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Break out of the BigCommerce Template Box

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Right now, BigCommerce is about the fastest growing eCommerce platform on the Internet. BC has a long list of features, they’re PCI compliant and have good tech support. What they don’t have, in my opinion, are great template designs. You can’t just pull one off the proverbial shelf and leave it as is – they’re too generic; your store will look like all the other stores whose owners are unwilling to have their template customized.

This is not a bash-BigCommerce article. This is a don’t-settle-for-a-generic-template article.

The good thing about the BigCommerce template system is that, for designers/developers, it is very straight forward. So once we at AMD had designed several BigCommerce stores we had learned the template layout system very well and were able to completely redesign the look and feel of any store, customize layouts and add enhancements, all in a relatively short time.

AMD offers Template Transformations for eCommerce merchants who want to step out of a generic template box and into a customized store on the BigCommerce platform without investing in a full-scale, from-scratch, custom design for their BigCommerce store.

The cost for our BigCommerce Template Transformations is about 25% of a completely custom BigCommerce Store with all the extra enhancements. This is easily affordable for merchants who are boot-strapping their way into the world of eCommerce.

BigCommerce is a great eCommerce platform and we highly recommend it. But we also recommend that merchants pull away from the generic template pack by having an AMD Template Transformation. Whether your store is already on BigCommerce or you’re getting ready to take the leap onto the BigCommerce platform, AMD’s Template Transformations will break your BigCommerce store out of the template box and put it ahead of the pack.

Click See our Template Transformations

Professional Product Photos

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So let’s say we’ve built your BigCommerce store with an extensive list of BigCommerce features. You’ve stocked your new BigCommerce store with products, written descriptions, keywords and accurate page titles. Now, before you launch your store and send out newsletters – stop! Take a look at your product photos. Did you go to a professional photo studio, hire a professional photographer to come to you, or did you take them yourself with your digital camera? Ask yourself this: what’s the first thing you see after your Google search locates a website that sells a product you’re searching for. If it’s a professional eCommerce store, you’ll see professional product photos, taken by professional photographers, being used in product listings and landing page banners. If you don’t, you’ll likely bounce from the site because you have doubts about the product or the store itself. Point is: Google, Yahoo, Bing and the rest all need keyword-rich content to see the products on your BigCommerce store. But it’s people who are going to buy your products and they see them with their eyes, not an algorithm. So, professional product photos are worth a thousand words in the buyer’s eyes. And as an eCommerce store owner, professional product photos can mean thousands more dollars in your pocket.

AMD recommends Lexicon Photo for professional product photos.

The Importance of Professional Logo Design

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Earlier this month, Starbucks shocked the world by unveiling a new logo. This wasn’t the first time that the coffee giant stirred things up a bit (coffee, stir, get it?) but caffeine addicts, mommy bloggers and business analysts around the globe are still debating the merits and weaknesses of the new and “improved” Starbucks siren. Even if you couldn’t care less about Starbucks and the image they print on cups and napkins, their logo saga is a perfect example of why your company should choose professional logo design.

Logos are an indispensable feature of any business, from multi-million dollar corporations like Starbucks to local mom-and-pop establishments. We’re living in an age where personal and corporate branding is becoming more and more important every single day, and a logo—good or bad—can make or break a company. Even so, professional logo design is overlooked all too often.

The Importance of a Logo

If you were stranded in a foreign country and desperately wanted a cheeseburger and fries, you would instantly recognize a pair of McDonald’s golden arches on top of any building—even if you didn’t speak the language in that country. The instant recognition that McDonald’s has successfully developed is an easy way to see how a company logo can instantly separate one business from another. A professionally-designed logo will instantly separate your business from your competitors.

Choose Professional Logo Design

The reasons that some business owners decide against professional logo design vary. Some people truly believe that they can whip something up themselves. Other business owners purchase a generic, one-size-fits-all logo on the internet, adding their company name. Some people even let a “friend of a friend” create a company logo for them.

