Building and growing an eCommerce store touches platform choice, design, payments, mobile, conversion, SEO, and selling across marketplaces. Below is a curated library of our resources covering each of those areas – organized so you can go straight to the stage you’re working on rather than scroll a flat link list. Each section explains what the cluster covers and why it matters before linking the individual guides.
Editorial note: this resource roundup has been reorganized into themed sections with context, and a non-working bare-text item from the original list was removed. Some linked posts predate current platform versions; treat the strategy as durable and verify product-specific steps against current documentation.
Choosing and justifying a platform
The platform decision shapes everything downstream – cost, flexibility, SEO, and how much custom work you’ll need later. These compare the major options and make the case for specific choices so you can match a platform to your catalog and roadmap rather than to marketing claims.
- 10 Reasons To Use BigCommerce – the core feature case for BigCommerce as a default for new and growing stores.
- Why BigCommerce is a More Profitable CMS – the commercial argument, not just the feature list.
- Shopify vs BigCommerce – a side-by-side on ease of use, support, and pricing.
- Volusion vs BigCommerce – a feature-by-feature comparison from real merchant experience.
- 4 Advantages of Magento – where a more flexible, developer-heavy platform fits.
Design, templates, and the essentials of a store
Once a platform is chosen, design and a baseline feature set determine whether visitors trust and use the store. This cluster covers responsive design, template customization, and the non-negotiable features every store needs.
- Why BigCommerce is the Best Responsive Shopping Cart – responsive flexibility in template choice.
- Responsive Web Design: What It Is and How To Use It – the fundamentals, still relevant in a mobile-first world.
- Why Template Customization Matters – how customizing a template projects your brand and improves the browsing experience.
- 5 Essential Things Your eCommerce Website Must Have – the baseline that turns visitors into customers.
- 8 Ways To Evaluate Your eCommerce Website – a checklist to audit what your store may be missing.
- 5 Essential Elements of eCommerce Website Success – the measures that drive more business.
- 5 eCommerce Landing Pages: Good and Bad – worked examples of what to put on home and landing pages.
Payments and trust
Payment options and visible trust are where conversions are won or lost at the final step. These cover configuring payments and weighing newer methods.
- How To Configure Payment Options in BigCommerce – why a robust payment setup, not just nice design, wins customer confidence.
- How To Add a PayPal Gateway in WordPress – for WordPress-based stores adding PayPal.
- Should You Accept Bitcoin? – an honest look at the pros and cons of a volatile payment option.
Mobile and conversion
Mobile is now the majority of traffic, and small layout and design changes can move conversion materially. This cluster covers the mobile shift and concrete conversion levers.
- 4 Reasons Every Retailer Should Have a Mobile App – the growth case for a dedicated app.
- 7 Ways Mobile Commerce Will Change Retail – how m-commerce reshapes design priorities.
- The Easiest Way to Increase Conversion – specific layout and design tweaks that lift conversion.
- Why Customers Aren’t Buying From Your BigCommerce Store – diagnosing functional and design constraints that block purchases.
- 10 Ways to Compete Against Large eCommerce Companies – strategy for winning against bigger competitors.
Marketplaces, integrations, and SEO
Reaching buyers beyond your own site – marketplaces and search – multiplies the return on everything above. This cluster covers Amazon selling, integrations, and search optimization.
- How To Integrate Amazon Products Into BigCommerce – broadening range and bringing new visitors in.
- How to Start Selling on the Amazon Marketplace – account setup through publishing products.
- Implement the Google Publisher Tag on BigCommerce – protecting and attributing your content as the original author.
- Step-by-Step BigCommerce SEO Help – using built-in SEO features to grow visibility across search engines.
The order these resources should be used in
A common mistake is to treat eCommerce work as a pile of independent tasks and tackle whatever feels urgent. The clusters above are deliberately sequenced, because each stage depends on the one before it, and doing them out of order wastes effort. Optimizing conversion on a store built on the wrong platform means re-doing the work after you migrate. Driving marketplace and SEO traffic to a site that doesn’t convert just buys expensive bounces. Adding a mobile app before the mobile site itself works well papers over the real problem. The right sequence is: get the platform decision right, build a design that earns trust and works on mobile, remove payment and checkout friction, then – and only then – pour conversion optimization and acquisition traffic into a store that can actually capitalize on it.
How to use this library
If you are planning a new store, read top to bottom – the order mirrors the build sequence. If you are fixing a specific problem, jump to the relevant cluster, but sanity-check the stage before it first: a conversion problem is often actually a design or platform problem wearing a conversion costume, and an acquisition problem is often a conversion problem upstream. Diagnosing at the wrong layer is the most expensive mistake in this entire list.
A note on dated material
Several of these resources predate current platform versions and current best practice in places – payment options have evolved, mobile expectations have risen, and SEO has changed substantially. The strategic logic in each (why platform fit matters, why trust and mobile drive conversion, why marketplaces diversify risk) remains durable; the product-specific steps should be cross-checked against current platform documentation before you implement them. Use the resources for the reasoning and the framework, and verify the click-by-click specifics against today’s admin screens.
The throughline across the whole library is the same sequence we use with clients: pick the right platform, design for trust and mobile, make payment and checkout frictionless, optimize for conversion, then expand reach through marketplaces and SEO. If you want help executing any stage, contact 1Digital® Agency – we work across every platform referenced above.