The retailers who build on BigCommerce
BigCommerce is a hosted, SaaS platform with an open API, which puts it in an interesting middle ground. Merchants get the convenience of not running servers, while agencies can still build headless storefronts or connect an ERP. It also offers B2B functionality, so wholesalers and manufacturers use it to take trade orders online.
The result is a merchant base that skews towards established catalogues: distributors with thousands of SKUs, brands running more than one storefront, and retailers who have moved up from a simpler platform because their product data and pricing outgrew it.
What those BigCommerce orders ask of a warehouse
Big catalogues mean long tails. A warehouse fulfilling BigCommerce orders has to find a slow-moving SKU as reliably as a bestseller, which is why stock is checked in against your purchase orders and held in pallet, carton or bin locations sized to how it sells. Picking runs at 99.9% pick and pack accuracy, and orders placed before 9pm are dispatched the same day (cut-offs vary by carrier, service and daily order profile).
Mixed baskets are common too. A trade customer might order a case of one line and single units of three others, while a consumer order on the same afternoon is a single parcel. We handle case, carton and pallet orders alongside parcel orders from one stock pool, with retailer labelling where the buyer needs it.
Split deliveries are normal on BigCommerce. When one line is short or ships from elsewhere, the rest of the order can still go, and the store shows it as partly shipped rather than stalling the whole thing.
Order statuses and shipments between BigCommerce and Smart
A paid order for physical goods lands in BigCommerce as Awaiting Fulfillment, which is the signal that it is ready to pick and pack. Those orders flow to us automatically, so nobody has to export them or re-key addresses.
When we dispatch, a shipment is created against the order with the carrier's tracking number. BigCommerce lets a shipment cover a subset of the products and quantities in an order, so a split delivery is recorded accurately, and creating the shipment triggers the customer's shipping notification.
Stock syncs the other way. The quantities on our shelves update the inventory levels in your BigCommerce catalogue, and you can see the same live figures, plus every order's progress, in our client portal.
