Migrating from Volusion to Bigcommerce

The Beginning

In March 2012, I stepped into the ecommerce world and launched a Volusion store for my non-profit, Stupid Cancer. I understood the basic functions of ecommerce, and felt like I could figure the rest out as I went. My expectations were pretty accurate, and found that navigating the unknown was a lot of fun. I picked Volusion because a colleague of mine had found success with their platform, and like any other digital software vertical, there were so many options. The sales started, issues that popped up along the way were remedied, and before I knew it, I had a successful online store.

Remember when you learned how to drive? That sense of confidence that followed? Before you knew it, you wanted to go faster.

Enter Bigcommerce: I received a solicitation to take a tour of their product by a Bigcommerce sales rep. I found myself building a carbon copy of my store on their platform within the first hour, and noticed the little things that were different than what I had been used to. I found myself building out shipping rates by weight, and entering those pesky sales tax rates by county. (Thanks a lot for that, by the way, New York State. #sarcasm)

I have to insert here that Volusion did get me off the ground with a very generous 80% discount. So, while Bigcommerce was unable to offer the same discount, I felt like I was getting much more in personal back and forth e-mails with their team, along with some on-boarding conference calls.

So here I am, with the holidays approaching rapidly and a steady flow of orders coming in, planning to abandon ship with Volusion and start on a new course.

I had everything pretty much built out on BC when it came time to flip the DNS. I say pretty much, because you’re never really ready when it comes time to go live.

Going Live

To my surprise, my new store was online about two hours later, and the orders resumed. A critical step here is to put your old store into maintenance mode, and have your provider restore it back to its original(demo) URL. Luckily, I was headed to a conference for the days following, so I had some downtime to watch the fallout, which ended up being related to the following:

301 Redirects

This is arguably the most important thing you will need to do. With a new ecommerce platform comes a new URL structure. For example, http://store.com/productname could end up being http://store.com/product-name. Anyone who searches for your product and clicks on your old URL will get a big old “Page Not Found.” Bigcommerce makes it easy to point potential customers in the right direction.

Shipping Rates

You probably set these up once and then left them alone, right? With Bigcommerce, I had an issue where I capped off my shipping rates at 2 pounds, without a price for anything heavier. This resulted in customers not being able to proceed with checkout. Make sure you test everything thoroughly, and let customers get in touch with you easily. (Install a “Contact Us” tab.)

Payment Processor

I was operating under the assumption that I had a relationship outside of Volusion with Authorize.net.  I plugged in my payment gateway info into my new store, and subsequently learned that it would be a breach of contract if I moved forward with that setup. I investigated my options, and found that PayPal Pro is a very nice solution if you're already accepting PayPal payments in your web store. It's a seamless application, and you get the great service that PayPal provides. (It's important to note that you can use a new Authorize.net account with Bigcommerce. You cannot use your Volusion Authorize.net account with Bigcommerce.)

Moving Forward

Once I had everything pretty much straightened out, I focused on getting my product offering back up to 100%. A new store offered the opportunity to audit my product images, descriptions, etc.

Having been live on Bigcommerce for a few weeks now, I am much happier with the mobile version of my store, and am seeing a lot of mobile checkouts. I was also happy to see that a lot of my favorite tools integrate just as well, if not better, with Bigcommerce. Check them out on the Bigcommerce App Store.

Making Sense of Business Metrics via Dashboards

If you're in an operations role at your company, chances are you're bombarded with business metrics information all day long. If you're like me, you probably keep multiple tabs open, or have bookmarks that go directly to various report pages. Pie charts, bar graphs, spark lines, gauges, meters, maps, and tables fill your day as you try to make sense of it all.

In a recent strategic planning meeting, my good friend Roni Zeiger referred me to a company called Klipfolio. This wasn't my first time looking at dashboard services, but definitely the first time it made sense. I had previously sat through a demo of Domo at eTail West. While there isn't anything inherently wrong with Domo, for $20 per month per user, Klipfolio is at the price point my NPO budget can afford.

So...where to start, right? In order to get started with building my dashboard, I first had to understand what I wanted to track. Suddenly, the possibilities were endless. I made a mental list:

• Social presence. Facebook insights are relatively easy to connect, and instantly rewarding. Below, you'll see I've created a chart that tracks 3 dimensions of insights: impressions, new likes, and engaged users. This mimics the standard view on Facebook. But hey, you don't have to go there anymore.

• More social presence. I quickly found out that the best part about social media API is that it's rich data and it's reliable. I have several panes on my dashboard that give me two dimensions of any given social platform. For example: Facebook followers and people talking about us; Twitter followers and number of tweets; Mailing list subscribers and open rate.

• Distribution. We have a growing eCommerce store, as well as a literature supply chain that goes out to cancer centers around the country. It's great to visualize which states and countries they're going to, and in what frequency.

• Event attendance. Exactly the same as distribution, but flipped, and with human beings.

• Cash flow. Donations, sponsorships, store revenue. You can do all sorts of fun things from creating thermometer like gauges with goals, as well as pie charts to see how your different campaigns stack up along side each other.

After two months of tinkering, that's where I've landed, but it's not exactly the end of the story. There are a few other aspects of creating your dashboard.

• Audience. Who are you showing this to? In my case, I can drag and drop different panes easily. If you plan on using your dashboard as a tool during a sales pitch, you will definitely need to modify and cater it to each specific meeting. I have also contemplated creating a "read only" version. Luckily, with Klipfolio, you can choose to share different panes with other users. This is great if you have people under you who might need to see only bits and pieces of information rather than everything under the hood.

