Skip to main content

Connect your BigCommerce store to Clione

Plans: Starter ✓ · Growth ✓ · Pro ✓ · Agency ✓

Time required: ~5 minutes to connect, ~10 with the Schema Injector.

You need: your BigCommerce admin as the store owner, or a user with the Manage API Accounts permission. If Settings → API Accounts is missing from your admin sidebar, you don't have it — the owner adds it in Settings → Users → [your name] → Permissions.

A BigCommerce store connects with two things: an API Access Token you mint inside your own store, which lets Clione read your catalog and write its signals back, and the Schema Injector, a small storefront script Clione installs for you. The token alone is enough to sync, enrich and publish. The Schema Injector is what renders the visible FAQ accordion and the discovery links for AI agents.

Connecting a different platform? See Connect Shopify, Connect WooCommerce, Connect PrestaShop or Connect commercetools.

Before you start​

  • A Store API Account, not a public app. Clione connects through a token you create in your own store. No app-review queue, no approval wait, you grant exactly the scopes listed below, and deleting the API Account in BigCommerce revokes Clione's access in one click.
  • You need your store hash. The alphanumeric segment of your admin URL, store-<hash>.mybigcommerce.com. BigCommerce also shows it in Settings → API → Store API URL, as api.bigcommerce.com/stores/<hash>. Clione asks for the hash on its own, with no store- prefix.
  • Two stores, two tokens. If you run several BigCommerce stores, each one needs its own API Account. A token from the wrong store fails with 404 Not Found, not with an authentication error, which is the confusing part.

Step 1 — Mint the API Access Token​

This is the one step that happens entirely in the BigCommerce admin, and it has its own page so the two never drift: Create a BigCommerce API account. It walks through Settings → API Accounts → Create API Account, the exact scope levels, and the one-time .txt download.

That page is the authority on the scopes; the table below is only so you know what you are about to grant before you open the admin.

ScopeLevelWhy
ProductsModifyRead products, categories, brands and variants; write the meta title, meta description and meta keywords back.
ContentModifyRead and update content pages; write the structured-data widgets; install and remove the Schema Injector.
Information & SettingsRead-onlyRead your store name and storefront domain. Clione never writes here.
OrdersRead-only, optionalPro and Agency only, for Attribution. Left at None, Clione reads no orders on any plan.

Everything else stays at None. Read-only on Products or Content is not enough: sync works and every publish fails with 403 Forbidden.

Keep the .txt file BigCommerce offers you. It is shown once, and the Access Token line is the value Clione needs.

Step 2 — Add the store in Clione​

  1. In the Clione dashboard, click + Add website in the left rail. The wizard opens on Platform.

  2. Platform: choose BigCommerce.

  3. Details: fill these in, then click Next.

    • Store Name — anything that helps you recognise the store in the dashboard.
    • Store Hash — the hash on its own: abc123def, not store-abc123def and not the whole URL. The form accepts whatever you type here, so a store- prefix is not refused — it just produces a store address that does not exist.
    • Storefront URL — the public address your shoppers visit: your custom domain if you have one, otherwise the mybigcommerce.com address. The root domain only — a page or file path is refused, and so is the api.bigcommerce.com address. This is where Clione later checks that your signals are really live. Leave it empty and Clione uses https://store-<your hash>.mybigcommerce.com, which is right for a store on BigCommerce's own domain and wrong for a custom one.
    • Currency — the primary currency of the store, used for prices and reports. Pick the one your BigCommerce store uses.

  4. Connect: paste the Access Token into API Access Token, then click Create & Connect.

    You can also click Create Store without the token and add it later in Store Settings → Credentials.

The Add new store form

If your plan's store limit is already used up, the wizard says so and offers Upgrade plan or the add-on that connects one more store.

Step 3 — Check the connection​

Open the store, go to Store Settings → Credentials and click Test connection. It reads your store's own record from BigCommerce with the token: on success you get "Connection OK; BigCommerce confirmed <your store name>", and seeing the right store name there is the point — it proves the token and the hash belong to the store you meant. On failure you get BigCommerce's own answer, verbatim: 401 for a token copied wrong, 404 for a hash that doesn't belong to it.

Three things worth knowing about this check:

  • It tests the saved token, not what is in the box. Paste, Save Changes, then test. Leaving the token field empty keeps the stored one, so a blank field is not a blank token.
  • It does not prove the write scopes are high enough. The call it makes needs nothing but a valid token. A token with Products at Read-only passes this check and then fails every publish with 403. The honest test of the write scopes is publishing one entity.
  • Saving the token publishes nothing. Nothing reaches your storefront until you publish an entity and install the Schema Injector.

When you save the token, Clione also registers product webhooks in your store, so a product you edit in BigCommerce syncs on its own instead of waiting for the daily sync. If your API account cannot create them, the registration fails and says so; the store keeps working on the scheduled sync.

The store's Overview then runs the Setup assistants checks, which tell you what is still missing — a first sync, the Schema Injector, FAQs.

Next, run your first sync: Sync your catalog.

