Forem: katie hoesley

Recap: Multi-Location Inventory Ask Me Anything

katie hoesley — Mon, 13 Feb 2023 19:45:26 +0000

If you missed our recent MLI (Multi-Location Inventory) and BOPIS (Buy Online Pickup In-Store) Ask Me Anything session in our Developer Slack space, don’t worry! I’ve compiled all questions and answers from the AMA in this blog.

Buy Online Pickup In Store (BOPIS), also known as Click & Collect outside of the United States, is a frequently requested feature for enterprise merchants. In order to enable BOPIS, we have transformed our platform from being able to support inventory stored at a single location out-of-the-box, to being able to support multi-location inventory (MLI).

Our engineers have developed a suite of APIs that will enable agency partners, tech partners, and eligible merchants to build custom BOPIS experiences via BigCommerce APIs. More specifically, we’ve released 3 new APIs (Inventory, Locations, and Pickup Methods) and updated a number of existing APIs to support BOPIS experiences.

After reading the summary, if you still have questions, please reach out to me. Let’s dive into the AMA!

The Hosts

During this AMA, your burning MLI and BOPIS were answered by a few of BigCommerce’s subject matter experts:

Jordan Sim, Senior Director of Product Management | “I’ve been with BC since 2013. Over my 10 years, I’ve worked in and/or led teams across most, if not all, areas of our commerce platform. I’m passionate about delivering valuable solutions and seeing our partners and merchants succeed in the market.”

Christine Truong, Program Manager for MLI | “I’ve been with BigCommerce for 3 years and have worked in Cart & Checkout, Orders, Promotions, Shipping, and Tax domains. I took over the MLI Program in 2021, and I provide support to Product, Engineering, and Design, while ensuring the delivery of all the projects under this program.”

Vadim Borinski, Engineering Manager: Shipping & Tax, Pricing | “I’ve been with BC since 2013, and most of my time has been spent in the Shipping space. Recently I’ve started looking after Pricing as well and over the last few years, I’ve been leading our MLI program from an engineering perspective. I don’t write as much code as I used to (or would like to) but I do love solving problems for our users.”

The Questions & Answers

I have a client that does BOPIS today. His #1 complaint is around sales tax. His physical store is in the Kansas City, Missouri area and is frequently visited by people from both Missouri and Kansas When people from KS order online and then pick up in the store (in MO), the sales tax is not correct. Seems the issue is Checkout does not do anything related to the shipping address when customers select “pick up in store” as the shipping method. Does this ring a bell for anyone?

Jordan Sim: Thanks for submitting the first question!

As you correctly stated, today, i.e. before the MLI BOPIS APIs, merchants have been able to repurpose static shipping methods and rename them to creatively render a pickup method within Checkout.

So technically, the data is formatted in the shape of a shipping method, but it’s really pickup data that’s been shoe-horned in. More specifically, the pickup in-store method that they are displaying is really just a text label.

With this MLI BOPIS API release, we will be formally introducing a new concept called Pickup Methods. These are aware of the location and the BigCommerce tax engine (and integrations with tax partners, like Avalara) can consume this location data where the order is being picked up to calculate the right sales tax.

Related to BOPIS, one of my clients who is located in the Kansas City area told me this:

“Right now the more common issue is that people from well outside the KC area from Florida to Oregon are selecting Pickup in Store for their shipping preference. If when they selected Pickup in Store it showed the store address or made them pick a location (if more than one store exists) the problem would probably be dramatically reduced.”

Jordan Sim: This experience is all possible when you consume the MLI BOPIS APIs as you can build this experience in your own custom checkout.

Are there plans for a basic front-end implementation of BOPIS out-of-box in the future, or is the desire to keep this as an API suite for users to build with?

Jordan Sim: There are plans for a basic front-end implementation of BOPIS in the future, for both the reference theme (Cornerstone) and the default checkout that comes out of the box. The timeline is TBD.

When is the feature going live to the public?

Jordan Sim: We intend on launching this (in terms of general availability) within 1H’23. We’re currently working through Open Beta feedback — and the volume and criticality of the feedback we receive will determine how quickly we can make this generally available!

Where can we find documentation on changes/UI updates to the BigC Control Panel related to orders that are placed with a BOPIS shipping method selected?

For example, we are most of the way through a BOPIS implementation, and after sending data into the new endpoints, we noticed a new Location line appear in the order details. This is awesome! But we had to “accidentally find it” and are now wondering what other things “appear” on other screens throughout the Control Panel, and what all the “Possible UI Elements” are so we can be sure we have created all of the expected data in this new API.

Christine Truong: The support KB documentation will be updated in advance of the general availability date within 1H’23. For more context, we have updated multiple UIs to enable BOPIS within the control panel to support an end-to-end experience. It looks like you’ve already discovered one of them, i.e. in Orders. We are introducing new UIs (to enable Locations Management and Pickup Methods Management) and updating existing UIs (i.e. Orders and Catalog)

Is there a plan/timeline to more elegantly handle returning Shipping Options from a store with BOPIS enabled?

In our current implementation, all products in a cart still needed to be consigned (attached to an address) before Shipping Options are returned from BigC. This makes no sense in a BOPIS scenario. By definition, the customer’s intent is to pick the item up in-store, so making them supply a shipping address only to select pickup is very counter-intuitive.

Christine Truong: Great question! Yes, we will be handling this elegantly with this release of the MLI BOPIS APIs.

As you correctly stated, today, i.e. before the MLI BOPIS APIs, merchants have been able to repurpose static shipping methods and rename them to creatively render a pickup method within Checkout. So technically, the data is formatted in the shape of a shipping method, but it’s really pickup data that’s been shoe-horned in.

With this release, we will be formally introducing a new concept called Pickup Methods. Here you can create one or multiple pickup methods per location (e.g. In-store pickup and Curbside pickup).

And rather than shoe-horning in the data, the data will be represented as consignment type pickup, which is different from shipping, which has a different consignment type. This creates a clean design and data separation.

Are there any plans for a BigCommerce Control Panel UI to edit BOPIS Location details? If so, what is the projected timeline for that? (We are trying to plan for what tooling we need to build and if it is worth the effort).

Jordan Sim: Yes there are plans for a BigCommerce Control Panel UI to edit BOPIS Location details! We want to launch a beta of the UIs, this month, in February. This will allow you to modify BOPIS location details. So sit tight and save your efforts on tooling because this is coming your way shortly.

Regarding the limit to the number of locations that can be enabled via the API, and how it is raised: How can a merchant or partner request to create more than 4 locations for their store?

Jordan Sim: This will be available to merchants only on the ENTERPRISE plan or PARTNER SANDBOXES (who are building staging environments to test/build new sites). If you’re on the Enterprise plan, please reach out to your Account Manager letting them know how many locations you are looking to support and they’ll route the request internally to the appropriate team.

Are there any prerequisites that must be met to request more than 4 locations (for example, can the limit only be overridden for ENT and Partner stores)?