• Data sources. API, XML, CSV, or JSON? (Who came up with these crazy acronyms, anyway?) In terms of data sources, API is ideal. As I mentioned, social API is up the majority of the time. I do have a pesky data source that is in and out. I really never know if my charts and graphs will populate. XML reports are static, but easy to work with. CSV files are also static, but a bit more customizable for specific reporting purposes. The data source will determine how efficient your dashboard is vs. how much manual updating it will require. Always shoot for API/JSON first.

If you're using a dashboard service or thinking about using one, I'd love to hear what you plan on tracking in the comments below.

Nonprofiteer of the Year 2013

In June, I found out I was a finalist for the Young Non-Profit Professionals Network of New York City's Nonprofiteer of the Year 2013 award.  I was stoked to be nominated for my first professional award. As soon as I found out, I had several colleagues forward me the newsletter YNPN-NYC had sent out, along with the 4 other finalists.  Quite an impressive list of people:

John Hellman (@JuanEstebanNYC) Director of Advocacy, Latino Commission on AIDS

John Moreno (@JohncitoMoreno) Founder, Latino Youth for Higher Education Program

Tara Pokras (@tpokras) Program Assistant, Project Sunshine

Mon Yuck Yu Chief of Staff, Academy of Medical & Public Health Services

The event was held in at the Center for Social Innovation on June 27th.  It was a nice intimate gathering of like-minded individuals.  The winner was named towards the end of the event after the 5 of us offered up some career advice.  I was honored to have been selected and thankful to everyone who nominated me!

Zendesk, a Non-Profit's Dream.

I'm going to generalize and say that most non-profits lack the ability to experiment with their tech infrastructure.  It's not their fault; they're just not as nerdy as Matthew and I. As I write this from my JetBlue gate at San Diego International Airport, I can't help but romanticize about closing tickets.  What I'm referring to is the act of responding to inquiries that get triaged by my staff and me.  It's become second nature.  I know that when I check my iPhone, there could be a Zendesk push notification.

So, what the hell is a Zendesk?

When I first pitched it to my staff, which doubled from 2 to 4 in 2012, I told them it was first a helpdesk ticketing system.  The inquiry comes in, the ticket is created, the notification is pushed, correspondence takes place, and then the ticket is solved.  Secondly, it's a glorious FAQ knowledge base that you can custom-tailor to your needs.  It also includes the ability to have a blog-style dialogue at the bottom of each FAQ page.

Why can't I keep using my free Gmail account that my whole staff shares which catch all of the e-mails that come in?

Chances are you have one or many e-mail addresses that catch your general inquiries.  (I have at least 6.)  You've created aliases, consolidated, and have any and all stray e-mails land in this Google safe haven.  If this sounds like you, you're not exactly doing it wrong, but you could be doing it better...with Zendesk.

If you're not doing this and have some other crazy MacGuyver setup, you may be past saving.

Why do you use it?

As I mentioned, I have at least six e-mails for inquiries to come in through.  Over the years, we've created these e-mail addresses for various purposes in an attempt to do something that I can't remember because it probably didn't work as well as we had thought it would.

Keeping with their mantra, we've been in a zen state since February.  Once we went live with ZD in February, in came the tickets! (YAY) We also realized that there was a lot of spam linked to these accounts, which subsequently drove our new ticket number up and resulted in us having to spend some time pruning.

Here's what I hoped for/expected when I signed up for Zendesk:

• One general inbox to rule them all. A place to keep inquiries and action items that isn't my personal g-mail which coexists with my work e-mail.

• Easily redirecting inquiries based on which bucket they landed in. Gone are the time-sucking e-mail introductions - with one click of a button, I can reassign a ticket to a coworker.

• Serving our constituents faster and more efficiently. Oh yea, those guys.

• Improved customer service. We operate a rapidly growing online store. Questions, comments, exchanges, and the occasional "WHERE IS MY ORDER??????"

• Living, breathing FAQ. Finally, a place to put all of our policies and hopefully reduce the number of inbound FAQs.

Here's the reality:

• You get what you pay for. Zendesk is definitely an investment, but it's worth every penny.

• Use it wisely. Zendesk is a leg of your communications strategy, but it's doesn't come with autopilot. (Do create macros, though!)

• Know your audience. Some people might be turned off by getting a ticket number assigned to them. Others may not understand their role in the process. If they're a legacy member of your organization, they just won't be expecting it. Keep on truckin'.

• Limit your back and forth. I once tried to coordinate a calendar meeting using Zendesk. We wound up going back and forth at least 10 times. There will be times you kick it old school and switch over to e-mail. Zendesk makes it easy to compose right from your dashboard.

• Feedback can be amazing. We've never had a "quick survey" tool. You can enable your Zendesk to send a followup e-mail to rate your customer service. I have mine set to 2 hours after I mark a ticket solved. Negative feedback is the single best gift someone can give you - it helps you do it better the next time.

• Creating FAQs can be both hard and easy. Your FAQs are not the same as people who are just learning about your organization. Crowdsource them and throw yours out of the closest window.

• FAQ pages can be fun. This is not your standard Zendesk front end.

• Accountability. Based on the size of your team, you can see who is kicking Zendesk's butt and who is slacking. You get full metrics about individual response time and the quality of their support.

There's definitely more to the story, and each Zendesk will have its challenges and opportunities.  As with any tech investment, you get out of it what you put in.