BigCommerce buys into the benefits of MACH architecture with Contentful

Introduction

Over 26.5 million — that’s the number of ecommerce shops that exist today. With so many options, it’s a wonder that any brand is able to attract a steady stream of customers to the checkout. A high-performing ecommerce platform — something like BigCommerce — can be a key differentiator. 

Since 2009, BigCommerce has provided retailers with the tools and services needed to launch and grow an online presence. For businesses in an industry as competitive as ecommerce platforms, quality content becomes an important source of leads and differentiation to put them ahead of their many competitors. With its marketing website — which spans 14 domains — as the primary driver of acquisition, the company has curated an impressive library of content intended to educate and entice merchants. But, as 2023 approached, internal teams began to feel the weight of their legacy CMS, which was self-hosted. It required significant resources to maintain (and even more to launch new content). 

Eager to speed up operations and reallocate resources to more impactful marketing projects, BigCommerce went shopping for a new, modern content solution, ultimately choosing Contentful. The company then selected Monogram, a Contentful Solution Partner, to lead the implementation of the new tool. 

Finding a platform that's tailored to fit

During the RFP process, BigCommerce outlined its wants and needs based on the shortcomings of its existing CMS. The ideal replacement would be cloud-hosted to alleviate the many “marketing” duties engineers had been supporting for far too long. It would also easily connect with third-party apps and include features to speed up content production cycles. 

“Our go-to-market time was stalled on new feature development and enhancements,” Ivy Pollock, Manager of Web Experience, said. “Content production was heavy-handed, so we had to make really hard choices about what we could do on the roadmap and what our content schedule could include each quarter.” 

Despite initially sending the RFP to both monolithic and headless vendors, BigCommerce ultimately decided that a composable tool would align best with their company philosophy and position in the MACH alliance. “We wanted a tool that offered the freedom to build exactly what we needed,” Jeremy Adam, Director of Web Strategy, said. “That's what we sell on the ecommerce side, so we decided, why not ‘dog-food’ this project and let it be a representation of the best approach for building a modern digital experience?’” The company already saw Makeswift — a visual editor, and Smartling — a translation service, as essential components of its tech stack.

Focusing on a quality customer experience

According to Adam, narrowing the choices from there was easy. “Contentful stood out as the best-in-class, enterprise-grade CMS, and the evaluation gave us a ton of confidence in the maturity of the product as well as the services and teams that could support us during the migration,” he said. BigCommerce's established partnership with Contentful as a technology and integration collaborator bolstered their confidence in the platform.

Like countless organizations around the globe, BigCommerce had a significant amount of pre-existing content they wanted to migrate over including their blog and other dynamic web content such as case studies, downloadable resources, and an app marketplace. To further ensure a smooth transition and help BigCommerce maximize Contentful’s core capabilities, Monogram provided developer resources, user guides, and training materials.

“Contentful Professional Services also played a huge role here,” Nikki Chavez, Senior Manager of Marketing Operations, Automation & Technology, said of the transition. “We appreciated how personable and collaborative our Contentful customer success manager was as we looked for the ideal approach to the migration.”

Cashing in on the benefits of composability

With content stored, structured, and managed in Contentful and hosted on Vercel, BigCommerce is seeing quick returns on its investment. Content management is less manual, content creation is a team sport and, as a result, productivity has increased. 

“Contentful has given us the ability to move more quickly and publish pieces in a timely manner,” Brandon Slovacek, Web Content Publishing Lead, said — and BigCommerce metrics back this up. “We’re now able to keep up with trends or events and publish about them when they happen, rather than waiting for them to be put into a publishing queue.” In the quarter before onboarding Contentful, the team produced just 13 blog posts. In the quarter after introducing the platform, they produced 23 posts — a 77% increase. 

Contentful Live Preview has a lot to do with this newfound speed, giving teams visibility into content layouts before they go live and expediting stakeholder reviews and approvals. The platform’s native functions that address user roles and permissions are also well-praised, as they enable more diverse teams to collaborate on web content while safeguarding specific content types, tags, or locales from being accidentally altered. And, because of its user-friendly interface and ability to configure help text throughout, nontechnical team members pick up the platform relatively quickly. 

“When we used to onboard new hires, we would wait until the very end to explain how our CMS worked — it was just so arduous,” Chavez said. “We don’t tiptoe around the topic now because Contentful is so straightforward.”

Browsing new integrations

“Contentful has already exceeded expectations,” the team shared. But, like any good tool, there are plenty of ways to extend it moving forward — and BigCommerce has already begun brainstorming some. 

To further increase productivity and efficiency, they’re looking to integrate the following apps: Jira for project management, Bynder for asset management, and Amplitude for testing and personalization. BigCommerce is also looking to refine content tags and taxonomies to further improve governance and create more order across the organization.

About the Contentful and BigCommerce partnership

In today’s digital landscape, turning customers from browsers into buyers goes beyond just building brand trust. Even the most loyal customers will quickly move on if they don’t encounter a fast, seamless buying experience across all channels. That’s where Contentful and BigCommerce come in. Together, these platforms enable merchants and retailers of all sizes to deliver fast, flexible, and omnichannel buying experiences that are personalized, scalable, and seamlessly connected across devices. By combining the best of SaaS and API-enabled flexibility, this partnership gives brands the ability to innovate faster and more efficiently. The result? Engaging customer experiences that drive conversions. Learn more about Contentful partners.