Weekly Recap of eCommerce News - W24

The internet is a great, yet overwhelming source of information. Every week, we read the articles published on eCommerce blogs, journals, and websites. We then curate and sum up what's hot and what’s not in eCommerce, and link to the information that matters to you. 

Here’s the lowdown on some of the hot topics in the industry last week:

• Advertising & Marketing Trends: iOS 15’s impact on email marketing; the importance of knowing your subscribers; data-centric culture; Google’s changes and post-update SEO; podcast advertising; social media & chat apps ads 
• Plugins & Products: eCommerce product releases (June edition)
• Design & Customer Experience: single customer view 
• Headless Commerce: unified checkout
• Conversion Optimization: A/B testing velocity
• Things to read or listen to: interview with meejee’s co-founder Ben Segarra; 12 eCommerce books for the summer; Ballsy’s founder on reaching 10,000 subscribers
• The eCommerce week in numbers: La Redoute expands to Benelux market

Marketing and Advertising

Forever changing privacy rules and regulations force a constant evolution in email marketing. By now quick to adapt to changes, email marketers will face a new challenge in the form of Apple iOS 15’s recently added features. The two new features: Mail Privacy Protection and Hide My Email will change the rules of the game once again. Find out how this affects your campaigns and prepare for the changes with this article.  

Before you give up hope that email marketing can work in the future, check out Armando Roggio’s advice on how to get to know and segment your audience. The best way to hold on to your subscribers is to send out personalized, highly relevant emails that are sensitive to their profiles and needs. Roggio makes a good case for segmentation with some up-to-date examples. 

To get to know customers, marketers have to analyze and interpret vast amounts of data. Our data-centric culture was the topic of conversation in a live interview for CommerceCo by Practical Ecommerce back in May, and it’s summed up in this piece. Armando Roggio talks to Mike Black, chief marketing officer at Profitero, an eCommerce analysis platform, and Halee Patel Newton, VP of Ecommerce at Califia Farms about the upcoming arms race of eCommerce data. 

We’ve gotten used to Google having surprises in store for SEOs and this year is no different. The giant plans what Alex Juel calls a “triple whammy”, the Core Web Vitals update, plus two core algorithm updates in June and July. You need not worry about the changes too much, but there are a few things to take into account once they kick in. Head over to this piece to find out how they will affect your website and what your SEO approach should be after the big update. For more general info, Neil Patel talks about what has the biggest impact on SEO in this short video from last week. 

Businesses’ safest advertising bet is to follow their customers. Podcasts are a great way for your message to reach the ears of those who are most likely to be interested in it. With clearly defined topics, themes and audiences, podcasts are quickly becoming a favorite ad medium for many. Jack M. Germain has summed up all you need to know about podcast advertising in this piece. 

Some will argue that podcast advertising feels like a return to traditional advertising channels. Don’t worry, social media ads and chat apps ads are here to save the summer. While there was no secret that social media is a powerful tool for advertising, the more recent trend of purchases via chat apps will take some by surprise. If you’re eager to experiment with different ad media, you can read about these latest trends here. 

Plugins & Products 

Practical eCommerce has written about the most exciting product releases in June and it is a rather lengthy list, which means there are a lot of reasons to get excited. Instagram and Pinterest’s newly added shopping features, Shopify’s Shop Pay Installments, Swiftly Systems and Juniper Networks’ partnership, Wix’s new point-of-sale capabilities are only a few of the most intriguing releases on this list. 

Design & Customer Experience

Understanding customers better is every marketer’s goal. Single customer view is the solution that offers a 360 perspective on how customers interact with a brand. This piece sums up the advantages and the six steps to building a single customer view: from aligning data owners and KPIs, finding the right tech, hiring data managers, sorting and integrating all data from legacy systems, setting a data governance strategy to finally, testing the processes.

Headless Commerce

As we move further into the age of multi-channel shopping, new checkout solutions are required. Once again, headless commerce is here to save the day and allow eCommerce businesses to create a unified view of customers with a headless checkout experience. Find out how an API checkout helps unify consumer data and why your business could use this approach from this article, published on the Bold Commerce Blog last week.   

Conversion Optimization

A/B testing is the holy grail of eCommerce. You can find answers to any questions you might have about what works and what doesn’t. But how often can you perform A/B tests and most importantly, how often should you do it? This article explains what is A/B testing velocity, why businesses should or shouldn’t do it, and explores 6 best practices when it comes to A/B testing and building a high-velocity testing process.

Things to read and listen to

Digital Commerce 360 interviewed meejee’s co-founder, Ben Segarra last week. He told the story of last year’s unpredicted growth, explained the company’s sustainability model, and gave some interesting insights into web design and how to evolve an audience. If you’ve been won over by meejee’s compelling visuals - like most of us have, you can find out more about the brand from the founder himself in this interview. 

The summer holidays are coming and that means more free time. Just in time for Sig Ueland’s list of 12 new eCommerce books to read this summer. 

There is something to be learned from every success story, so this week we came across another one worth sharing. Ballsy’s founder talked to Shopify Masters about the process of coming up with a new product category, learnings from logistical mishaps, marketing a newly invented product category, and reaching a whopping 10,000 subscribers in this podcast. 

The eCommerce week in numbers

Like many other retailers, La Redoute has been forced to take the digital turn in 2020. For its expansion on the Benelux market, the French brand has had to reorganize internally and put in place an effective eCommerce shipping strategy. This exponential development led to the impressive 120% growth rate La Redoute achieved in the Benelux market last year. This piece sums up their journey into uncharted territory.