On July 11-12 you will be directed to a new website. I am still processing (shipping) outstanding orders on the old website, and you will receive your shipping notifications from there. You will be able to tell you are on the new website if you see a welcome banner on the home page directing you to this blog post. I realize this may be confusing, but there's no way to simply switch over to a new provider without some complication and overlap between sites. I've been working hard on this new site in hopes that the transition is as easy as possible on you.
You can still access your order information, account and wishlists at the old Big Commerce site, for the next 7 days: https://store-6ha6r.mybigcommerce.com/
Some background on the move:
If you've been a customer for the last few years, then you probably remember the huge move from Yahoo Shopping (where Aromaleigh was for over 15 years), to WooCommerce (which was hacked) and ultimately Big Commerce, which we made our home as of last July.
If I knew then what I know now- I would have gone with Shopify instead of Big Commerce. The reason being that my monthly Big Commerce bill has increased by 500%. The reason? They recently started up a new pricing structure, based on # of orders and capped dollar amounts. This affects Aromaleigh because as a shop with a very low average order size of $15, I'm quickly put into a premium tier, and then further penalized for going over allowable order limits. The result? Big Commerce has started charging my small shop several hundred dollars per month, which is a major bite into my already small profit margins.
I've reached out to them but they refuse to work with me and take into account that due to my low average order size, I tend to have a lot of repeat customer orders and thus a high order # to a comparatively low gross total sales amount. Big Commerce has priced themselves out of my league. And I'm not alone- small online shops like mine are fleeing Big Commerce.
The end result is that I've been working this last week on a new website here on Shopify, and have just transferred the domain controls over. Changes take effect within 48 hours. I hope I covered all of my bases, but it is very possible there might be glitches and if you find any, feel free to send in a message via the contact form. I appreciate your comments in this area!
The good news... Unlike Big Commerce, I was able to migrate your customer files and all orders into the new shop! You will be able to access your customer accounts on the old site for a short period of time- more details on that coming soon.
The bad news... You have to manually reactivate your accounts. You will be receiving an email about this, inviting you to create a new password for your new account here on the Shopify platform.
Some changes... Shopify handles some things differently than Big Commerce, such as discounts. For the Weekly sales, you will now have to enter a coupon code to get your discount. For the Clearance section, prices already show the discount- so you don't need to add items to cart to see the discount.
Shopify doesn't have a built in wishlist, so I am working on adding this functionality as soon as possible. For now, please access (copy or screencap) your old wishlists by logging in to your old Big Commerce store account, here: https://store-6ha6r.mybigcommerce.com/ (Note that it no longer displays aromaleighcosmetics.com because I have transferred the DNS records to the new website)
I truly hope that Shopify holds out to be the best solution for myself and other small shops like mine. I can't imagine that they would "pull a Big Commerce" after seeing how enraged their new pricing structure system made customers.
So knock on wood, cross your fingers... because I hope we are sitting pretty at Shopify for good.
Thank you as always, for your patience during these changes. Even as a long-time indie veteran of what will soon be 20 years, we still have growing pains!
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