Jordan Sim: I’ll cross-link to this post which I believe will answer this question: https://bigcommerce-devs.slack.com/archives/C04LGFKLU3X/p1675294052278289?thread_ts=1674853811.195559&cid=C04LGFKLU3X

In regards to a checkout, can I checkout with 2 items in the cart where 1 item is purchased from one location (store) and another one is from another location? After successful checkout, the inventory should be deducted from different representing locations (stores).

Jordan Sim: Today, this is not possible and this is an intentional design decision. The majority of BOPIS transactions worldwide are single pickup locations only per order. A very small percentage of orders are picked up at multiple locations.

Therefore taking an iterative release approach we supported a single pickup location per order in the first release of BOPIS. In the future, we will look to support more sophisticated use cases like the one you have shared.

Will Multi-location Inventory and BOPIS be available to all plans?

Jordan Sim: Yes! MLI and BOPIS will be available to all plans.

In addition to this, we intend on launching this (in terms of general availability) within 1H’23. We’re currently working through Open Beta feedback — and the volume and criticality of the feedback we receive will determine how quickly we can make this generally available!

Will the “Partial Pickup” on a single location will be supported on the first version of BOPIS? For example, if a customer picks up one product on a day, and on a later date (at the same location) they pickup the rest of the items in his order. Will that be possible to do in the Order Admin view?

Jordan Sim: Partial Pickup of a single order from a single location will not be supported on the first version of BOPIS. In this first release of the MLI BOPIS APIs, we allow the shopper to pick up the whole order atomically, or not. The reason for taking this is because, from the initial merchant and partner research, we learned that the majority of the time, shoppers completely pick up their order in total. We do, however, want to support partial pickups for a single order from a single location in the future.

Will this be available for BigCommerce B2B Edition customers as their checkout is customized?

Jordan Sim: Yes — All your need to do is upgrade the CheckoutSDK to the latest version to get access to BOPIS. Once you do this, you will have access to the APIs that’ll allow you to customize the B2B Edition Checkout to support the BOPIS experience.

Reading through the catalog API info, “Once you update to consume the new Inventory API, management of inventory via the Catalog API will cease. All inventory management will occur through the Inventory API.”

As a Tech partner (App) that currently reads inventory_level from the product catalog, how do I know a store has switched over to the inventory API? Is there going to be a new feature in the Get Store Information API call to know where I have to read inventory for a store?

Vadim Borinski: In the short term you will still be able to read an inventory level* from the product catalog however we do discourage this as there may be some delay in syncing values — and we do intend to completely remove inventory data from the Catalog API in the long term.

More importantly, the catalog API inventory level will always represent the stock level at the default location, so you will lose visibility into stock levels at other Locations (assuming you use more than one).

Finally, yes, we do plan to add a way to indicate whether MLI is enabled or not for a store likely in time for GA.

That’s it!

And that’s a wrap on our MLI/BOPIS AMA recap! Huge thanks to Christine, Vadim, and Jordan for participating in this AMA and answering so many burning questions from our Developer Community.

If you’re a developer and build on the BigCommerce platform, join our BigCommerce Developers Slack community by applying here!

If you still have questions and this blog doesn’t answer them, reach out in our Developer Slack space, comment on this blog, or tweet at us (@katie_hoesley or @BigCommerceDevs)

Connect With Us!

BigCommerce Developers Community Update: We’re On Youtube!

katie hoesley — Fri, 10 Feb 2023 20:59:06 +0000

BigCommerceDevs YouTube is LIVE!

If you’ve been patiently waiting for BigCommerce Developers to start our own YouTube channel, you’re in luck!

Last week, we debuted our channel and our first video series, “Getting Started with BigCommerce”, filmed and edited by our Developer Advocate Stephen Hilliard.

This is our first series, with many more coming your way! We hope our YouTube page becomes a helpful, informative resource for any developers building apps, widgets, storefronts, and anything else on BigCommerce’s platform.

What Do We Need From You, the Developers?

In a word: feedback!

These videos are one of our initiatives toward making BigCommerce the absolute best eCommerce platform for developers. We’d love to hear your thoughts on the videos, the types of videos you’d like to see, and anything in between.

These videos are for you, our developer community, and we hope we can continue our video initiative by listening to and implementing your input.

What’s Next?

Head on over to our new YouTube page, subscribe, and stay up-to-date on the videos we’re posting.

We’ll continue to create video content, and if there’s a specific topic you’d love a video or series on, comment on this article, email us at devrel@bigcommerce.com, or tweet at us!

8 Books That Made Me Better At My Job in Tech

katie hoesley — Tue, 13 Dec 2022 14:59:57 +0000

I’ve always been a huge reader, I even pursued my ever-useful degree in English Literature, and have begun to be more thoughtful about what it is I’m reading. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve tried to select some books that I really think will make me better: at my job, at being a partner, at managing a house, whatever.

The books on this list have had a true impact on my career in tech, and I find myself recommending them to everyone I know that starts the path toward software engineering, pursuing their MBA, entering law school, or any other cognitively or emotionally challenging intellectual endeavor.

I highly recommend these to everyone, and if you know me in real life, you probably have one of my copies of these lying around your house!

Here they are: the 8 books that made me better at my job.

Deep Work, Cal Newport

If you stop reading this blog after this recommendation, I’m fine with that, as long as you get this book. Deep Work genuinely changed my life. Cal Newport is brilliant and writes books like interesting research papers. This book dives into how high-performing students study and how to most effectively use your brain for cognitively intense jobs. If you plan to go back to school, are in college, or want to be a software engineer, the list goes ON, this book is essential reading.

Turn the Ship Around, L. David Marquet

This book was introduced to me by my boss when we started contracting at USAA and the US Air Force and Space Force. This book gave me a glimpse into military life, but primarily focused on the importance of effective management and making all workers stakeholders.

TL;DR — if you’re in a management position (even unofficially) this will change your life.

Extreme Programming Explained, Kent Beck & Cynthia Andres

Believe me when I say this is not my typical type of reading. Technical manuals are the stuff of nightmares. However, this book helped me grasp why XP (extreme programming) is so damn effective. It’s also allowed me to fundamentally understand each element of XP, which I’m able to apply to my work despite not always operating in a true XP format. If you thrive on efficiency, even if you aren’t a dev, this content is truly work-changing.

The Subtle Art of Not Giving A Fck, Mark Manson

This book is on every book compilation list, and for good reason. Manson helps you reframe the way you think and the way you think about what others think. As a woman in tech, reframing my mindset has been really important and integral to my success.

You Are a Badass, Jen Sincero

Like the above, this book helped reframe my mindset around goals and who I aspire to be. Though this is likely categorized as “self-help”, it’s not the warm-and-fuzzy inspiring tale you’re used to (and likely avoid, like I do!). It gives practical tips, real examples, and leaves you feeling ready to take on the world.

Digital Minimalism, Cal Newport

Another Cal Newport winner! (Note: everything he writes is worth reading)

This book walks through the importance of cutting ties with our obsessive digital habits and taking the time to think deeply away from screens. This book was recommended to me by an old roommate who is now a senior developer at DropBox — so if you think folks who work in tech can’t pursue digital minimalism, we can!

