In 2021, ecommerce experienced another year of pandemic-accelerated growth. We hope your business has navigated the changes in our society and economy, and that ecommerce has been a catalyst for doing so successfully.
As a platform provider, we strive to power success with industry-best ecommerce product, performance, security, quality and innovation.
In terms of product and service execution, 2021 was the best year in our history. We were pleased to see this reflected in our collective customers’ performance during peak holiday selling, in which our customers’ sales outperformed estimated industry averages by more than 10%. BigCommerce also saw 100% Cyber Week platform performance uptime, marking the eighth consecutive year of zero reported site downtime during the peak holiday period.
Please see below a few highlights of our 2021 efforts to provide industry-leading capabilities in product innovation, international expansion, and omnichannel selling. I will also share a few of our biggest priorities for 2022.
Product innovation
Over the course of 2021, BigCommerce launched numerous new features designed to improve customer growth and experience.
One of our most successful launches was B2B Edition, which offers next-level B2B functionality from BundleB2B, including quote management, invoice portal, payment method visibility control and much more. We also introduced our free integration with Google BigQuery, which as part of our Big Open Data Solutions provides our merchants industry-leading capabilities in data management and analytics.
We released major upgrades to our transactional email templates, introducing new features, options to customize the email templates with a modern user interface and new APIs. Promotions Manager now benefits from our Advanced Editor tool for Enterprise plans. In a major security enhancement, we enabled two-factor authentication (2FA) for all store users.
We also released several new features for developers, including Widget Builder, Product Sort Order API, Tax Provider API, Custom Templates Associations API, new data available in GraphQL Storefront API and a Next.js sample app. For headless specifically, we launched new partnerships with leading front-end solutions including Next.js, Uniform, Shogun Frontend and Amplience — with many more coming soon.
Multi-storefront (MSF) has also launched in beta, and once fully released in 2022, it will unlock the ability for merchants to create and manage multiple Stencil and/or headless storefronts within a single BigCommerce store.
International expansion
International selling capabilities and geographic expansion continue to be one of BigCommerce’s biggest areas of investment. In Europe, we launched localized product and go-to-market operations in France, Italy and the Netherlands. Timed with these market launches were language translation and content customization features in our email templates, system messaging and onboarding flows. We also announced partnerships with multiple leaders in European payments and, in France, the CMA CGM Group’s shipping, fulfillment and New Oxatis commerce capabilities.
In the APAC region, we expanded agency and technology partnerships in multiple Asian countries with an eye toward continued growth and future market entries. In Latin America, we hired our first team members and held our first partner conference in preparation for formal market entry in January 2022.
Omnichannel leadership
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In July, BigCommerce acquired Feedonomics, the world’s best solution for product feed optimization and syndication to 100+ leading advertising, search, social network and marketplaces channels around the world. At the time of acquisition, Feedonomics served 28% of the top 1000 US retail ecommerce sites. Combined with BigCommerce, Feedonomics provides merchants with industry-leading capabilities for third-party demand generation, advertising and marketplace selling.
We also announced new and expanded partnerships with several of the world’s leading advertising and selling channels, including Google, Walmart, Amazon, TikTok, Wish and Mercado Libre. These partnerships provide merchants unique opportunities to grow their businesses through third-party product distribution, advertising and selling.
Industry recognition
BigCommerce continued to earn widespread recognition as an industry-leading platform and employer in 2021. In its 2020-2021 assessment, IDC MarketScape named BigCommerce a Leader among B2C and Headless ecommerce platforms. Paradigm honored BigCommerce with 16 medals across its B2B Combines (Enterprise Edition and Midmarket Edition). With respect to company leadership, BigCommerce made Inc. Magazine’s inaugural list of Best-Led Companies and earned two Austin Business Journal awards for Best CFO and CEO.
2022 plans
BigCommerce will continue to expand in prioritized segments throughout 2022. Geographically, we plan to continue our international expansion, formally launching in Latin America (including Mexico, Chile and Argentina), Germany, Spain, the Nordics and Benelux.
Among our many new enterprise product enhancements, multi-storefront functionality (MSF) is expected to be the most transformational. MSF enables selling across multiple brands, customer segments and/or geographies from a single account. When fully rolled out in 2022, MSF will satisfy a multitude of high-demand use cases.
We plan further roll-out of enterprise capabilities including multi-location inventory and distributed commerce. And we will continue rapid innovation in partnership with our vibrant technology and agency ecosystems.
To stay up-to-date on the exciting product launches and latest industry insights, I encourage you to attend our monthly Town Halls and explore our Customer Learning Resources, including our Make it Big Podcast which launched in 2021.