If any of those scenarios are routes you’ve taken yourself, consider this: your company logo represents your business and all it has to offer. Why should it be anything less than the best? Choose professional logo design and put your best foot forward!

Run Your Own Business? You Need a Website!

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In case you haven’t already noticed, the days of putting an ad in the Yellow Pages to expand your customer base are long gone. When people need a product or service, they turn to their computer instead. Some small business owners are reluctant to take the plunge into cyberspace, but getting your company online is one of the best things that you can do.

Boost Your Company’s Image with a Professionally Designed Website

Earlier this year Starbucks shocked the world by unveiling a new logo. This wasn’t the first time that the coffee giant stirred things up a bit, but caffeine addicts, mommy bloggers and business analysts around the globe are still debating the merits and weaknesses of the new and “improved” Starbucks siren. Even if you couldn’t care less about Starbucks and the image they print on their cups and napkins, the Starbucks logo saga is a perfect example of the importance of a company’s image.

Whether you run a lawn-care business or you sell handmade quilts, the image that you project speaks volumes about your business. A quality website projects an image of professionalism and authority in your field. Most people would rather hire a company they found online than a company whose owner chooses to advertise with homemade business cards and a pair of magnets on the sides of their car.

Sell Your Products Online with an e-Commerce Website

If your business sells tangible items, an e-commerce website provides the ability to sell those products online. This can expand your sales opportunities immensely! Many stay-at-home moms have become successful entrepreneurs, selling arts and crafts or even their children’s outgrown clothing online. While most these women have turned to websites like eBay and etsy to run their online stores, a professionally designed e-commerce website will put them ahead of the crowd. Running your own site gives you the opportunity to separate yourself from the masses and customize the look of your online store.

Website Templates and Custom Designs

Getting started with your own professional website is a lot easier than you may think. Ready-made templates are easy to customize with your choice of colors, photos and your company’s name, logo and contact information, but websites can also be designed just for you.

A professionally designed website will make a great first impression on your potential customers, and an e-commerce website can help your sales skyrocket. Go ahead and make your business look better than your competition—you can thank us later!

Benefits of Hiring a Virtual Assistant

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Say the word outsourcing in a crowded room and chances are pretty high that someone will make a comment about jobs being sent overseas. They might have a valid point, but outsourcing is simply the process of delegating tasks to others—it doesn’t really matter where the person doing those tasks is located. Hiring a virtual assistant has become common practice for many small business owners, even though using an online virtual assistant is a form of outsourcing.

In layman’s terms, an administrative virtual assistant is someone who performs general office duties from a remote location. Your administrative virtual assistant can help you with basic clerical duties like data entry, appointment scheduling, mailings, invoicing and more— all without setting foot in your office.

5 Benefits of Hiring a Virtual Assistant

The advantages of hiring a virtual assistant are abundant, and five of the main benefits are listed below.

    1. Increased productivity. Virtual assistants perform mundane yet necessary tasks that waste your valuable time. Letting someone else handle those tasks translates into more productive time for you.

    2. No need for office space. Hiring a virtual assistant is convenient if you have limited office space because they work from their own home or office.

    3. No special equipment. A virtual assistant owns their own computer, telephone, furniture and the like. In most cases, no special equipment is needed from you when hiring a virtual assistant.

    4. Fewer worries. Many sole proprietors are afraid of taking on employees because they do not want to deal with payroll taxes and employee benefits. Most virtual assistants work as independent contractors, meaning fewer worries for you.

    5. Substantial savings. Hiring a virtual assistant also translates into substantial savings for you and your business! With more time to spend on your own productive tasks, no need to worry about additional office space or expensive equipment and dealing with costly taxes and benefits.

