Awesome GTI Migrates From Magento, Leverages BigCommerce to Launch B2B Channel & Grow 96%

The Awesome GTI success story

When Awesome GTI was founded in 1989, it was a hobby. Founder Jim Cotton wanted to help others modify, tune, and maintain their Volkswagens, Audis, and other performance cars.

But when the hobby naturally progressed into an online business, the operation started to get a bit more complex.

Originally operating from a Magento storefront, Awesome GTI discovered that their online operation wasn’t as optimized as it could be.

As the number of SKUs increased, maintaining their online system became a distraction from actually managing, marketing, and selling products.

Then they switched to BigCommerce.

Now Awesome GTI doesn’t have to worry about hosting issues or platform management — and instead, they can focus on scaling up their operation.

It’s working, too: So far, they’ve seen a 96% increase in revenue YoY.

Magento wasn’t optimized for scalability

As told to BigCommerce by Wayne Ainsworth, Ecommerce Manager, Awesome GTI.

We’d been on Magento for several years, but there came a point when we realized that the platform wasn’t optimized for what we were trying to do anymore. Plus, we were never sure if the data from that system was 100% correct.

We needed a hosted platform that allowed us to focus more on the marketing and selling of products rather than always being tied up with system maintenance.

That’s why BigCommerce stood out as a big opportunity for us. We were expanding into B2B markets and fundamentally changing the way we do things online, and BigCommerce helped us accomplish that. It’s helped us get to where we are today.

Shopify seemed geared toward small-scale business

As told to BigCommerce by Wayne Ainsworth, Ecommerce Manager, Awesome GTI.

Shopify, to us, seemed very much geared toward the small, new-to-ecommerce companies.

The themes were basic, and it generally had this very small scale, t-shirt seller feeling. Seeing as we were an established ecommerce brand with more than 10,000 SKUs, this just didn’t line up with what we needed.

When we looked at the BigCommerce system, we saw all the features on the front and back end that we were looking for, from integrations to support.

Even though we’ve never had to use BigCommerce’s support resources, we like knowing we have technical support available to us.

Easy migration from Magento to BigCommerce

As told to BigCommerce by Wayne Ainsworth, Ecommerce Manager, Awesome GTI.

Our entire migration process from Magento to BigCommerce only took a few months. That was great turnaround time for us, because we were still 100% operational during this entire transition process.

Since making the switch, we’ve had 1.3 million sessions, 4 million pageviews — and it’s consistently growing.

Our online store’s performance is remarkable: bounce rate is reduced, session duration is up, and daily sessions are increasing. The growth we wanted to see is there.

Learn more about migrating from Magento to BigCommerce

Customer groups for greater efficiency

As told to BigCommerce by Wayne Ainsworth, Ecommerce Manager, Awesome GTI.

Customer groups allows us to create different tiers for discounting, which is important because we have some large dealers we work with that need different pricing structures.

The great thing is that this tool makes all of that complex data easy to manage. We have one guy who oversees this aspect of the business, so this tool makes it easy and seamless for him to maintain his normal duties and to run the site.

We know that if he had to pick up the phone every 10-15 minutes to take an order or process one, he’d be tied up a lot of the time. So not only does it boost our efficiency, but it’s a cost-saver, too.

Detailed analytics for data-driven decision-making

As told to BigCommerce by Wayne Ainsworth, Ecommerce Manager, Awesome GTI.

We use the insight from our BigCommerce analytics all the time. Whether it’s drilling down to the product level for marketing or understanding our customers' wants and needs better, this information has been invaluable.

I’m constantly surprised at how much data it gives us and all that it allows us to do.

Simple analytics like ‘most discounted products’ or ‘most abandoned products’ are brilliant because they allow us to see trends and then to act on them, whether it’s offering a discount or following up with emails to customers.

Right away we can spot areas for optimization.

More than a selling platform

As told to BigCommerce by Wayne Ainsworth, Ecommerce Manager, Awesome GTI.

We’ve found that BigCommerce isn’t just a selling platform — it’s also our product catalog and our medium for customers who want to speak to us through channels like social media and live chat.

We honestly don’t have a single complaint. BigCommerce has worked perfectly for us.