Getting Started With BigCommerce For Drupal
Imagine a business that specializes in selling high-end outdoor gear and equipment. This business not only focuses on e-commerce sales but also aims to position itself as a thought leader in the outdoor community by providing valuable content such as guides, tutorials, and product reviews. Here’s how using the BigCommerce for Drupal integration will be useful for a business like this.
Drupal, with its strong content management capabilities, allows the retailer to publish and manage rich, engaging content efficiently. Meanwhile, BigCommerce provides a robust e-commerce platform to manage the sales side, handling product listings, inventory, checkout processes, and payment systems.
With the BigCommerce for Drupal integration, customers visiting the website for research can seamlessly transition to making a purchase without feeling like they’ve left the site or switched to a different platform.
This seamless integration between informative content and the shopping experience enhances user engagement and potentially increases conversion rates.
The BigCommerce for Drupal integration also brings SEO benefits. The informative content hosted on Drupal helps improve the site’s SEO, drawing in traffic through organic search.
Visitors looking for hiking tips or boot care instructions can find the site’s content, which then leads them to the product pages on BigCommerce, turning readers into potential customers.
The retailer can manage its content and e-commerce operations from a unified backend, simplifying workflows.
This efficiency means they can quickly update product information, publish new content, or launch marketing campaigns without needing to juggle multiple platforms.
This scenario illustrates why a business that values both e-commerce efficiency and content marketing would choose to integrate Drupal with BigCommerce.
With that said, let’s dive into how to integrate BigCommerce for Drupal.
BigCommerce for Drupal Integration: Setting it Up
Prerequisites
- A BigCommerce Account and Store Created:
You will need to create a BigCommerce account having product listed, and shipping and payment methods already configured in your store.
- A Working Drupal 8 Site
You should have a Drupal 8 site with commerce module enabled and a store already setup. You can do it via Commerce > Configuration > store > Stores. It doesn’t require any payment methods enabled or shipping methods as BigCommerce will handle this after integration.
- An SSL Certificate For Your Drupal Site
Your Drupal website needs to have an active SSL certificate for the BigCommerce checkout form to render. This ensures security for your customers at checkout.
Integrating BigCommerce for Drupal
Once you have fulfilled all the requirements, here’s what you need to do next!
Step 1: Create a BigCommerce API Account
- On your BigCommerce store admin page, navigate to Advanced settings > API accounts.
- Click on “Create API Account” and select “Create V3/V2 API Token”.
- Provide a name and select scope for each feature (scope is to tell Drupal what to do and what not to do, for example, you can set the scope for products as “read only” so no changes are made after syncing the products to Drupal)
- Click on save to save your changes. After saving you will see a summary of the changes made and a prompt to download the file. Make sure to download it and save it on your device. Once you create an API account, you can’t modify the keys.
Step 2: Download and Configure BigCommerce for Drupal Module
- Get the BigCommerce for Drupal module and install it.
Note: make sure to use the Composer instead of manually downloading it.
- In Drupal, navigate to the module configuration page at Commerce > configuration > BigCommerce > BigCommerce settings.
- Fill in the API Path, client ID, Secret Key and Access Token that you saved after creating the BigCommerce API.
- Click on “save”. if everything is entered correctly, you will be “Connected Successfully”.
- Now we configure that channel settings. This will create a Storefront URL for your in BigCommerce which will match the one you created on Drupal.
- Select “Add New Channel” from the select channel list
- Provide a channel name
- Click “Create new BigCommerce channel” you will then see a site ID and Site URL on the setting page.
- Now in the same channel setting click on “update BigCommerce Site URL”. This lets you confirm that the URL generated in actually sent to BigCommerce, otherwise, the checkout form will not be loaded on the Drupal site.
Step 3: Sync Products, Variations and Taxonomies From BigCommerce
- In Drupal , navigate to the product synchronization page: Commerce > Configuration > BigCommerce Product Synchronization.
- Click the “sync products from BigCommerce” to sync all the products, variations and categories to your Drupal site .
- Make sure to confirm the product have synced by visiting the product page for Drupal Commerce. Go to commerce > Products to see if the products from BigCommerce are synced.
Step 4: See the BigCommerce Checkout in Action
- Once everything is setup and configured, see the checkout in action. Go to the product page and add a product into the cart. Proceed to checkout to make sure it is working. If everything is done correctly, you will see a BigCommerce checkout form embedded into your Drupal site. However, if you don’t see the checkout form, make sure that your channels are correct and that you have an SSL certificate installed.
- When you place the test order, the information will be stored in Drupal (Commerce > Orders ) and also be sent to BigCommerce (Orders > View).
Also Read: BigCommerce WordPress Integration
What’s Next?
Being a leader in eCommerce means recognizing the possible opportunities that can deliver a good experience to the visitors of your website and converting them to loyal customers. Where this guide is to help you do it yourself, hiring a professional BigCommerce development services can make a significant difference.
Codup is committed to excellence, transparency and delivering excellent results. Our team has years of experience and is ready to offer custom integration services for BigCommerce tailored to fit your unique business needs and challenges. Reach out and discover how we can assist in transforming your eCommerce experience, ensuring it meets future demands of the digital commerce landscape.