Range, David Epstein

Range will really impact the way your mind works. Among other things, Epstein talks about how generalists tend to succeed due to their agile nature, creativity, and flexible thinking, and having a wide range of interests and hobbies, and areas of expertise leaves you primed to make connections, pivot, learn new things and be more effective than specialized peers. If you work in tech, this will resonate deeply.

The Defining Decade, Meg Jay

This book focuses on how important your 20s are. It’s the decade where you begin your career, frequently the decade where you begin important relationships, and so on. Even if you’re no longer in your twenties, this book helps guide you toward focusing on things that impact your life in the long run that you can work on now!

Questions? Comments? Concerns?

If you want to chat about what you’ve read or about anything, comment on this blog, or tweet at me!

Interview with BigCommerce’s Developer Community Manager Heather Barr: A Twitter Space Recap

katie hoesley — Wed, 07 Dec 2022 02:25:13 +0000

Last week, I sat down with our Developer Community Manager, Heather Barr, to chat about our Developer Community on our weekly(ish) Twitter Space.

As you read our interview, you’ll notice how palpable Heather’s passion for this community is. She has (often single-handedly) fostered the growth of our Developer Community throughout her career with BigCommerce, and her answers sound like she has no plans to take her foot off the gas anytime soon. Read on to learn more about the community we’re so lucky to have, and Heather’s vision for the future.

This article is the TL;DR of our Twitter Space!

The Interview

Katie Hoesley: Hey Heather! Thanks for sitting down with me today. Let’s get right into it: can you tell me about what a Developer Community Manager does?

Heather Barr: Thanks for having me! What a loaded question! My primary role at BigCommerce is to advocate for the community’s needs and resources while being a resource to the members as well.

To dive into these — Advocating for the community’s needs! This looks like answering these questions:

What does the community need to thrive?
What can I do to address these needs?

At the moment, this is broken down into two main categories.

Better tooling! The most important tool is our spaces, like Slack. Next are things like improving our swag offering for contributor programs (that we want to revamp!) and events/challenges, optimizing and tracking developer experience, improving onboarding, and supporting opportunities for members to do more with the community (such as working more with us or organizing community-led events and programs), access to additional resources for self-help and discovery within the community or documentation, and lastly — visibility into what’s going on and how to get involved.
More resources! For example, knowledgeable BC-ers who have a similar experience, or more experience, than myself! Since I am the most consistent and present BigCommerce contact in this space (aside from Twitter — you are rocking Twitter!) bandwidth gets pretty stretched. A large effort of mine has been to change this, and not just for the time that I’m here, but beyond that, as well.

This leads me to another large responsibility of my role: being a resource to the members. This looks like acting as someone who can test and share visibility on issues or odd behaviors that our community members are having for a faster turnaround. This benefits our community members and BigCommerce by helping identify bugs and any necessary documentation updates.

Over my tenure here at BigCommerce, my role has gradually shifted focus to these two key aspects. As most of you have likely observed, I have days where I’m more focused on long-term processes and experience improvements (that’s when y’all don’t see me as much), and then I have days where I’m much more active in the community myself. Balancing is tough sometimes, but I do the best I can and am grateful for our members who are incredibly helpful with one another.

KH: Why do developer communities matter?

HB: I can’t speak for all developer communities out there, as they all have different benefits and ecosystems that are being supported — But for companies like ours, they’re so important for a partnership. Not only that but also for building on and improving the platform, together. BigCommerce wouldn’t be the same without our partnerships and without all of the developers out there who are challenging our platform limits and building real solutions to problems our merchants face and even bringing more merchants to BigCommerce through their relationships as agencies. In my opinion, I feel that developer communities are a huge part of DevX, which is an important investment for any company to commit to, especially those that depend on developers.

KH: What is the state of our community/where do we want to go?

HB: Great question, Katie! So, it’s two-sided. I’ll tl;dr it by saying the current state of our community is what I’ll call a layup for BigCommerce and a great peer-to-peer resource for devs. Currently, our members are mostly engaged in peer-to-peer, meaning dev-to-dev, conversations, and sometimes engaging with BigCommerce employees as well.

As far as where we want to go — This is what I meant by a layup for BigCommerce’ — This is the perfect time for BC-ers to step in and learn about developers building on and for our platform. Katie, Stephen (our Developer Advocates), and I still have work to do on this front to foster that connection, but it’s something I’ve personally spent a lot of time on recently, and may have some news soon.

I want to leave this question with a note — We’re extremely lucky to have so many of you who are open to helping and sharing your experiences. Specifically speaking about our Developer Slack space — this is the general vibe of the community, at the moment, and I hope this remains a constant as we grow!

KH: Any cool community things coming up?

HB: Cool things? Yes! Over the next few months, there are a handful of things I’m excited about.

To start with — DevWeek! DevWeek is an internal collaboration week that I played a big part in organizing for some of us internal folks at BigCommerce. This is a week where our developers, our DevDocs team, the DevRel team, and I are coming together to talk about areas of our roles that overlap and to work together in solving some common problems that you all face. We’re also going to be using this time to plan for 2023, so I will probably have more to share about fun opportunities closer to EOY!

I love that these Twitter spaces are a constant opportunity for our teams and our members. Every week this is something that excites me. Katie, you do a great job with these, and a note to all of you who are here or will be listening to the recording: if there’s a topic you want to hear about, let Katie know! Or if you want to get involved to be a guest, let her know! I would love to see more devs and partners co-host or be guests on these, as this continues to grow.

Our customer community manager, Jacinda Espinosa, will be running another series of Partner Q&A’s in Q1. This is where partners can, for example, run a demo of their app and host a Q&A immediately after in our primary merchant-facing Facebook community group to get feedback, ideas, questions, etc! If you’re interested in joining, apply here!

KH: What kinds of community contributions do we want?

HB: We’d love to see our members contribute by creating content! Written or visual tutorials, blogs, how-to content, general talks, videos, or blogs on your development process, maybe something interesting your app solves or an interesting solution you created for a problem other developers likely encounter as well. Anything unique is amazing to see!

To mention a few who’ve done things like this:

Tom Robertshaw from Space48 does a great job at this with the Space48Apps YouTube channel.
Although this was last year, Max Karlsson had a memorable contribution I’d like to talk about. He wrote a 2 part blog on implementing the forgotten password workflow for headless, as it was a common topic in the community at the time — that was incredible to see and I won’t ever forget that. (Check out Part 1 and Part 2 of that blog!)
Just the other day, Jack Harner wrote a blog on Stencil CI-CD via GitHub actions. Check it out if you haven’t seen it yet!
During BigCommerceDX, the most recent community-led event organized by Space48, Matt Coy from ArcticLeaf demonstrated an Advanced Handlebars live-code tutorial that was so popular and valuable in the community.

These are just some examples, but the main takeaway is that the most impactful contributions are those that help your fellow community members. Engaging in our community spaces with each other, on Slack for example — is incredibly valuable and my absolute favorite type of contribution.

KH: What are some pie-in-the-sky goals you have for the community over the next few years?

HB: My main goal with the Dev Community over the next few years is for it to become more of a collaborative space between BC-ers and the members. Last year, I created and ran a pilot program focused on a couple of BC-ers for exactly that purpose — and learned a lot from it. Notes were taken, adjustments were made and I’m about to try again in a much bigger way.

