The BigCommerce control panel is where you'll initially set up and configure your store. It's where you'll do most of your product catalog, customer, and order management. You'll also have quick access to sales and marketing reports.

The BigCommerce control panel

If you’ve used other web content management or ecommerce platform control panels, the layout for the BigCommerce control panel will look and feel familiar. It’s designed so that the most commonly used parts of your store’s backend, like checking orders, adding/editing products, and updating customer data, are accessible from any other part of the store with just one or two clicks.

 

Dashboard

The dashboard contains setup widgets, gives a quick overview of store reports and recent orders. Click Home on the left navigation to return to the dashboard at any time.

The Home link on the left navigation menu.

Clicking the bell icon at the top of the dashboard will expand to show notifications and store alerts and events like new order messages, pending reviews, products with low stock, and updates to themes.

The top of the dashboard shows notifications and store alerts/events

Some notifications, such as Script Manager script changes and low stock warnings, cannot be manually dismissed. These notifications will remain in the dashboard until they expire or are acted upon.

Get started guides — This section contains widgets to help you set up various aspects of your store. A checklist will be visible until products, shipping settings, a payment gateway, and taxes have been set up. The smaller widgets contain more information or links to other areas you may wish to set up.

Get started guides section showing various widgets and the launch checklist.

Store performance — The Store performance section shows how your store data is trending over time. You can view store metrics for the current day, week, month or year, as well as for the last 7, 30, or 365 days. You can also compare data from the currently selected time period to the previous time period, or to the previous year. For more detailed reporting, see our article on Ecommerce Analytics.

Store performance

Store statistics — This section shows your store’s lifetime total for orders, as well as the current count of customers, products, and product categories.

Example of the Store Statistics section of the control panel dashboard

Orders — This section shows your store’s most recent orders. In addition, you can toggle to see the most recent orders with a pending, completed, or refunded status. Click on View more ;to see your store’s full orders list.

Example of the Orders section of the control panel dashboard

 

Did you know? Not all users can view Store Performance and Store Statistics data. See User Roles and Permissions for more details on the required user permissions.

 

Customizing the Dashboard

Each section can be turned on or off and reordered using the gear icon in the top right. Each user can customize their own dashboard experience without impacting other users. To show or hide a section, click the checkbox next to it. To move a section, click and drag the grip icon to the right of the section name.

Drag and drop sections to change the order in which they appear in the dashboard