Hiring a Virtual Assistant Shouldn’t Cause Headaches

As a business owner, you may consider yourself a Jack of all trades (or a Jill of all trades!) Realistically, though, there’s no need to worry about doing everything yourself. Hiring a virtual assistant is an excellent way to cover all your bases while saving time and money. Let Advanced Multimedia Designs take care of the details and provide you with a top-quality administrative virtual assistant today!

TinaDemel.com BigCommerce Store Design Process

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Probably the most important part of my custom eCommerce store design process is the point at which I create and submit three layout/design options to the client for them to choose from. I base the design concepts on client consultations and their answers to my pre-client questionnaire, that I give them prior to even offering a project proposal.

My latest client is TinaDemel.com, a New York based lingerie store, now venturing into eCommerce on the BigCommerce platform, my preferred platform. For the TinaDemel.com lingerie store site, I took the client’s preferences and references to their competitors websites and used them as a jumping off point for a custom design, of course applying my own design standards and principles.

One thing I got from Tina Demel was color preference, which I used to create a 7 color light pastel palette that I used with the first two design concepts. For the third design option, I used a palette that I created to be pretty much opposite from the first two: fully saturated, dark, rich chocolatey colors with variations of primary colors to “pop” important elements. Like a chocolate cupcake with colored sprinkles … Anyway, that’s the design that they ended up selecting for their lingerie store.

I just want to point out that I always take my client’s input into account and use it. In this case that input helped me create two great design options. But I also need to create unique solutions that I feel will set them apart from their competitors. And sometimes that means throwing in a wild card.

Take a look at the three concepts and let me know which one you like best. Id love to hear from you.



Note: I grabbed the “Hi Gorgeous” banner from the Victoria Secret website just for the comping process. It will be replaced by banners that I will create for the website.

Promotional Videos for Websites

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Amongst SEO and SEM companies and their B2B clients, online video marketing is quickly gaining popularity and respect as a sharp business tool. Some proponents are even calling online video marketing “the future of marketing”.


Online video marketing can be very cost effective as well, and with various optimization methods a single well-produced product video can get good mileage as a promotional video on websites, blogs and Youtube.

AMD recently created this promotional video for our client Photo Pie, www.photopie.com. The video, aimed at professional photographers, is intended to generate interest and excitement about Photo Pie products – custom wardrobe and backgrounds.

For more information on marketing videos contact AMD, Inc.

Non-Flash Image Slider

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For their BigCommerce store, selling custom wardrobe and backgrounds for professional photographers, our customers Photo Pie (www.photopie.com) needed an efficient and attractive way to display a series of images without using Flash.

So we implemented a jquery slider function that mimics the action of most popular Flash image sliders. The user can pause the product slideshow, restart it, step backward and forward, and follow a link to a product listing when an image is clicked. The jquery image slider is fast-loading and its appearance is controlled by a cascading style sheet (CSS) so if there are multiple instances of the slider, all can be altered at once. If you need a way to feature products efficiently and attractively without using Flash – to avoid losing mobile shoppers or those who might use tablets – contact the BigCommerce Store Specialists – AMD, Inc to have us add this feature to your BigCommerce store.

Client Featured on Mobile Commerce Daily

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Luxe Purses featured on Mobile Commerce Daily

Our client’s website, Luxe Purses, was recently featured on Mobile Commerce Daily.

Read the article here: Retail merchants use mcommerce platform to create mobile storefronts

We can create great websites for companies like Luxe Purses, thanks to our hosting provider, BigCommerce.

If you are looking to start up your own ECommerce or MCommerce store online, be sure to check out our Customizable Website Designs for BigCommerce Stores.

BigCommerce Custom Designed Stores

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Advanced Multimedia Designs offers complete customization packages for BigCommerce websites.

It’s easy for you. We set up your BigCommerce store for you and do all of the design work. And as a BigCommerce authorized reseller, we get the standard set up fee waived.

If you’re ready to sell your products or service online, follow this link to our BigCommerce Custom Designed Store packages, then Contact Us to get your BigCommerce store started today.