How to Sell Custom Products on BigCommerce

Launch your store in a few hours!

We often come across this type of a statement, but if BigCommerce is your ecommerce host then you will literally be able to start selling from your online store the next day.

Its flexible layout and functionalities make it one of the most prominent platforms to get started into the eCommerce space.

With almost 24M e-stores around the world today, offering easy shopping and originality are just not enough to help you get ahead in the game.

With personalization craze growing each day, selling personalized products can make it possible for you to stand out among the monstrous competition. Because personalization means freedom. To create. To think. To wear.

Customers can decide their choice of color, size, printing, image, graphics options. As per the stats, 53% of shoppers believe that online stores offering product personalization are more customer-oriented, supportive and provide better services, and are likely to return on such type of website.

Today we will show how you can implement this concept into your BigCommerce store.

Prepare a Plan

A foolproof plan is essential especially when introducing something new to your business.

And the first step is to define your customer base. When starting into the web-to-print industry, your major customer base would be:

– Printers

– E-store owners

– Print on demand merchants

– Influencers

Preparing the buyers’ persona based on your research would help you understand your target audience and prepare your store’s experience accordingly. Here are quick steps to make a buyers’ persona.

1. Research your target audience
2. Narrow down the most common details
3. Create separate personas
4. Give your personas names, demographics, psychographics

This will be the base of defining your audience, targets, the type of products for which you want to enable personalization.

Invest in BigCommerce Product Customizer

Here comes the decision part. Purchasing a BigCommerce Product Customizer will allow your customers to personalize products on your e-store. With a plethora of options available today, it is important to make your choice on the tool that fulfills your as well as your customers’ requirements.

People love to experiment with colors, and graphics. Therefore, having a feature rich tool that allows users to design easily and create products as per their requirement can be the win-win solution. From minor features like masking effects, image filters, multi slide previews to major features like readymade templates, clip art, social media connections, a tool with all of them would make a big difference.

Apart from the features, one important thing is to have a user friendly interface. The easier it is to use for the customers the better feedback you would receive. Hence, before buying make sure that you take a personalized demo to check the tool thoroughly and if it includes all the features you want in your e-store or not.

To experience how the BigCommerce Product Customizer would work for your business, you can check the demo of our product.

Select the Right Products and Suppliers

After deciding the audience and designer tool, it is time to select the products and suppliers. Based on your buyers’ persona, find out the products they prefer, their lifestyle, and the products that are in trend for personalization.

To help you further, we’ve already done the last bit of the research. As per the market trends, t-shirts, mugs, stationery products, cushions, bottles, plates, etc. are some of the retail options you can go for. After deciding the products, it is important to choose the supplier for your business. Print on demand merchants can skip this step.

Picking up the suppliers is like finding the sheep from a flock. That’s why trying out different suppliers for different products is the way to go. Taking the end customer’s point of view, cost, quality, time management, all the legal operations, etc. into consideration will help you find that right one.

Set up the printing infrastructure

The next and one of the most important steps is to set up a printing infrastructure or a facility where you can print your orders without any glitches.

A printing studio equipped with well-maintained printers along with a coating and a finishing unit is a must for the end results.

Tips for Printing:

– After receiving the final design from your customers, keep one editable file for yourself so that you can track the changes made later if needed. Hence, in the worst case scenario, if there are issues in the final product due to the size or resolution, you won’t have to start from scratch.

– While printing your products, it is advisable to hire professionals to do the job. One pro tip is that after printing garments, let the ink set in the garment to make sure that they have maximum washability.

Set up logistics infrastructure

After your customers place the order, they would expect on-time deliveries. So, to make your customers happy, here are three simple ways to streamline your delivery process:

1. Take care of your orders independently with the help of your team and the labour force.
2. Sell your product through the drop-shipper who can take care of your orders.
3. Collaborate with a logistics company that can take care of your warehousing and fulfillment.

If you are just getting started into this business, then taking care of your own logistics can be cost-effective and flexible. If you have money to invest and outsource, opting for third-party warehousing can be the solution. You can find companies that can take care of storage, packing, and shipping of your orders.

Launch Your Store

After setting up everything, you can finally launch your store and invite your customers to unleash their creativity and design their own products.

The key is having a user friendly designer tool and a simpler checkout process for lesser cart abandonments.

Even if you do not have the knowledge of programming and coding, investing in the right BigCommerce product customizer will do the work.

Do the Marketing Right

After setting everything up, interesting potential customers into your business is essential to generate revenue. Market your business through flyers, pamphlets, business cards, to the nearest organizations and businesses. Along with that practicing digital marketing has become mandatory. Make sure to optimize your store as per search engines’ algorithms to gain customers from around the globe.

After you start getting customers, taking their reviews and sharing across social media would also help. You can wear your merchandise, step out, click pictures to spread the word through social media which would make a big difference. Planning giveaways can also help. If required you can also sponsor events, invest in online ads, or use any other paid marketing tactics.

Online polls and Surveys would also increase the customer engagement and will help you to improve your business as per the feedback.