In this podcast, James & Paul digest the latest company news, assessing what the summit revealed about BigCommerce’s market position, go-to-market strategy and what the latest developments reveal about their product proposition and roadmap.
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BigCommerce ran its annual summit in London last week, welcoming more than 400 agency and technology partners, 200 customers and 100 employees from across the globe.
It has been a challenging few years for BigCommerce. Shopify has accelerated its product capability but the pace of roadmap change from BigCommerce hasn’t really delighted merchants. They also had to cut the workforce as part of a global restructuring to align with their go-to-market strategy. However, BigCommerce is still landing marquee clients, really strong in enterprise B2B and has attracted a few exciting B2C brands like White Stuff and The Real Real in the US.
Join Paul and James as they explore the new Catalyst composable storefront, latest news on International & B2B, and what’s happening with key product capabilities like Feedonomics and the tight partnership with PayPal that now has a password free checkout in beta in the US.
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Key discussion points
- Scene setting: the last 2 years have been challenging for BigCommerce, Shopify has accelerated its product capability, pace of roadmap change hasn’t been exciting merchants. They also had to cut the workforce as part of an essential restructure. However, they’re still landing marquee clients, really strong in enterprise B2B and landed a few exciting B2C brands like White Stuff. So there are several silver linings.
- Performance update:
- Revenue +16% YoY for Q423, +11% in Q3
- 5,944 enterprise accounts which make up 73% of ARR (annual recurring revenue) BUT enterprise = $1m – $50m + $50m segments! Not really enterprise 🙂
- 9% enterprise ARR growth, modest but positive nonetheless
- IDC now has BC in the B2C Leaders segment for midmarket for first time
- Landed some huge customers in US e.g. The Real Real $1.5bn, leading luxury fashion marketplace
- Focus on improving CSAT & proactive growth consulting
- Strategy:
- Clear focus on 5 pillars of their vision: Enterprise / International / Omnichannel / B2B / Composable
- The amusing dig at Shopify for Payments and charging transaction fees landed: both citing research their checkouts convert the best!
- Shift to being opinionated on composable stack rather than ‘anything goes’ >> this is good
- Best example: Catalyst headless framework + Makeswift acquisition (for $9m in Nov 2023) built on Next.js and React (so solid ecosystem, hundreds of thousands of Next.js developers worldwide)
- Pre-integrated with all BigCommerce functionality, can provision a new store instance within a few minutes
- Next step is bringing enterprise class no/low code visual editor with Makeswift integration, adding workflow and publisher controls + permissions, even content branching (optional as can use any other CMS you want but not compatible with Page Builder)
- Speed to market increases & reduced complexity for headless due to opinionated approach > self hosted themes available, don’t build from scratch
- Vercel integrated hosting packaged via BigCommerce
- Example store using it is Burrow.com
- Pinch of salt: built for perfect CWV performance, SEO and accessibility scores: but that’s before you add styling, 3P scripts, theme customisation, UX features etc.
- Product – 100 new roadmap items:
- Fastlane from PayPal:
- PayPal partnership key (they were headline sponsors)
- Fast payment using 2 factor auth with 6 digit code by phone, removing passwords
- Shop Pay rival basically
- Typical BigCommerce guest checkout has 40% CR, Fastlane seeing 70% guest CR
- Smart move: PayPal has 400m global account, 30m in UK
- PayPal also innovating: cashback offers in PP app to help merchants acquire new customers
- 60 AI models and algorithms for fraud detection and payment auth
- Security & compliance: PCI DSS 4.0 attestation of compliance in June, ISO27017 and ISO27018 certifications
- International
- True MSF in a single instance is due for release in 24, true geolocation, pricing, currency, payment options, content etc.
- Set products to tax inc. or exc. for different locations e.g. inc VAT in UK, exc Sales Tax in US
- Feedonomics:
- Really pushing on this, very sales focused presentation from SVP Sales & Partnerships
- FeedAI for intelligent
- Data transformation, primary focus Google but also for all key marketing channels. Extended into new channels like Walmart.
- Marketplacer integration coming
- BigAI
- B2B AI generated draft response to request for quote
- Copywriter with Gemini upgrade to enables style settings and optimise for SEO
- Product recommendations powered by Google AI (closed beta for Enterprise): devs can use Storefront GraphQL API to insert recs (Similar to / Others you might like / Frequently bought together)
- Predictive analytics e.g. LTV – using BigQuery ML – beta target Q3
- B2B
- 100% source code access to Buyer Portal
- Functional adds like custom shipping for quotes, multi-level hierarchies for orgs, centralised invoicing for online payment management
- Quotes building well e.g. can now do quotes on price protected SKUs, coming to mobile for field sales reps
- Full template control for transactional emails – be careful!
- Fastlane from PayPal:
- Reading the room:
- Most upbeat it has been for years
- Cools DTC brands coming through like Sneakers N Stuff in build
- Real positivity from the agency partners on Catalyst & Makeswift (if you want to learn more, look up Tom Robertshaw’s videos on LinkedIn)
Want to suggest a topic or guest for a future episode? Contact us via the website or on LinkedIn.
