Walton’s Creates a Foundation for Future Growth on BigCommerce

SOLUTION

Finding a partner for ecommerce success.

After deciding on BigCommerce as their new platform, the Walton’s began working with the BigCommerce Data Migration team. Working together, Walton’s new site launched in four months, “which is crazy,” says Tremblay. “The last time we migrated, we prepared for a full year. This time, we were able to write the product integration code in a week’s time. I realize not a lot of companies are going to have developers on staff, but with BigCommerce, it’s something that you can do on your own. It amounts to huge cost savings.” 

After the site launched, Walton’s continued finding new features and functionality that proved BigCommerce was the right platform choice. 

Easy integrations make improving functionality a breeze. 

The team was immediately impressed with BigCommerce’s native functionality, in addition to its impressive array of apps that could easily plug into an existing site. 

“We always want to try different things, just to see how they’re working. We’re always thinking ‘How can we improve the customer’s experience?’ And with BigCommerce, instead of having to build that from the ground up, very often, there’s already an app out there that will either give us exactly what we’re looking for, or lead us in the direction of what we were initially thinking,” Tremblay said. 

Through APIs, Tremblay’s team can easily plug in a variety of integrations into the BigCommerce back-end, allowing new and existing systems to talk to each other without the need for external resources. 

“We use Sage 100 as our ERP, and it’s so simple to get a new product into BigCommerce,” Tremblay said. “I just click a button in our ERP and it feeds every bit of product information over: different pricing levels, product groups, different sizes, everything. I can do it all from one location. It’s very well done, and very easy for me to use.” 

They’ve also been able to use tools like the Shogun page builder to quickly and easily create new pages for their site. “Shogun has been huge,” he said. “It makes custom pages so easy. Not only do they look good, but they have great Core Web Vitals scores.” 

For functionality specific to their business needs, the Walton’s team can work with one of many BigCommerce technology or agency partners to create a tool that does exactly what they need — and even help other BigCommerce customers in the process. “We worked with an agency called Razoyo to create a custom app for shared order history. They actually submitted this project to BigCommerce to have on their app store, so other businesses could use it, too,” he said.  

“We got them to write us a specific application that allows different customers within the same company to see all of their invoices in one place. It prevents double orders and saves our customers a huge headache. And us, too,” he laughed. “What do you do when someone orders twice as much as they need? Usually, that’s a return, so it’s a really big help for us not having to deal with that confusion.” 

One platform for selling B2B and DTC saves time. 

One of the main drivers for migrating to a new platform was the need to sell both DTC and B2B on the same platform. While this functionality existed on their previous sites, they were missing key features that made B2B sales a challenge — especially on the back-end. 

“When it comes to our retail customers, whatever they’re buying, there’s not a retail bin and a commercial bin,” explained Tremblay. “Our customers, no matter who they are, are getting a commercial-grade product. And for our site, we can update all of that information in one place with one record. We don’t have to do it on two different sites, which would double the work for our team. BigCommerce makes it a lot easier.” 

The Walton’s team is also able to save time by putting customers into specific price groups, or by creating bulk or sale pricing for specific items. “This is a major function for us that is aligned with our business,” Tremblay said. “Not many platforms are set up to be able to do this kind of grouping that easily, especially right out of the box.”