BigCommerce 2019 Partner of the Year: EYStudios

We recently sat down with Chris Patton, Solutions Engineer at EYStudios to talk about their 2019 BigCommerce Partner of the Year Award and what sites and solutions they are building on BigCommerce.

Hi Chris, Tell us a little bit about yourself and your role at EYStudios.

Sure! My name is Chris Patton, I am the Solutions Engineer here at EYStudios. My role is to work with clients and the sales team to gather their business and functional requirements, discover solutions for their specific requirements and draft up a comprehensive scope of work before it moves into a full project. I moved into the Solutions Engineer role after 2 years as the Lead BigCommerce developer on our production team. I work in our first-floor office in Kennesaw with our Sales team. I have been at EYStudios for 4 years and have worked on either directly (through development) or indirectly (via requirement gathering and scoping) almost every BigCommerce project since I have been here. Some interesting things about me are I have 8 children 4 boys and 4 girls whose ages range from 22 to 1 and before I became a developer, I moonlighted as a professional Mixed Martial Arts Fighter and still practice Brazillian Jiu-Jitsu to this day.

For those not familiar with EYStudios, tell us a little about this agency.

Located out of Kennesaw, Ga, EYStudios is a full-service solutions integrator in the BigCommerce ecosystem. Among the services we offer are custom design and development, ongoing optimization and retainer program, and digital marketing services. We work with a variety of clients in the SMB, Mid-Market, and Enterprise spaces. Our ideal client is looking beyond the here and now, and focusing on where they want to take their business in the next 5–15 years. We feel that contributing to those merchants’ goals is a win-win situation for everyone involved.

What do you think sets EYStudios apart from the other ecommerce agencies out there?

I believe what separates EYStudios from other agencies is our approach to the merchant and their business. We express to our clients that we are invested in their success and want to be much more than a vendor. We want to be their trusted advisor and provide them the tools to achieve their goals. Their goals are our goals and everything we do is aimed at aligning to those goals

When did EYStudios become a BigCommerce Partner? How did you get involved with working on our platform?

We became a BigCommerce Partner in 2014. At the time we were doing a lot of work on the Yahoo platform. We made a decision that we didn’t want to be tied down to one platform, so we did our due diligence and saw that BigCommerce was on the rise. BigCommerce presented us with an opportunity to work with a platform that was forward-thinking and valued the merchant relationship. This aligned with where we wanted to take our company and was a natural fit.

Personally, I love the collaboration that BigCommerce brings to the table. BigCommerce does a fantastic job of listening to the solution agencies and merchants about their pain points and implementing a solution. They take great efforts into taking this feedback to continuously make their platform better and future-proofing the merchant’s business.

In your experience, why do your clients at EYStudios choose to work with BigCommerce over other platforms?

Our clients choose BigCommerce for several reasons, however, a recurring theme that we have seen is clients want an affordable platform that has the flexibility of an open-source platform along with the dependability of a SaaS platform which BigCommerce lends itself well to being an OpenSaaS platform.

What’s next for EYStudios? We’d love to hear about your plans and vision for 2020.

Following up a year in which we won Partner Of The Year is always tough, but we accept the challenge. We want to work with BigCommerce more through more creative marketing means and expand our growing B2B visibility on the platform. We want to continue to challenge ourselves to be a better partner to BigCommerce and the ecosystem. Personal and company growth is important to us as we work together.

We’ve talked about what clients like about BigCommerce. Next, I’d love to hear your perspective as a developer. What do you love about developing on BigCommerce?

I love developing on BigCommerce for several reasons. The first is the use of modern frontend languages, next is Stencil CLI, and lastly, BigCommerce has a robust API. Because BigCommerce utilizes modern frontend languages, Sass, HTML5, Javascript and Javascript libraries such as handlebars and react instead of a proprietary language as other SaaS platforms utilize, I am able to use my existing development toolbox without having to learn a language that does not serve me outside of developing on a specific eCommerce platform. I find that the Stencil CLI tool allows flexibility in developing new features on a live site as well as allowing me to view the data that is in the store while I am developing. Lastly, because BigCommerce has a robust API it allows me as a developer to extend the functionality of any BigCommerce store.

Are there any particular BigCommerce projects on that you are proud of?

There are several projects that I am proud of but one that I am especially proud of is stylinonline.com. This was one of my first BigCommerce projects after the switch from Blueprint to Stencil. This project featured a few features that I found challenging at the time. The first was the ability to add multiple products with different quantities to the cart at the same time. Next was the ability to display inventory and product sizes on Product Listing pages from data that were pulled from an external warehouse API. Lastly was the ability to allow the user to display new arrival products by a date range, this required using custom fields, modifying a faceted filter, and using the config.json and schema.json files.

Are there any other BigCommerce projects or site builds that have been your favorites?

One of my favorite BigCommerce site builds was doorlocksdirect.com. One of the technical challenges of this product was their need to have several coordinate products with options on the product page that could be added to the cart at one time. To solve this we utilized native custom fields, BigCommerce’s Catalog API, and Vue.js to render the data on the frontend. Essentially the client could place a list of product skus in a custom field and when a customer landed on the product page an AJAX call to our internal connector to BigCommerce’s catalog API was triggered to grab all product data about each product in that list. Once the product data was fetched from the API we rendered that data on the frontend via Vue.js.

What BigCommerce features and innovations are you most excited about?

The features and innovations that I am most excited by right now are as follows: Visual Merchandiser/ Page Builder tool, Promotions Manager, Multi-currency, Multi-storefronts and the Storefront API powered by GraphQL.

And finally — what advice do you have for ecommerce developers looking to advance their careers?

My advice for developers looking to advance their careers is to continually be learning. Learn your eCommerce platform, know the ends and out of it, what are its limitations and how to get around them. Learn more about the eCommerce industry and the current trends and best practices. Share what you have learned by mentoring junior developers and write blog posts when you learn something for the first time.

Thank you to Chris and EYStudios for being part of this interview and sharing your insight with the BigCommerce Dev Community.

Want to continue the conversation? Have a question? Reach out in the comments below or on the @BigcommerceDevs Twitter.