performance storefronts that integrate world-class technology. 

With features like Catalyst and the front-end content management tool Makeswift, BigCommerce is simplifying the process of building a modern, composable site that’s SEO-optimized and designed to scale.

• Flexibility and innovative design become one with the addition of Makeswift to a brand’s composable Catalyst storefront. Businesses can reach new levels of creativity and efficiency with Makeswift’s intuitive visual builder and design previews.

• BigCommerce is introducing Catalyst integrations, single-click apps, and cross-border commerce tools that enable users to get the benefits of composability with the ease of SaaS, simplify integration installation, and cater to global shoppers.

• Minimize back-office tasks and enhance the user experience with Makeswift tools designed to optimize team collaboration, reach global markets, streamline workflows, educate shoppers, and create custom features.

• Brands can take advantage of BigCommerce’s headless capabilities by integrating Makeswift with their CMS of choice, such as Contentful, Contentstack, or Sitecore.

Connect with international shoppers and grow global sales

To successfully expand into international markets, brands need access to tools that allow them to offer a localized buying experience. BigCommerce is making it easier for businesses to connect with customers worldwide with its latest features designed to create high-performing shopping experiences tailored to specific regions.

• Boost conversions by offering a customized checkout experience with localized shipping options, flexible tax pricing, and international payment methods. Explore new international payment integrations, like OXXO, which allow brands to more effectively cater to international shoppers.

• Take advantage of BigCommerce’s Multi-Storefront feature to effortlessly localize catalogs. Tailor product attributes and variations based on region to improve add-to-cart conversions.

• Enhance the customer experience with the ability to localize blog settings and posts by storefront channel. 

• With Makeswift, brands can visually customize their site based on visitors’ geographic locations, increasing accessibility and engagement with a broader audience.

Elevate the B2B buyer experience

As a leading B2B ecommerce platform, BigCommerce provides robust features designed to help brands grow their B2B businesses. With these tools, businesses can elevate their B2B buyer experience and increase sales with the latest in customization and connectivity.

• We recently launched our open-source B2B Buyer Portal, which empowers brands to transform the buyer experience with more customization options than ever before. Manufacturers, distributors, wholesalers, and other businesses can now build bespoke Buyer Portal applications, minimizing the cost of solving complex, vertical-specific B2B challenges.

• Enhance operational efficiency with company buyer roles and company-level invoice payment terms, streamlining the billing process and ensuring transaction accuracy.

• Be on the lookout for additional tools designed to improve workflows and reduce complexities — like our new hierarchical data model that lets brands mirror their back-office operations and features designed to assist with quoting.

Unlock new levels of productivity and growth with BigAI

BigCommerce stays on the cutting edge of new technologies and is always looking for ways ecommerce brands and retailers can take advantage of them. Our suite of AI-powered tools allows businesses to elevate their shopping experience, increase engagement, conversions, and productivity.

• Increase team efficiency with tools like the B2B Quotes AI Assistant to generate custom quote proposal emails, BigAI Copywriter to craft compelling and SEO-optimized product descriptions, BigAI predictive analytics for insights on the future lifetime value of new shoppers, and more.

• Optimize the user experience with BigCommerce’s AI-driven product recommendation feature and AI-powered semantic search to increase average order value and shopper satisfaction.

• Take advantage of BigCommerce’s BigAI Partners to unlock innovative artificial intelligence tools designed to enhance their ecommerce store. Leverage KlevuAI, Bloomreach, Searchspring, and Feedonomics to create personalized shopping experiences and improve team workflows.

• Developers can join BigCommerce’s Developer Center to learn from other software engineers. This community can utilize the Big Open Data Layer to simplify collecting storefront data as well as harness the platform’s open-source AI foundation app and extensions to build innovative artificial intelligence solutions.