I believe this goal has the best chance of making the Developer Community not just a space for developers, but a space that is used as a part of BigCommerce’s development lifecycle. I can’t wait to show our Community members what I’ve been working on for them!

KH: What would you like to see more of from/in the community?

HB: I would like to see more collaboration in our community between BC-ers and external developers, and I know I’m not alone in that!

I think we’re at a great time with the right people on board to start seeing these changes. Now that our DevRel team is ramped up and settling into their roles, we’re able to approach problems from different sides to move forward faster, together.

Secondly, I hope to see more community-led events, either virtual or IRL events and gatherings that our members organize and host themselves. I think as the community grows, more individuals would be interested in something like Space48’s virtual BigCommerceDX last year and other types of events where they can meet each other and share the awesome things they build on the platform.

I hope to create new ways to reward our members who do this and incentivize others to get involved!

KH: You’ve mentioned “D2D”. What’s this new program you’re talking about?

HB: I can’t say much more about this program just yet! I’ve been hearing feedback from the community and I’ve been working for y’all in the background. It’s my mission to deliver more value in our spaces to help you get unstuck faster, and have more opportunities to connect with internal BigCommerce folks and others in the community in creative and productive ways.

KH: What’s the best part about managing the BigCommerce Developer Community?

HB: Goodness, there isn’t just one!

Seeing how helpful and involved the members are taking the cake. I also really do feel like I’m making an impact here, on both the inside and outside. I know that I’m not always available or able to answer some of the questions that are asked by devs and partners, but the work I’ve been doing to help address this in the shadows I feel will start to pay off soon.

Next to that — finding and working with so many like-minded people at BigCommerce has been awesome. Branching out and creating new relationships with other BC-ers is something that has taken some time in my role, as I didn’t seek this out much when I first started. As I’ve grown in my role and met people like you, Katie, who reminded me of the power relationships have in the workplace and finding more advocates for our community members from teams outside of our own, has become one of my favorite parts of my role.

Have more questions?

We love hearing from our community members! If you have questions, comments, or anything in between, please reach out to us! You can reach both Heather and me in our Developer Slack space (if you’re a developer and aren’t in our Slack space, let’s change that! Follow this link to apply!), you can comment on this article, tweet at @BigCommerceDevs or @Katie_Hoesley, or email devrel@bigcommerce.com.

BOPIS (Buy Online Pickup In Store) APIs now Available in Open Beta

katie hoesley — Mon, 05 Dec 2022 16:25:57 +0000

BOPIS is available!

An exciting new feature of our multi-location inventory functionality is here! Buy online pick up in store (BOPIS — check out the documentation here!), also known as Click & Collect outside the United States, is now available in open beta via our APIs. This update enables merchant developers, tech partners, and agencies to create custom experiences around picking up items at their retail locations.

What exactly is an open beta?

BigCommerce open betas include production use ready functionality, which is subject to change based on the feedback from beta participants. Open betas are a great way to try out the latest functionality and have your voice heard by giving feedback to the BigCommerce team. Participants opt in to open betas, and everyone is eligible!

What’s included in the release?

We’ve released 2 new APIs, including the Pickup Methods API and Inventory API, and updated a handful of existing APIs. Together, this means that merchants who have multiple retail locations will have the tools to create custom BOPIS/Click & Collect experiences that are tailored to their buyers’ preferences.

I’m interested! What are my next steps?

To opt in, locate and click on Settings in the Control Panel menu, located on the left-hand side. Once you’ve done so, select Inventory in your BigCommerce Control Panel, as seen below.

After selecting “Settings”, select “Inventory”

A banner with an option to Try it now should be on the top of the page_._ If you want to enable the BOPIS APIs, select that! This banner also provides you with more information about the BOPIS APIs, what is coming soon, and a link to relevant documentation (also found here).

BOPIS APIs opt-in banner

To enable BOPIS APIs, click Try it now! Once you click that, you’ll see the banner pictured below outlining what is available in the beta as well as providing supplemental documentation about the API at the top of your screen.

BOPIS APIs early access mode trial success

And that’s it! You now have BOPIS enabled on your store. To learn more about our APIs, please check out ourBOPIS APIs documentation.

If you still have questions, comment on this article ortweet at us!

Staging by StagingPro Now Available on BigCommerce

katie hoesley — Mon, 05 Dec 2022 16:23:40 +0000

At BigCommerce, we understand the importance of merchants being able to preview changes to a store before pushing those changes to production. Nobody wants users having a confusing, subpar experience because they encountered some non-production-ready content!

How can we help make sure that never happens? BigCommerce now features staging by StagingPro!

StagingPro is a comprehensive enterprise integration for staging. Seamlessly integrate staging environments with existing workflows and tools, all from within your BigCommerce control panel.

“We are thrilled to partner with BigCommerce to transform the way merchants and agencies design, develop and deploy BigCommerce stores. StagingPro is built to eliminate the day-to-day challenges retailers and agencies face in this fast-evolving technology space.

Susant Patro, CEO of StagingPro

Now, instead of using a secondary store for staging and testing purposes, BigCommerce merchants are able to use StagingPro to stage and test on their primary storefront. This is a particularly huge upgrade for anyone who works in our ecosystem and enjoys experimenting with design and user experience flows before pushing to live production.

Why is staging important?

Staging is important for many reasons, but one reason really stands out: you want to test and observe your changes and approve them before pushing them to production where users interact with your program. It’s important for users to have intuitive, friction-free experiences online, and programs that haven’t been adequately tested are frequently problematic.

Staging allows developers, and in this case any merchant or developer on the platform, to observe and interact with their changes before making them visible to users. This allows for optimal user experiences, repeat customers, the list goes on!

“We are setting a new era of digital experiences through moving data, design, code, generating previews and scheduling deployments across multiple BigCommerce stores. StagingPro will accelerate RoI, improve efficiency and reduce the total cost of ownership for businesses worldwide.”

Susant Patro, CEO of StagingPro

StagingPro is a cost-effective, highly automated staging solution that allows for web development at the speed your business demands. StagingPro allows you to build staging websites as exact replicas, including the same data as the production environment, even including theme!

The best part?

You’re able to easily manage your StagingPro environment launches all from your BigCommerce control panel.

I’m interested! What’s next?

If you think Staging by StagingPro is for you, request a demo!

If you have questions, comment on this article ortweet at us, or send an email to Hello@stagingpro.com!

BigCommerce + ethos: A Partnership Exemplifying the Links Between Web3 & Ecommerce

katie hoesley — Fri, 18 Nov 2022 15:11:33 +0000

BigCommerce <> ethos

Have you been waiting for the option to have a branded NFT experience that lives directly in your store? Are you a fan of digital assets but want to be sure they have real value for your customers? Do you want users of all technical skill levels to be able to interact with these digital assets?

Good news!

Any merchant with a store on the BigCommerce platform now has the option to work with ethos! ethos is a white label NFT platform that enables brands to sell or issue NFTs.

