How to Create a Blog on BigCommerce

BigCommerce is one of the most used business software solutions today, and it’s Shopify’s biggest competitor. That being said, regardless of how great a platform BigCommerce is, its native blogging solution isn’t up to the standard of its other features.

By now, you must know the value of blogging for maintaining your online presence and building a relationship with your readers, not to mention that it leads to bigger profits. So, in this tutorial, we’ll go over the steps of how to create a blog on BigCommerce with DropInBlog – the handiest, friendliest, and most functional blogging tool available. Let’s go!

What Is BigCommerce and What’s It Used for?

BigCommerce is a cloud-based, SaaS, all-in-one platform that is mostly geared towards large businesses, B2B (business-to-business) sellers, and global sellers. Its popularity stems from the robust suite of out-of-the-box features it provides. 

It can also be suitable for small businesses with large catalogs, but it’s not the best match for startups simply because of the costs.

BigCommerce is an agile platform that has a slight learning curve to begin with. However, its native features are truly impressive and save you the costs of having to use a lot of third-party apps. The UI is intuitive, easy to navigate, and provides a really good hosting experience.

Can You Blog on BigCommerce?

You can definitely blog on BigCommerce – in fact, it’s highly recommended! As with any e-commerce platform, adding a blog to your site and blogging about something relevant to your brand can help increase your profits and really anchor your business (see our article on the highest-paid bloggers).

Unfortunately, BigCommerce’s native blogging functionality is elementary, to say the least. Compared to the other out-of-the-box features the platform has, it’s a watered-down version of the real deal because you only get the basic SEO features. You can add authors, dates, and images, but that’s about it, making it too basic for serious blogging.

However, that’s where DropInBlog comes in. This blogging tool is designed solely for blogging and offers features way beyond the basics. Plus, it was designed to be highly user-friendly and very easy to work with.

What You Need to Create a Blog on BigCommerce

Creating a blog on BigCommerce is a relatively simple process. All you need is an active BigCommerce account – DropInBlog will take care of everything else.

How to Create a Blog on BigCommerce with DropInBlog

Okay, so let’s guide you through the steps of installing DropInBlog on your BigCommerce website.

To start the setup, go to the DropInBlog listing in the BigCommerce App Marketplace. 

Next, click Get this app to begin the installation process.

You will be redirected to a window asking you to log into your BigCommerce account. To continue, click Log in.

You will then be redirected to a sign-in form. After you enter your login credentials, you will be taken to a confirmation page within your BigCommerce dashboard. When you get there, click Install. 

Next, you’ll be taken to a confirmation window where you need to click Confirm to finalize the installation process and allow DropInBlog to merge with BigCommerce:

And voilà! Your new DropInBlog account will be automatically created, and a DropInBlog page will be added to your website. You will be instantly redirected to your DropInBlog admin panel within the BigCommerce dashboard.

You’ll notice that there are four example posts full of helpful tips, but we also recommend “taking the tour” to familiarize yourself with DropInBlog’s features.

To view how your BigCommerce blog page will look, you can click My Blog in the top left corner. 

This is what we see when we preview our blog:

The final step is adding the new blog page to your menu. To do this, head back to your BigCommerce dashboard and navigate to Storefront in the left navigation menu. After that, click Web Pages.

Here, you’ll see all the pages you have on your website. What you need to do is toggle the visibility of Our Blog to “on” so that it will appear on the main menu. While you’re here, you can also arrange the order of the menu items if you want.

Lastly, when you want to manage your blog, navigate to Apps on your dashboard and click on DropInBlog.

And that’s it! Now you can freely explore everything you can do with DropInBlog, the most practical blogging tool you’ll ever need!

How to Add Recent Posts to Your BigCommerce Homepage

To gain more visibility to your blog, you may want to add a section to the homepage of your BigCommerce site showcasing your recent blog posts. The below video walks you through the process step by step.

From within your BigCommerce account, navigate to Storefront on the left sidebar and click on it.

Under Current Themes, click on Customize. 

You will be directed to the BigCommerce page builder, where you can customize your pages using drag and drop design system.

On the left upper side, make sure that the selected page is Homepage.

On the left sidebar under Page Builder, you will find different widgets that you can drag and drop to any part of your page.

Scroll down and choose Recent Posts - DropInBlog under the Custom section. Click and drag the Recent Posts - DropInBlog widget to the Drop widgets here section on your homepage. We'll place it at the end of the page, just before the footer section.

Once you've added it, the Recent Posts - DropInBlog section will appear on the left, where you can customize it. You can change the title (if you don't like the default "Recent Posts"), choose the number of posts your visitors see when they land on the page, and edit the display layout. 

In addition, you'll have the option to select which category of posts shows in Recent Posts. For instance, if you have a "Product Announcements" category, you can filter out the rest of your blog posts and show only those related to your product announcements here.

Once you've done with the customization, click on Save to save the changes, and then click on Publish to publish your page. 

Finally, make sure to check it out on your live website!

Notable DropInBlog Features

Creating a super functional and good-looking blog with DropInBlog is easy, as you can see. But there’s so much more to blogging than just publishing articles, and DropInBlog has all the tools to elevate your blogging experience and optimize your posts.

Let’s do a brief overview of some of DIB’s notable features.

Blog Layout and Custom CSS

DropInBlog’s defining characteristic is that it inherits your CSS, which means that your new blog will seamlessly adapt to your chosen website template. To further customize it, you can choose one of the three blog layouts: 

DIB enables you to add custom CSS that will be injected into your website if you want to go a step further. You can use this to customize the appearance of your blog even more and implement very specific changes. Then, you won’t have to worry about the layout shifting around when you update.

SEO Analyzer

The SEO Analyzer is truly the highlight of DiB. It’s a really great tool that can help you optimize your blog posts quickly and efficiently. 

In short, the SEO Analyzer is an intelligent and interactive tool that gives you immediate feedback as you type. It grades your content based on multiple criteria and suggests how to improve your article's SEO score. 

This is the gist of it, but for more in-depth information, you can check out our article on how to use the SEO Analyzer for better SERP results.

Blog Settings

With DropInBlog, you can manage your blog settings in great detail. From adding 404 error messages and article reading times to easily modifying the output previews with just a toggle and changing the social and localization settings, DropInBlog allows you to have a real hands-on experience. 

So, the only thing remaining is to look for inspiration and use the tools of this blogging space in the best way possible!

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