Step 4 — Install the Schema Injector​

Two separate things reach a BigCommerce storefront, and it saves confusion to keep them apart:

  • The JSON-LD. When you publish an entity, Clione installs a BigCommerce Widget placement for it, and Stencil renders it into the HTML your server sends on the first request. Crawlers that run no JavaScript see it. You install nothing for this — publishing does it.
  • The Schema Injector. A script, listed as Clione FAQ Renderer in BigCommerce's Script Manager, that renders the visible FAQ accordion, applies your FAQ CSS, and adds the two discovery <link> tags AI agents look for. It emits no JSON-LD.

Install it in Store Settings → Schema Injector → Install. Clione registers the script through BigCommerce's Scripts API with load_method: async, so it never blocks your page from rendering, and mints its own read-only, hostname-restricted key — you paste nothing. The tab then shows Installed with the script's id, and Refresh status re-reads it from BigCommerce.

If your storefront is headless — Catalyst, Next.js, any custom frontend — the Scripts API does not reach it. Use the @clione/seo SDK instead; Clione detects this and tells you rather than installing something that would do nothing.

Full detail, including uninstalling cleanly: Schema Injector.

What Clione syncs​

BigCommerceIn ClioneSynced
ProductsProductsWith their variants, options and custom fields
CategoriesCategoriesAll of them, the category tree included
Content pagesPagesThe pages BigCommerce exposes under Storefront → Web Pages

Brands are read, but as part of a product rather than as their own entity, so there is no Brands list in Clione. Customers are never read.

On Pro and Agency, and only if you granted the optional Orders — Read-only scope, Clione reads your orders from the last 30 days once a day for the Attribution report. BigCommerce sends the whole order; Clione keeps the order-level fields and line items and never stores a buyer's name, email, phone, address, customer account or payment details. Order data is deleted 13 months after the order date. On Starter and Growth no order is read, even with the scope granted.

What BigCommerce gets that other platforms don't​

BigCommerce is the most complete platform in Clione. Compared with the others:

  • Canonical URL, meta keywords and Open Graph tags are written by Clione. WooCommerce and PrestaShop get none of the three.
  • llms.txt and per-entity .md documents on your own domain, through a subdomain you point at Clione with a CNAME. Add the hostname in Store Settings → Integrations, point the CNAME where that card tells you, then press Verify: Clione checks the DNS itself and serves nothing on a domain it has not verified. Shopify gets the same documents through the Clione app; WooCommerce and PrestaShop have no equivalent.
  • The Setup assistants checks and the FAQ widget check run here.

And the two things it does not have, so you don't look for them:

  • No per-language signals for markets. Only Shopify has them — a BigCommerce store with several storefront languages is a channel per language, and Clione refuses the market list rather than show one it cannot act on.
  • No multi-currency JSON-LD. Only Shopify has it. Variant price ranges, lowest to highest, do work here.

The full matrix, per signal and per entity type: Platform capabilities.

Troubleshooting​

401 Unauthorized — The Access Token was copied with a stray space, or the API Account was deleted in BigCommerce. Copy the Access Token line again, exactly, and paste it in Store Settings → Credentials.

404 Not Found — The store hash does not belong to that token. Check the API Path line of the .txt file against your admin URL.

403 Forbidden when Clione reads — Products is at None. 403 only when Clione writes — Products or Content is at Read-only. Raise the level in BigCommerce and save; the existing token keeps working, so there is nothing to re-paste.

429 Too Many Requests, repeatedly — BigCommerce rate-limits per token and Clione backs off on its own. Seeing it often means another integration shares the same API Account. Give Clione its own.

The Schema Injector install stops with "Manual Clione embed detected" — a Clione snippet was added to your theme by hand. Remove it, or choose Install anyway (force) if you know it is stale.

No JSON-LD in a product's page source — that entity has not been published yet. Open its Publish tab. See Publish.

Verification cannot reach a sandbox or password-protected store — enter your BigCommerce Preview Code on the entity's Publish tab (BigCommerce admin → Storefront → My Themes → Advanced → Preview Code). See Verify signals.

Sync finishes but products are missing — they are probably hidden, or in a channel this token's store does not cover. Compare the same filter in BigCommerce's own product list.

Revoking access​

  1. Uninstall the Schema Injector first, in Store Settings → Schema Injector. Once the API Account is gone, Clione can no longer remove the script for you and you would have to delete Clione FAQ Renderer by hand in Script Manager.
  2. In BigCommerce, Settings → API Accounts, find the Clione account and delete it.

Every Clione request to your store is refused from that moment. To also delete the store and its enriched data from Clione, use Remove Store on the Danger Zone tab of Store Settings — see Store settings.

What happens next​

  1. Sync. Clione pulls products, categories and pages — Sync your catalog.
  2. Enrich. Enrichment always asks before it spends credits; a sync never enriches on its own — Enrich your catalog.
  3. Publish. Enrichment writes nothing to your storefront. Publishing does — Publish.
  4. Verify. On Growth and above, Verification in the store sidebar confirms the live storefront matches Clione — Verify signals.

Questions? Email help@clione.ai.