“ethos’ platform allows brands to offer NFTs through a fully branded experience that includes real-world utility. Added utility such as discounts, air drops, early access, or special products when holding an NFT makes ethos the chosen partner for brands who want to reward and grow their customer base.” (ethos Named BigCommerce Technology Partner Press Release)

How does it work?

It starts with ethos, who creates a fully branded experience for merchants by capturing their brand’s assets, creating landing pages where users can pre-register for an NFT drop or go through the purchasing process, and more!

ethos’ NFTs can be equipped with real-world value like discounts, air drops, early access, or special products when holding an NFT. Whether your customers are crypto pros or want to use a credit card to purchase items in your store, ethos provides barrier free transaction options. Customers can buy these NFTs with cryptocurrency or traditional payment methods, and don’t need to set up their own crypto wallets and keys if they would prefer not to.

Imagine a merchant launches their first NFT and adds to that NFT a perpetual 20% off all purchases coupon that now lives in the customer’s account. Customers don’t need to track down any email confirmations or gift cards, it’s just right there in their customer account, and 20% discounts are applied to their orders!

These NFT holders are now a segment of your audience you know a lot about, and you have a direct line of communication with them: their NFTs. You can now send out special offers, freebies, event invitations, etc. to certain segments based on NFTs they’ve purchased from you.

ethos also has what’s called an eDrop. An eDrop gives you the ability to issue free NFTs to anybody! This allows merchants to issue NFTs to anyone and have any utility attached to them — maybe they send them to their friends and family to give them a 20% discount on product, maybe they want to surprise a loyal customer with a one-time freebie — whatever!

Non-crypto experts make up the mass majority of consumers today, so catering to customers with diverse crypto knowledge levels is paramount to achieve mass adoption of Web3 concepts like NFTs. ethos’ ease of use makes it possible for any merchant to hop aboard the NFT train.

I’m interested! What’s next?

If you want to check out what this looks like in practice, Saddleback Leather will be the first BigCommerce merchant to launch using this innovative platform at the end of November.

Saddleback Leather’s ethos landing page

You can go totheir ethos landing page, pictured above, and either sign up for the next collection drop or, once the collection is available, you can buy your NFT directly on that page. The NFT(s) you buy will actually live directly in your user account on the Saddleback Leather store.

If you are a BigCommerce merchant and are interested in applying for the early adopter program, or to learn more about NFTs, please click here!

BigCWeb3

Getting Started: Use Building Blocks to Compose Your Headless BigCommerce Storefront using Next.js,

katie hoesley — Wed, 16 Nov 2022 17:54:51 +0000

Getting Started: Use Building Blocks to Compose Your Headless BigCommerce Storefront using Next.js, Contentstack & Netlify!

Last week the Jamstack Conference happened in San Francisco, and BigCommerce’s team was excited to attend and present one of our starter repos!

As a composable commerce engine, we facilitate developers leveraging modern technologies and approaches like Jamstack. Open SaaS gives merchants much more flexibility and freedom of choice while still maintaining the benefits of using a SaaS platform. It’s important to us that developers get to use the tools they want to use, which is why we enable them to build storefronts with whatever their preferred tech stack is.

BigCommerce’s flexibility allows merchants to use our APIs to integrate to their existing systems and easily install third-party applications without complicating the management and upkeep of their BigCommerce store. With our headless approach, you can build with your preferred meta framework and deploy your front end anywhere.

What does the starter include?

This proof of concept headless storefront starter repo allows you to fire up a storefront with the following composable tech stack:

Next.js as our frontend framework
Contentstack as our Content Management System
BigCommerce as our Commerce Engine
Netlify to deploy — we want to deploy on Netlify because they allow the level of stack flexibility that our users want to use!

Let’s check out the repo!

1.✅ You’re here! The first step is being in this repo and hitting the “Deploy to Netlify” button at the bottom of this ReadMe.

You need a BigCommerce store! Login or Sign Up to set up a new BigCommerce store to use! Once you’ve logged in or signed up, follow these instructions to obtain your BigCommerce API credentials.
Create an account or login to Contentstack.
Create a “Stack” by selecting “+ New Stack”, title it, add a description, and click “Create”.
Now that your Stack has been created, let’s identify your API keys. Navigate to the “Settings” icon on your left hand panel.

Scroll down and select “Tokens”. This will take you to a page that has a “+ Delivery Tokens” button. Click that, and enter a name and description for your new API keys.

Select the proper branch you’re working from and your production environment (you may need to also create a production environment). Then click “Generate Token”.
If successful, you should see something like this:

Hang on to these variables, you’ll need them in an upcoming step.
Now, back to the ReadMe! Hit the “Deploy to Netlify” button found at the bottom of the page.

Once you’re brought to the page pictured below, select “Connect to Github”

Once you’re brought to this page (seen in screenshots below), give your repository a unique name and enter all of your BigCommerce and Contentstack API credentials.

Save and Deploy!

The deploy process has begun! This may take up to 10 minutes, and will bring you to a page that looks like this:

You can watch your project’s progress by clicking on the tab pictured below:

If you click into that tab, once your build is successfully complete, you’ll see something like this:

To view your site, click “Open Production Deploy” or “Permalink” — both will bring you to your deployed site!

You’re deployed! Great job! 👏

I want to use the starter! What’s next?

Fork and clone the repository here and give it a go, following the steps above (also available in the ReadMe file)! Before you get started, you will need a Contentstack account and a BigCommerce store so you’re able to obtain the necessary API keys.

If you’re building headless storefronts on the BigCommerce platform, be sure to join our Developer Slack space so you can access our #headless channel where you can pose questions and discuss with fellow developers doing similar things!

If this tech stack isn’t exactly what you’re looking for:

Still have comments? Questions? Leave a comment or tweet at us! @BigCommerceDevs or @KatieHoesley.

The App Extensions API Beta is Now Available!

katie hoesley — Mon, 26 Sep 2022 18:15:44 +0000

Before the App Extensions feature, the user experience for merchants didn’t feel as native as we wanted it to. We want apps on the BigCommerce marketplace to be able to achieve a user experience on par with our native features. This new feature is targeted at developers to build rich experiences that feel native to the merchant.

Our app platform, to date, has restricted where apps can be used. There has been a sandbox where a merchant has to go into the apps menu, select the app they want to use, and then the app loads and you can make use of it. As a consequence of this, we see a lot of less-than-desirable user experiences when it comes to apps.

There’s a trend in our ecosystem where a lot of apps are essentially extensions to existing workflows within our existing ecommerce platform. We have a lot of rich integrations that are extending tasks like Order Management, Catalog Management, etc.

For example, if you use Order Management integrations today, you may have an experience where you do some of your order management in the BigCommerce Control Panel, some of it in an app, and that flow often feels clunky to the user.

We want to fix that!

Our first step to making this process easier is this feature, App Extensions, where we’re working to connect those dots. For example, if you’re already doing order management in the context of the orders, the apps that you use can essentially inject an integration point right next to the Order so they can add additional functionality right on top of that. The same functionality is available for Customers and for Products.

Who is this Beta for?

This beta is specifically geared towards:

App Developers
App Partners

What’s included in the Beta?

