Selling online is a tale of two strategies: building your own branded empire or tapping into the colossal traffic of an established marketplace. For years, merchants debated which path was better. Today, the smartest brands know the answer is both. By combining a powerful ecommerce platform like BigCommerce with the world’s largest marketplace, Amazon, you create an unstoppable sales engine. This guide will show you exactly how to do it.
Whether you’re just starting your journey of selling on bigcommerce or you’re a seasoned pro looking to expand your reach, integrating with Amazon is a game-changing move. We’ll explore everything from setting up the connection and mastering fulfillment to leveraging powerful features like Buy with Prime to supercharge your growth.
Table of Contents
- Why Connect BigCommerce and Amazon? The Multi-Channel Advantage
- Getting Started: The Core BigCommerce Amazon Integration
- Mastering Fulfillment: FBA, MCF, and Your BigCommerce Store
- Boosting Conversions on Your Store with Buy with Prime
- Managing and Scaling Your Multi-Channel Empire
- Frequently Asked Questions
Why Connect BigCommerce and Amazon? The Multi-Channel Advantage
Running an independent storefront and a marketplace shop in silos is a recipe for inventory headaches and missed opportunities. The true power lies in a unified approach. This is where a bigcommerce multi channel strategy comes into play, creating a central hub for all your sales activities.
Here’s why combining bigcommerce and amazon is so effective:
- Massive Audience Expansion: Amazon gives you immediate access to hundreds of millions of active customers who are primed to buy. It’s the ultimate product discovery engine.
- Centralized Operations: Instead of juggling two separate platforms, you can manage inventory, process orders, and track sales from your BigCommerce dashboard. This saves countless hours and reduces the risk of human error.
- Brand Building and Direct Sales: While Amazon is great for acquiring new customers, your BigCommerce store is where you build your brand, cultivate customer relationships, and enjoy higher profit margins. You can use your Amazon presence to drive traffic back to your owned domain.
- Build Trust and Credibility: A professional presence on a trusted marketplace like Amazon lends credibility to your brand, which can benefit sales across all channels.
Getting Started: The Core BigCommerce Amazon Integration
BigCommerce simplifies the process of connecting your store to the world’s largest marketplace. The platform offers a powerful, native integration that acts as the central nervous system for your multi-channel operations. This isn’t just a simple data feed; it’s a deep, functional connection.
The setup for the bigcommerce amazon integration allows you to:
- List Products in Bulk: Quickly create new Amazon listings directly from your BigCommerce catalog. You can map your BigCommerce products to existing Amazon listings (if you already sell there) or create entirely new ones.
- Sync Inventory Automatically: This is perhaps the most critical feature. When a product sells on either Amazon or your BigCommerce store, inventory is automatically updated on the other channel. This prevents overselling and the dreaded order cancellation.
- Manage Everything from One Place: The goal of the bigcommerce amazon marketplace integration is to make BigCommerce your command center. You can set unique prices, descriptions, and details for your Amazon listings without ever leaving your BigCommerce control panel.
Getting started is straightforward. From your BigCommerce dashboard, you navigate to the Channel Manager, connect your Amazon Seller Central account, configure your settings, and begin listing. This seamless process is key to making it easy to bigcommerce sell on amazon without the technical overhead.
Mastering Fulfillment: FBA, MCF, and Your BigCommerce Store
Fulfillment can make or break an ecommerce business. Partnering with Amazon for logistics, even for orders from your own website, is one of the most powerful aspects of this integration.
There are two primary fulfillment models to understand:
- Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA): This is the standard model for selling on the marketplace. You send your inventory to Amazon’s fulfillment centers, and they handle the picking, packing, shipping, and customer service for all orders placed on Amazon.com. Leveraging bigcommerce amazon fba is a popular strategy for its speed and access to Prime shipping eligibility.
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Multi-Channel Fulfillment (MCF): This is where the magic happens for your own store. With bigcommerce amazon mcf, you can use the same FBA inventory to fulfill orders that come directly from your BigCommerce website. A customer buys from
yourstore.com, but Amazon’s world-class logistics network picks, packs, and ships the order. This provides a consistent, fast, and reliable shipping experience for all your customers, regardless of where they purchased.
