Weekly Recap of eCommerce News - W29

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: Holiday Season Prep; Brand Reputation Monitoring Tools, AIDA, The Perfect Newsletter, Snapchat Advertising
• SEO: Semantic Search, Subdomains vs. Subdirectories; Holiday SEO Tips
• Customer Acquisition: Customer Acquisition & Marketing; Customer Churn; Differential Pricing
• Headless Commerce: eCommerce CMS; Replatforming; Automated B2B Pricing; B2B Lead Generation
• Conversion Optimization: Google Analytics & Other Data Sources; Checkout Experience
• Things to read or listen to: Podcast: Lifetime Customer Value; Interview with Andrew Chan; Tophatter: the Anti-Amazon Start-up; 
  

Marketing and Advertising

While for many July rings bells of summer holiday, in the online retail world it’s the month when campaigns for the winter holidays start to be dreamed up. To get you ready for what promises to be a busy holiday season this year, Digital Commerce 360 published an article presenting 4 ways for online retailers to prepare for the busy season ahead. Marketing authenticity and adaptability, providing customers with value-add info, a reliable fulfillment service, and preparing for security scenarios are important all year round but become essential during busy periods. 

A brand develops under the influence of many different factors and interactions and it is one of the things brand managers fear most. To keep track of your brand’s reputation, the online world now offers numerous tools that allow you to track pretty much anything you could possibly imagine, whether it’s posts, comments, reviews, and rankings. Practical eCommerce reviewed some of the top tools and you can read about them here.

From 1898 until this day, the AIDA method has been tried and tested time and again. It still stands as one of the most efficient methods to turn leads into customers which is why online retailers also use it. Those of you who need a refresher, as well as practical advice on how to apply it in your marketing strategy, head over to this article for a look at the AIDA method from a contemporary perspective. 

While we are on the topic of content that gets attention and converts, this piece gathers 18 of the most powerful newsletters sent across different industries. The article breaks down the examples to understand what their senders did and how they managed to create attention-grabbing newsletters that you actually want in your inbox. 

If you’re an ad person looking to explore rather uncharted advertising territory, Snapchat might be your new conquest. Find out whether this new channel is right for you, how it works, how much it costs, and how to tailor your ads to make the most of it from this piece. 

SEO

Hubspot’s blog has become a priceless resource for SEO managers in the past couple of weeks. After several articles published in the middle of July, the writers continue their SEO series this week with a piece about semantic search. Find out how search engines try to understand the intent and contextual meaning of a search query in order to give results that match what the user had in mind and what this means for your SEO from this article.

The debate goes on between SEO experts on whether subdomains or subdirectories are better for a website. This article might not settle it but it will surely give you a better understanding of the two concepts and how they each affect SEO, leaving it up to you to make an informed decision. 

Like it or not, the holidays are already upon us. Especially when talking about SEO strategies, which take some time to work their magic. Alex Juel put together 10 holiday SEO tips for you to try out in preparation for the quickly approaching winter shopping season. Don’t leave it too late, head over to this article now.

Customer Acquisition

If you still think of customer acquisition as an outcome rather than a process, this article will make you reassess everything: a step-by-step guide through the top acquisition strategies, from paid ads, email marketing, influencer marketing, referral programs, SEO, social media channels and even traditional advertising channels, all presented with the good and bad sides, and some advice in between. 

Once you acquire customers, you can’t assume they will be with you forever. Customer churn is a problem every business has to deal with, often times for very different reasons. This piece differentiates between voluntary and involuntary churn, to help identify the reasons behind high churn rates and help reduce them. 

In the chase for new customers, pricing plays an important part. A solid differential pricing strategy can help your increase your market reach, increase revenues, set up a better price management system, and streamline production. Find out how to identify market segments and develop a differential strategy from this article.

Headless Commerce

Most eCommerce platforms are not good CMS platforms. After starting with this bold statement that may throw many eCommerce business owners into despair, this article walks you through the essential features of a good CMS, making a solid case for why the two should be separated. It also provides a comprehensive list of features that good content and eCommerce CMSs should have.

Many of you will have already been there: getting the great news that your business has grown, coupled with the news that your website doesn’t meet its needs anymore. Replatforming is a painful process but it doesn’t always mean a new full-stack solution. Modular architecture allows you to make some adjustments on the consumer-facing frontend platform, without requiring backend modification and vice versa. Read more about this solution here. 

A flexible web architecture can be useful for many things, including pricing automation. Pricing automation is especially challenging for B2B businesses and their inherently complex pricing strategies. This piece explains how a platform-agnostic API solution can solve that problem and offer your B2B customers a better online experience. Combine that with the lead generation strategies from this article, and you might get yourself the most loyal B2B customers you’ve ever had.

Conversion Optimization

Online retailers have come to depend on Google Analytics. There currently isn’t a more reliable source of data or one that matters more, than the data sets provided by Google. As much as it is a powerful tool, Google Analytics is not (yet!) everything. Using the data provided by Analytics in conjunction with other sets of data is possible, not to mention recommended. Google Analytics makes it easy to import and integrate advertising, organic search, social media, affiliate marketing data, and more. Read all about the multiple possibilities here. 

A big part of conversion optimization is improving and customizing the checkout flow. Find out the best ways to map out each flow and A/B test solutions to ensure your customers have a smooth journey from any landing page to the final destination: purchase. This article walks you through the process and gives you tips and pointers on how to use the unlimited possibilities enabled by checkout flows to drive sales.

Things to read or listen to

In this podcast, John Grimshaw talks to  Ryan Deiss of BOOM! about the 4 best opportunities to make additional sales and increase the lifetime customer value of your brand using real-life examples and BOOM!s own experience. eCommerce Times’ interview with Andrew Chan, co-founder and CPO of tracking and post-purchase e-commerce platform AfterShip, tackles this same topic and makes for a very interesting read. 

In a world where everything has become about saving time, Tophatter invites us to spend time and, why not, have fun. This retail discovery marketplace is gamifying the shopping experience and deal hunters seem to love it. Read more about it here.