Reach more shoppers across more channels with new omnichannel features

With so many touchpoints available to reach consumers, having a strong omnichannel presence is more important than ever. That’s why BigCommerce enables businesses to connect over 300 channels to their ecommerce store, providing a seamless and unified customer experience. We’re excited to share several new features and updates that allow brands to further amplify their omnichannel strategy.

• Offer customers the convenience of same-day delivery and Buy Online, Pick Up in Store with Feedonomics’ recent launch of Instant Commerce. With Instant Commerce, brands can list local inventory for fast delivery and enable pick-up through Amazon.

• Optimize shipping, order management, and employee controls with Feedonomics’ real-time order sync, partial shipment, and store-level access control features. Enjoy streamlined support for Instant Commerce, partial shipments, and more with Feedonomics’ API update on the FeedAMP order management automation platform.

• Manage product catalogs and channel feeds for different storefronts, as well as automatically update inventory data across marketplaces with BigCommerce’s Multi-Storefront support, multi-language support, and Marketplacer integration.

• Easily add, edit, or remove any data values in Feedonomics with a suite of data entry solutions. Download missing or invalid data requirements and re-upload data in bulk via in-platform tools.

• Brands can connect to new marketplaces, leverage GenAI for marketplace categorization and taxonomy mapping, and access additional features to streamline and grow their omnichannel business.

Boost conversions with optimized checkout tools

BigCommerce’s high-performance composable platform already enables brands to achieve high conversion rates. We’re introducing new checkout optimization tools that allow brands to take their conversions to the next level so they can outperform their competition.

• Brands that integrate Fastlane by PayPal can provide a passwordless checkout solution that helps drive conversions. Early results of the Fastlane Early Adopters program in the US have shown that it can accelerate checkout speeds by nearly 40% compared to a traditional guest checkout.

• Sell more with new conversion-boosting promotional tools and discounting options to offer more flexibility and drive sales.

• Take advantage of custom checkout features to offer a localized purchasing experience based on region, securely save payment information for repeat shoppers, and provide more advanced delivery options — improving the user journey.

Drive faster and more secure operations

BigCommerce offers enterprise-grade security and compliance to all customers, allowing them to boost team efficiency and provide a better user experience. Our assortment of operational tools makes managing a brand easier, faster, and more secure than ever before.

• Easily search, view, and switch stores with a new top bar and updated navigation design in the BigCommerce Control Panel — now with a sleeker, modern look and available in more languages.

• Streamline operations with new features designed to improve inventory management and updates across multiple locations; artificial intelligence tools that minimize back-office tasks; and features to simplify shipping, order fulfillment, billing, and more.

• Enhance the safety of customer data with improved UPS shipping protection, new cloud security measures, and enterprise-grade permissions that let brands manage store access across individual users, groups, partners, and storefronts.

Discover new and improved developer tools

With BigCommerce’s open-source framework, the sky's the limit for developers. We design our platform with developers in mind and provide extensive resources to meet their needs. Build better ecommerce experiences faster with new developer tools, guides, and platform updates.

• Developers can now enjoy a fresh new look and branding language to help them navigate resources with ease. We’ve updated our guides and references based on developer feedback, including documentation for apps, authentication, checkout, and storefront GraphQL.

• To empower developers to share their experiences and knowledge, we now offer the ability to contribute to our foundational documents. 

• Explore improvements to our development portal and BigDesign React library, which streamline and accelerate app creation.

• BigCommerce is introducing several platform updates, including enhancements to Catalyst, B2B features, AI capabilities, catalog management, APIs, billing, and checkout processes — all designed to enhance the user experience and improve backend efficiency.

The final word

At BigCommerce, our goal is to provide top-of-the-line tools that empower brands to grow their business and achieve ecommerce success. Our commitment to delivering commerce without compromise ensures our customers can scale without limitations.

“We’ve been optimizing across our entire platform and we’re delivering it right to your fingertips. This is commerce without compromise. We can’t wait for you to experience our latest product innovations,” said Sim.

Learn more at bigcommerce.com/next-big-thing.