Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM) can bring a surge of opportunity for ecommerce businesses, but peak season can also put pressure on every part of the customer journey.
For BigCommerce merchants, preparing for BFCM goes beyond planning promotions and increasing inventory. Your ecommerce platform, order management, shipping, and fulfillment workflows all need to work together to keep orders moving and customers informed.
We spoke with Neha Shah, VP of Customer Success Management at BigCommerce, about what merchants should consider as they prepare for peak season and plan for continued growth beyond the holidays.
Build a strong foundation before the rush
The best time to evaluate your ecommerce operation is before order volume spikes.
Merchants can use the weeks leading up to BFCM to look at where their teams are spending the most time, identify potential bottlenecks, and make sure their technology is set up to support increased demand.
That includes looking at how orders move from your storefront through fulfillment and shipping, and where automation can help reduce manual work.
With the BigCommerce and ShipStation integration, merchants can connect their ecommerce storefront and shipping workflow. Orders can automatically flow from BigCommerce into ShipStation for processing, while shipment details are sent back to BigCommerce after labels are created.
Connect the customer journey from checkout to delivery
Peak season isn’t just about getting more orders. It’s about delivering the experience customers expect when order volume is at its highest.
A connected ecommerce and shipping workflow can help merchants keep important order and shipment information moving between systems. The integration also supports capabilities such as inventory sync, multi-storefront, and the ability to send ShipStation rates to BigCommerce checkout.
That connection gives teams greater visibility into the operational side of the customer journey while helping them spend less time manually moving information between systems.
A seamless shipping setup lets merchants focus on growth and customer experience. ShipStation gives merchants the tools to manage and automate shipping through BFCM and beyond. For Customer Success teams, that means less time managing shipping complexity and more time focused on merchant growth, expansion, and long-term success.
Neha Shah — , VP of Customer Success Management at BigCommerce
Prepare for more than peak
While BFCM is an important test of an ecommerce operation, the goal shouldn’t be to build processes that only work during the holiday rush.
Peak season can give merchants a valuable opportunity to identify where their operations can become more efficient as they scale. Which tasks are still manual? Where are teams spending time that could be automated? Are your systems communicating the information your teams and customers need?
Answering those questions before the rush can help merchants build a stronger operational foundation for the months ahead.
For BigCommerce merchants, connecting the ecommerce experience with the shipping and fulfillment workflow is one part of that foundation. With BigCommerce and ShipStation working together, merchants can manage the journey from order to shipment through an integrated workflow designed to support growing businesses.
About BigCommerce
BigCommerce is an ecommerce platform that enables merchants to build and grow their online businesses. Through its integration with ShipStation, BigCommerce merchants can connect their storefront with shipping and fulfillment workflows as they scale.
Explore the BigCommerce + ShipStation integration.