By joining the App Extensions API beta, participating partners will be able to:

Have the ability to integrate with the control panel, extending the native control panel features using third party apps and allowing the user experience to feel more native
Manage Orders, Products & Customers directly within the flow of the native control panel
Interact with 3rd-party apps directly within the product screens
Integrate a CRM application within the native customer UI
Move through workflows more seamlessly than ever before!

I Want to Sign Up!

If this sounds like something you’re interested in being part of, please complete this sign-up form. The BigCommerce Product team will review your application, and if selected for the Beta, we will reach out with additional onboarding information.

BigHackathon: Summer ’22 Recap

katie hoesley — Fri, 23 Sep 2022 13:56:19 +0000

This summer was huge for the BigCommerce community! This August, we ran our first-ever developer hackathon, BigHackathon: Summer ‘22!

We wanted to encourage developers, both those who are well versed in the world of BigCommerce and those who are unfamiliar with BigCommerce altogether, to take some time to build applications on our platform that solve real problems for real users — for real prizes. And our developer community did not disappoint.

Let’s dive into a recap of the two-week hacking extravaganza!

The Hackathon

BigHackathon was open to developers, UX designers, product managers — anyone who could help put together an app on a short timeline. We hosted this fully virtually, which allowed us to bring together teams from across the world, spanning 3 continents, numerous countries and states. We had partners, non-partners, and even former BigCommerce employees submit projects!

Developers had from August 15th-August 26th to build an application that integrated with at least one BigCommerce API that solved a real problem for the platform. The prompt?

Your teams will be building solutions to real problems that BC customers and/or developers really face! This could be an issue you face as a developer, an app you think should exist but doesn’t yet, or a widget you know everyone will love.

These guidelines are intentionally vague so you can truly run wild — as long as whatever you build improves the BC ecosystem and interacts with BC APIs.

Our participants took this prompt and truly ran with it. We saw incredible solutions that ranged from management tools to help incentivize your customer to buy more to finding new ways to market products to customers.

The Speakers

Throughout BigHackathon, we had numerous BigCommerce employees spend time with our participants in AMAs, lightning talks, and advice-sessions about successful hackathon strategies, how to properly communicate about a product, how to design a mobile app, and more! It was really fun to connect our external developers, the folks who use our platform, with the developers who bring that platform to life.

Tommy Ekstrand | Manager of Web & Customer Self Service

Tommy came in and spoke with developers about a strategic hackathon approach with his lightning talk, titled “Hacking Your Strategy.” Tommy is no stranger to hackathons and gave our participants great advice about how to build and present a winning app!

Airon White | Manager of Product Marketing

Airon joined our participants twice with her two-part talk series “Build It & They Will Try It” and “Pitch It & They Will Buy It”. These talks walked devs through the product lifecycle and discussed the importance of keeping end-users in mind.

Roberto Alvares | Engineer & BigDesign Champion

BigCommerce engineer Roberto walked our participants through how to get started with BigDesign and how to incorporate BigDesign into their hackathon submissions. You can find the recap here or watch it below!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XG9KgeRcgWU

Chris Ruddell & Dan Murrell | Lead Mobile Engineer, Mobile Engineering Manager

Chris and Dan hosted an AMA about all things related to building BigCommerce mobile apps using our public store management APIs! They broke down the differences between iOS and Android, what their team focuses on most, best practices when developing mobile apps, and everything in between. Read about this event on our Developer Blog.

Pat Williams | Manager of Partner Solutions Engineering

Pat hosted an Office Hours session with developers and allowed them to pick his brain about partner solutions, what kinds of apps users gravitate towards, what solutions he’d love someone to build for BigCommerce’s platform, and so much more!

The Winners

So…who won?!

We received significantly more submissions than we anticipated (a great problem to have!). Because of this, we couldn’t just award 3 prizes, so we added an Honorable Mention category. These six projects were exemplary and extremely impressive — the teams only had two weeks to build on top of their full-time jobs and lives! We were truly blown away.

Honorable Mention Recipients:

Widget Builder | Amandeep Singh
Translations App | “Galaxy Quest” Andrew Barber, Steven McIlroy, Matt Wooten, Space48
CommerceBlocks | “Comet DeFrog” Tom Robertshaw & Tom Saunders, Space48

Top 3 Finalists:

🥉3rd place: Advanced Checkout Rules | “Not Quite TopGun” Manoj K, Priya S, Bhuvaneshwari S, Kensium

This app solved for an existing checkout problem that many merchants face. Kensium built a beautiful ui for store owners to manage checkout payment options tailored per customer groups.

🥈2nd place: Store Credit Manager | Travis Lockcuff, Jim Carpenter, MoJo Active

This app solved a problem for merchants who need to manage store credit on mass levels. Mojo Active knocked this one out of the park — their ui is beautiful and extremely intuitive, providing an excellent experience for merchants.

🥇1st place: Marketing Widgets | Scott Williams, Human Marketing

With the release of the advanced promotions editor, many merchants have been missing the promotional banner features that they loved with our legacy editor. Marketing Widgets not only brings this functionally back, but improves the ui of managing these and provides tons more customization options for merchants.

I want to join future events!

BigCommerce’s Developer Relations and Community teams have a lot of fun developer events, challenges and prize-winning opportunities up their sleeves. To stay in the know about what our team is planning for our developer community, you can:

💥Apply to join our Developer Slack space!

💥Follow @BigCommerceDevs on Twitter!

💥Visit our events page to see what events are coming up!

Mobile Apps Ask Me Anything (AMA) Recap

katie hoesley — Mon, 22 Aug 2022 14:16:14 +0000

If you missed our Ask Me Anything session with Dan Murrell, manager of our Mobile App team, and Chris Ruddell, Lead Mobile Software Engineer, not to worry! Check out the recording, or read through the compilation of questions and answers from the AMA that can answer any questions you have.

These BigCommerce Mobile App experts have over a decade of experience in mobile development each, and together almost 8 years building for BigCommerce. Simply put: they’re the ones to ask if you have questions about anything mobile app related!

Let’s dive into the questions!

How important is my mobile app versus my desktop app?

Chris: Some people think about mobile apps as almost a replacement for desktop apps, and we view them, rather, as complementary. You hear terms thrown around like “second screen”, mainly with TV watching, but that’s also really true with store management on an e-commerce platform. So, the full feature-set of being able to manage your store is on the control panel on the desktop experience.

We know we can’t do that on the mobile app, we have limited space that we’re working with…but what we can do is provide a really superior experience on a mobile device for things you would do on-the-go. If you’re taking a trip somewhere and you need to go in and change the status of an order or you’re at a conference and someone wants to make a purchase from your business, you can just open up your mobile app complete that order.

So, it’s things like that where the app shines because it can complement the experience of the desktop.

What makes a good mobile app?

Dan: Knowing what the platform’s limitations are will help you design a good mobile app. You should always start with the user experience, very early on if not first. So, like Chris said, we complement a very complex product that can do everything if you sit down at a desk or are on a laptop.

But, if you’re on the go and have a limited amount of time or space that you get on a mobile app, understanding those constraints and doing your design and your building keeping those constraints in mind is what makes a really good mobile app. A good user experience means a good mobile app.