A proper bigcommerce fba integration ensures that order information flows seamlessly from your store to Amazon’s fulfillment centers. This unified approach to bigcommerce amazon fulfillment means you only have to manage one pool of inventory, simplifying logistics and reducing storage costs. Using bigcommerce fba for all your fulfillment needs is a scalable strategy for growing brands.
Boosting Conversions on Your Store with Buy with Prime
For years, the convenience and trust of Amazon Prime were exclusive to the Amazon marketplace. That has changed with Buy with Prime. This groundbreaking feature allows you to add the Prime shopping experience directly to your BigCommerce product pages.
The bigcommerce buy with prime integration places a "Buy with Prime" button on your site. When a Prime member clicks it, they can check out using their saved Amazon payment and shipping information, all without leaving your website.
The key benefits of buy with prime bigcommerce include:
- Increased Conversion Rates: Shoppers trust the Prime logo. Offering free, fast shipping and a familiar, easy checkout process can significantly reduce cart abandonment.
- Leverage Amazon’s Brand: The Prime promise of reliability and speed is a powerful endorsement for your products.
- Simplified Checkout: Customers don’t have to re-enter their address or credit card details, creating a frictionless path to purchase.
This feature is a perfect example of how merchants can leverage Amazon’s strengths on their own terms, directly within their branded BigCommerce environment.
Managing and Scaling Your Multi-Channel Empire
Once you’re connected, the focus shifts to optimization and growth. Your BigCommerce dashboard remains your central hub as you manage various bigcommerce sales channels.
Here are key areas to focus on:
- Pricing Strategy: The Amazon marketplace is highly competitive. To stay on top, you may need dynamic pricing. Many merchants use third-party apps that integrate with BigCommerce for automated bigcommerce repricing, ensuring your products are always competitively positioned against other sellers.
- Leveraging Social Proof: Trust is currency online. A fantastic way to build it is to display amazon reviews on bigcommerce. Using an app from the BigCommerce marketplace, you can pull your hard-earned Amazon product reviews and display them on your corresponding BigCommerce product pages, boosting shopper confidence.
- Expanding to Other Marketplaces: The principles of multi-channel selling extend beyond Amazon. Once you’ve mastered the workflow, you can sell on different marketplace with bigcommerce, too. For example, you can use the same centralized model to sell on walmart by bigcommerce. For sellers migrating their business, tools are available to import ebay listings to bigcommerce, consolidating all your operations into one powerful platform.
Frequently Asked Questions
How does BigCommerce work with Amazon?
At its core, the connection synchronizes your BigCommerce product catalog with your Amazon Seller Central account. You can create and manage Amazon listings, sync inventory levels in real-time between both channels, and even use Amazon’s fulfillment network (FBA and MCF) to ship orders from your BigCommerce store. In essence, it turns your BigCommerce dashboard into a command center for your multi-channel sales. Answering how does bigcommerce work in this context means it acts as the central hub for your entire ecommerce operation.
Can I use my existing Amazon listings with the BigCommerce integration?
Yes. During the setup process, the integration allows you to map products in your BigCommerce catalog to your existing ASINs (Amazon Standard Identification Numbers) on Amazon. This links them for inventory and order management, so you don’t have to start from scratch.
What’s the difference between FBA and MCF for my BigCommerce store?
Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) is for orders placed on Amazon.com. You send inventory to Amazon, and they handle fulfillment for those marketplace sales. Multi-Channel Fulfillment (MCF) is for orders placed off Amazon, such as on your BigCommerce store. It lets you use your same FBA inventory to fulfill those orders, leveraging Amazon’s logistics network for your own website’s sales. Many merchants use bigcommerce fba for both.
How do I start selling on BigCommerce if I’m new to ecommerce?
If you’re wondering how to sell on bigcommerce, the process is designed to be user-friendly. You start by signing up for a free trial, choosing a theme to design your store, adding your products with descriptions and images, setting up payment gateways (like Stripe or PayPal), and configuring your shipping rules. BigCommerce offers extensive guides and 24/7 support to help new merchants get their store launched successfully.