To achieve success in the eCommerce space, you need to have a development plan that makes your site function well. This can be important with top platforms like BigCommerce. You want to find a BigCommerce development partner who completely knows the platform and the tricks to helping you improve your rankings and results through a website that operates well, a partner that can help you every step of the way from start to finish.
At 1Digital Agency, we are proud to be Elite BigCommerce Partners and our knowledge of the platform is second to none. We can be the partner you need to get your website where you want it to be, functioning how you want it to with the help of a trusted partner there with you every step of the way.
Before you get started with your BigCommerce development project, review a few of these development factors that you should consider when starting a development project.
Navigation – Everything about your layout and navigation is important to generating sales. The navigation of your website is not just how the pages are laid out or how easy it is to get from one page to another. It can include additional factors like loading time for pages as well, all very critical aspects of the customer experience. The layout should be simple with the potential to draw in customers. It should be easy to navigate and provide a positive experience for the customer.
Product Description – Product pages carry a lot of weight in your website because they are the customer’s way of learning everything there is to know about the products, especially since the customer cannot handle the product prior to purchasing it. You want to make sure your website structure includes all of the graphical and descriptive details so that you can effectively provide accurate product descriptions, leaving no mystery to the customer about what they are getting.
Return Policy – Your goal is for every customer to be pleased with your products, but there are always a few that cannot be satisfied. You want to be proactive for these types of customers who may need to return the product. Set the guidelines early and make sure they are clearly defined.
Shipping – Flexible shipping is just another option that can lead to success for your eCommerce business. Much like your return policy, define the shipping costs and timeline early and leave no mystery to the customer. You also need to make sure you fulfill the order and deliver it in the timeline you guarantee.
Checkout Process – You have convinced customers to add products to their cart and make a purchase, but getting across the finish line can be the most difficult part of running an eCommerce business. So many people find extensive checkout processes to be too much and will abandon their cart and never return. You want to make sure you have a simple and easy checkout process that takes less than two minutes and requires listing all of the essential details only once.
Reviews – Many purchases from new customers are influenced by your past customers. Reviews can go a long way and you want to make it easy for visitors to read and leave reviews of their own to keep the conversation going. When putting together your website, make sure there is an option for customers to leave a review to help encourage others to both get a better understanding of your products and why they should buy from you.
At 1Digital Agency, we are a BigCommerce partner that can help you with every step of your website development from start to finish. We know the importance of all of the features and functions of the website and how it goes a long way in helping you achieve success. We want to help and be a part of that.
Contact 1Digital Agency today to find out more about how we can be the BigCommerce development partner you need.
Turning the development factors into a pre-build specification
Navigation, product descriptions, return policy, shipping, checkout, and reviews are the right factors. The way to make them count is to specify each one before development starts, because retrofitting them after launch is where budgets and timelines die. A practical pre-build spec:
- Navigation & architecture: define the category tree and URL structure up front, with internal-linking rules. Decide it before build, because changing it after launch means a redirect project, not an edit.
- Product pages: specify the content model — required images, structured specs, description format, schema markup — so every product page is consistently complete rather than dependent on whoever entered it.
- Policies (return, shipping, privacy): write them before build and decide where they surface (product page, cart, footer). They are conversion content, not legal afterthoughts.
- Checkout: define the target — guest checkout, minimal fields, all-in cost shown early, supported payment methods — as an acceptance criterion the build must meet, not a "we'll tune it later."
- Reviews/UGC: decide the mechanism and where it displays before launch so social proof is on product pages from day one, not bolted on once traffic exists.
What "from start to finish" should actually include
An end-to-end partner relationship is not just building the site — it is discovery and spec, build on a staging environment, QA against acceptance criteria (including edge-case carts and mobile), a launch runbook with redirects and indexation monitoring, and a post-launch optimization loop. The phases that get skipped under time pressure — QA and post-launch monitoring — are precisely the ones that determine whether the site performs.
How to evaluate a BigCommerce development partner
- Do they produce a written spec and acceptance criteria, or just start building?
- Is there a staging environment and a documented QA pass before launch?
- What is the launch runbook — redirect map, sitemap submission, post-launch monitoring?
- Who owns the theme code and content if the relationship ends?
- Is there a defined post-launch optimization phase, or does engagement end at go-live?
Frequently asked questions
Why specify everything before development? Because the costly changes — navigation, URL structure, content model — become redirect and rework projects after launch instead of decisions on paper. A spec is the cheapest place to change your mind.
What most often goes wrong in a BigCommerce build? Skipped QA and no launch runbook: untested edge-case carts, missing redirects, and no post-launch indexation monitoring. The build itself is rarely the failure point; the launch discipline is.
Does the partner relationship end at launch? It should not. The highest-value work — conversion optimization and SEO — happens on a live site with real data. Treat launch as the start of optimization, not the finish line.
We work as that end-to-end partner. See our BigCommerce services and eCommerce development, or contact us.