What’s the major difference between desktop experience and mobile experience that devs should keep in mind when building apps?

Chris: The limit of space is a major difference… We have to really pay attention to the primary functions and features that a user is going to need or want. We have to make those decisions ahead of time and really hone in on them given the limitation of space, but also there are other limitations like how you interact with the application. On a desktop, you have a full keyboard, a mouse, but on the phone you’re using your finger for everything, so the amount of text you can type is limited. But, you can also do things like dragging and dropping, you have access to device hardware like different sensors and things that you wouldn’t necessarily have on a desktop. That can provide a richer experience — one example of that is being able to look up an item by its barcode. On the mobile app, we have access to the device’s camera and can scan a barcode and pull that item up. That’s a lot harder on a desktop!

Dan: I would say it’s a whole lot easier to take a picture of a product on your phone than to pick up your laptop and turn it around to use that webcam. We’ve got all sorts of advantages that we can play with like that on mobile!

Is a “mobile friendly web app” fine? Or is it best to build out a website and an app separately?

Dan: A mobile friendly website is usually pretty good as long as the people who design it put the effort in to make sure that it does the functions that they need to do in the desktop, which in our case is essentially everything, and narrows down the functions for when it’s on mobile because you can’t show a gigantic screen of options on mobile. As long as they start by keeping that in mind, you can definitely build a good web app.

Where you run into problems is when you’re designing for a website, your design language is just whatever your design language is. When you’re designing for mobile apps, the [mobile app] platforms have a very carefully thought out design language that everybody, more or less, understands.

So on a desktop, you can have a guide to help people figure out how to use your website, but on a mobile app, because that design language has essentially trained users how to use their phone, scroll a list, select something, delete things, etc. you get all that standardization so someone could pick up a phone that’s running your app and almost intuitively know how to use it. Having that familiarity on the mobile platforms and being able to make use of that — that mostly comes in a native app. A web app can try to mimic that, but it’s much more work.

Which tech stack(s) do you recommend for building a mobile app?

Chris: There are several different choices to be made when you start a mobile app project. At BigCommerce we decided early on to create our mobile app using native technologies. Meaning, for an iPhone we use Swift & an Android we use Kotlin.

But, you could also choose to go with a more hybrid approach. We had a really early iteration that was a cross-platform React Native technology. Something like that can work great if it’s a fairly simple app and you’re on a team that doesn’t have the resources to develop two separate application. It was great for getting a Proof of Concept out the door, but with the complexity we have at BC we decided to do it properly and build out two.

There are a lot of different tech stacks you could go with, but we felt it was important to go native.

Do iOS or Android apps perform better? Is it important to have both?

Dan: You should see our Slack! We have the Android vs. iPhone emojis flying back-and-forth all the time! I would say they both perform similarly. You can absolutely have two different apps, on each platform, that perform differently, however we really work towards having a 1:1 performance between the two. I think in our case, we’re pretty equal on that front, and absolutely it’s important to have both.

We’ve found while we’ve been growing internationally that while in the United States and other similar Western countries there’s a lot more iOs adoption, but when we get outside those borders, Android totally dominates. So, we’d be shutting out a lot of users one way or another.

Chris: When I hear this question, I think of App Store performance. Android definitely has the larger user base, internationally. iOS is the leader in the US. Since we’re focusing on internal expansion, it’s important to ensure both experiences are prioritized.

What are the “Best Practices & Industry Standards” when it comes to building a mobile app?

Chris: There are a lot of different best practices out there. Swift UI & Compose are definitely the standard that is quickly being adopted by the industry. Even apart from that, if you were to not use those newer technologies, the underlying principles that they bring — that reactive style of programming — has definitely taken hold. Now, most apps take a more reactive approach.

Dan: Both of these platforms [iPhone and Android] are very generously supported by Apple and Google and they make lots and lots of developer resources available. And not just developer as in the code part, but also the design part as well. There are design guides for both platforms that really help everyone build a consistent app. Those resources are available across the board!

How do you make your app work in other languages?

Chris: That’s a great question! That’s one of the things we really have valued on the mobile team is that the mobile apps, by default really, are set up well for localization. So, when we as a company made the decision to localize the entire platform and make it available in different languages, it was a lot easier task for our team that other teams.

The mobile apps are, by their very nature, set up for that. What I mean by that is that they — the framework you build an iOs or Android on — already had support for putting in your different translations. We only had an English file with all of our strings, but it wasn’t hard to add a German file and a Spanish file. And then the device controls which language gets displayed by the user going into their device settings. We don’t have to anything, the device just handles that for us.

What tools do you use to make the apps consistent between iOs and Android?

Chris: In terms of consistency, one of the most important things is consistency of design and user experience, and to that end we rely heavily on our Design team to plan out what the screens are going to look like and taking into account the differences between the platforms.

So, for instance, a text box that you would use for user input, look different on iOs and Android because they both have their own design style that the system uses. We could have forced those boxes to look identical on both, but it wouldn’t feel natural to the user. We spent a lot of time talking about what we need to keep consistent between the two and what we want to be particular to each from a design standpoint.

We have different websites and online tools we use for things like that such as Figma. We also have tools to be consistent in terms of the quality of the app, like bug reporting tools that notify us of things like crashes. That really helps us take care of bugs quickly, and if there’s a bug on one app there’s likely a bug on the other. But, there’s no tool to develop a feature on Android and copy it to iOs — we’ve got to develop those independently — but we can use the shared learning across the teams.

Dan: I’m really impressed at how well our Design team has been able to develop designs that can be made so consistent between the two platforms. I’ve definitely worked on apps that were significantly different between iOs and Android. Our designers have done a lot of work on the front end figuring these things out.

How do you ensure an app is performant, and should you use REST or GraphQL?

Chris: There are things you can do to make the app more performant, like not downloading more data than you need. The user may be roaming or on 3g and need to make decisions. So we’ve decided to only load a small amount of data as the user is viewing it, to help with performance. Caching also helps.

In terms of which tech to use, this depends on the server you intend to use. We started with REST, for example, but have recently moved to GraphQL (like our admin features). Once the GraphQL resources become more available, we’re looking to increase our use of this. The best use case for GraphQL is the orders page. This has customer info, catalog info, and order info that is required to pull. With GraphQL we could access this data with a single query, for example.

What are some things to look out for when adding coupons and discounts to a checkout cart?

Chris: When you’re adding a coupon you need the coupon code, so if your system has similar codes — make sure to type it in correctly. On our mobile app and a user adds a coupon to the order, we display what the coupon is for because they may have mistyped something. We want to make sure we make it clear to the user what coupon they’re applying before they save that order.

Also, make sure you know how your coupons and discounts work. Complex rules are an area to look out for as these can cause complications to the overall pricing. For instance, is this coupon/discount applied before or after tax? Is it a percentage of a product or of an entire order? Be sure you’re really aware of the rules you’ve set up before you allow coupons to be applied to your orders.

What do I need to think about when taking payments in an app? Charging people to use my app?

Dan: Great Question. Both of the platforms, Apple and Google, want to take a cut of any money you make in these apps. Generally it’s 30%, and sometimes they’ll cut it down a bit for subscriptions or if you’re huge like Amazon or Netflix you can negotiate. But, for an average developer, there will be a take from the platform, which is fine! They’re allowing your app to get seen by possibly millions of users. You can adjust your pricing to make up for these rates. Privacy may also need to be considered in this.

Chris: If you want to charge to download your app or charge for things inside your app, there will be cuts from Apple or Google. For instance, the BC platform, people pay to use the platform, but they don’t pay to use the app. The app is a free app which requires having a paid account on BigCommerce. So, there are ways of being able to monetize your work and not have to pay Apple and Google if you can do it outside of the app itself.

The other way you can deal with this is by deciding what it is you’re charging for. If it’s for some digital content or feature of the application, Apple and Google are going to want a cut of that. But, if it’s for a physical product, which many of our merchants sell, then they don’t take that 30% margin off of what you might be making a 2% margin on. They made the decision early on that if you’re selling physical products you don’t have to pay those margins to Apple and Google.

What has been the history of the mobile app at BigCommerce and what is on the horizon?

Dan: Back in 2018 we had an app , but we did not have a dedicated team. I was the first hire for that and started growing the team over the years! With this we were able to expand the capabilities of the app. Originally, it was a React Native app, but we found out within a few months that the long term ideas and design we have in mind was way too complex to stay with React. Now we have the two separate native apps.

Chris: Some things we’re currently working on is the ability to create draft orders via the app, this would include the functionality to send draft orders to customers and sent the checkout page directly to your customer for checkout. Also taking payments for orders via the iOS app, which is currently working for Android. Another thing on the horizon is to expand the mobile app analytics view!

What are some cool things you can do with the BigCommerce mobile app that might not be obvious?

Dan: You don’t have to sit in front of your desk all the time to manage your store. If your warehouse manager sends you a text while you’re on the go, this app gives you the flexibility to live your life and manage your store at the same time.

Chris: I think of the use cases in which someone would be using our app. For example, a long time customer calls you regarding an issue with the order while you’re at the airport away from your desk. You can help that customer in the moment rather than needing to wait until you’re back at the office. Win-win!

And that’s a wrap on our Mobile Apps AMA! Huge thanks to our engineers Dan and Chris for participating in this AMA and answering so many burning questions from our Developer Community. If you’re a developer and build on the BigCommerce platform, join our DevSlack community by applying here!

If you still have questions and this blog doesn’t answer them, comment on this blog or tweet at me @Katie_Hoesley or @BigCommerceDevs. We can’t wait to hack with you!

BigHackathon: Summer ’22 Ask Me Anything Recap

katie hoesley — Wed, 10 Aug 2022 14:47:37 +0000

If you missed yesterday’s Ask Me Anything sessions about our upcoming hackathon, #BigHackathon: Summer ’22, no sweat! We’ve put together a list of the questions asked to hopefully answer yours, too. If you read through these and still have questions about our upcoming event, check out our website for more answers.

Private vs Public Repos?

Private repos are acceptable as long as at least one of the judges has access, and all public repos are accepted! We’ll be sure to supply you with the appropriate GitHub handles to share your repo with.

What to expect throughout the hackathon?

Given this is a virtual hackathon, the day-to-day lift/expectation from you (besides developing your app) is fairly low.

We kick off at 10am CDT on Monday, August 15 and from then on you are given free reign to hack your solution! We have a number of presentations throughout the week with BC employees who have a lot of solution wisdom to share, and submissions are due by 11:59pm CDT on August 26.

Our Discord server will serve as our means of communication with you all, and you can expect updates and reminders to be distributed there. You will receive very minimal email contact from us, but you can expect detailed instructions and hackathon information after our kick-off meeting, and detailed submission information and reminders around the submission deadline. If you have any questions, comments or concerns, you can reach out to Heather Barr, Stephen Hilliard or myself (Katie Hoesley) at any time via Discord or DevSlack.

I wrote about my first Web3 hackathon experience recently — if you want to learn more about the hackathon experience, check it out!

What are the lighting talks/events about?

Throughout the duration of the hackathon we have a number of lightning talks/AMA type events meant to help participants create the best products they can! We’ll be hearing from:

Tommy Ekstrand, BigCommerce’s Manager of Web & Customer Self Service
Airon White, BigCommerce’s Manager of Product Marketing
Robert Alvarez, BigCommerce Engineer
Pat Williams, BigCommerce’s Manager of Partner Solutions Engineers

& possibly more!

To learn more about these events or to register to attend them, visit our website!

Does BigCommerce take ownership over the products developed during #BigHackathon?

No, what you build is yours! Plain and simple.

Do you have any ideas or examples of applications we can browse through?

We will be releasing feedback from internal teams for inspiration. Keep a lookout in our Discord for updates on this!

Are there any examples of past submissions we can reference?

No, the prompt for #BigHackathon is intentionally vague to encourage maximum creativity!

Do you have any advice for first time hackers?

Spend time wireframing, designing, and planning before development!
Create feature deadlines and have a project manager or someone in charge of keeping the team on track
Determine your MVP and shoot for that, then add extra features later
Have fun, think outside the box & be creative!

Why are hackathon communications on Discord instead of in BigCommerce’s Developer Slack space?

BC’s DevSlack is a space for developers or members of technical teams who build on BigCommerce’s platform to engage with us and each other, and to avoid arbitrarily adding every registrant of this hackathon to that space, we decided to preserve DevSlack’s integrity by using Discord. We do hope anyone who is NOT in DevSlack will apply and join us in there for the future, though! Link to DevSlack application here.

Can we create team channels in Discord?

No, a minor Discord limitation, but we encourage everyone to meet with their teams & are welcome to use Discord to do so or DevSlack, however works best for the team! Your comms are your comms, and Discord will (at minimum) be your team’s way of communicating with the BigCommerce team.

Can we use beta APIs if we have access to them already?

For this hackathon, no. We want to make sure everyone is on a level playing field, and access to cool new APIs might tilt the scales a bit. So, for #BigHackathon: Summer ’22, no beta APIs can be used.

Once we complete our project, do we need to present?

There will not be live demos, but you will record a demo (instructions and requirements will be sent out on Monday after kick-off) and that is what the judges will look at when considering your submission. We will also collect a GitHub repository.

What type of solutions are we looking for?

We expect most solutions to be widgets & apps and are not accepting theme solutions. We’re expecting either a replacement of something that is unfavorable on the platform, or something that resolves a product gap. We also have a rubric that will be shared to have full transparency on how we’ll be judging.

Will the final submissions be public for all other participants to see?

We will likely send out all submission videos to all registrants in some sort of restricted video form (possibly Vimeo with a password, but TBD) so you can all see what your competition created. BigCommerce Developer Relations team might also present some of these videos at an upcoming partner summit! So, make ’em good!

And that’s a wrap! If you’d like to register for #BigHackathon, fill out this registration form.

If you still have questions and our website doesn’t answer them, comment on this blog or tweet at me @Katie_Hoesley. We can’t wait to hack with you!