Weekly recap of eCommerce news - W33

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: Lifecycle marketing; Contextual Ad Targeting: High-performance emails 
• Platforms and Products: Content theft protection tools; Competitive intelligence software; Web Design Statistics in 2021; Magento vs. Shopify; Best eCommerce tools; Security and protection tips
• Customer Experience: Website speed optimisation; Prime eCommerce website examples
• Conversion Optimisation: Conversion optimisation strategies for the holidays; Ubiquitous checkout button
• Things to read or listen to: Podcast: Facebook Ads in 2021
• The eCommerce week in numbers: US eCommerce sales rise

Marketing and Advertising

eCommerce lacks the friendly face of the salesmen. To make up for it, it needs lifecycle marketing to build long-term relationships and gain the customer’s trust. Val Geisler, a customer evangelist at Klaviyo spoke to Armando Roggio of Practical eCommerce last week, about the best lifecycle marketing strategies. You can listen to their discussion here to learn about the different phases of the consumer-brand/product interaction and how you should approach each of these phases.

As consumer privacy concerns take centre stage and advertisers are having to give up the old ways of tracking and identifying their customers, old strategies of ad placement are making a comeback. Find out how and why privacy issues might revive contextual ad placement from this article.

You wouldn’t think that an entire strategy is needed for something we do on regular basis: writing emails. But for eCommerce retailers, email is the only way to build a relationship with their customers, so knowing what makes a good email that your consumers will open and maybe even skim through if not read in its entirety, is crucial. Carolyn Nye of Practical eCommerce looks at the key elements of high-performance emails and writes in detail about them in this piece.

Platforms and Products

Many eCommerce platforms invest a lot of time, money, and effort into producing unique content that will place them at the top of the search engine results page. But how many have ever considered protecting that content? Piracy is not uncommon online and someone stealing your content is not only illegal but can also damage your search rankings. Luckily, there are tools that can help you protect your content. Find out what they are from this piece.

eCommerce is climbing in the charts which does not only mean that the success of a business is almost guaranteed, but also that it becomes a highly competitive sector. If online brands want to have an edge, they must keep an eye on their competitors at all times. With Visualping’s competitive intelligence software it’s possible to get alerted any time your competitors’ websites change. Learn how to use this magic tool to your advantage from this article.

And speaking of keeping websites up to date, Hubspot gathered a list of 25+ web design statistics that everyone should know in 2021. If you want a birds-eye view of what matters in web design and understand where it’s heading, check out this summary.

This might seem like a long-forgotten feud, but no winner has ever been declared and with things moving so fast in the eCommerce world we need constant updates. Therefore, eCommerce geeks are still trying to answer the question of whether Magento or Shopify is better and most importantly, for who. For those facing that decision right now, this article might have some answers.

There can never be too many tools in the life of an eCommerce retailer. Tools and ad-ons allow eCommerce businesses to run smoothly and streamline performance. This article sums up some of the best eCommerce tools. Everything you need to know from website, research, business, to marketing and analytics tools.

The one thing this list is missing is the security plan and strategy that any eCommerce store should have in place. Luckily, we stumbled across another article that covers just that. Here is a list of reasons, i.e. potential security threats, why you should think up a security strategy, and tips on how to do it.

Customer Experience

Nothing will put off customers more than a slow website. Google’s research found that 53% of mobile website visitors bounce if a website doesn’t load within 3 seconds. This article will help you find out how your website fares in comparison to others, what the reasons are for websites loading slowly, and what to do about them.

If you want to give your website a make-over you can never have too many sources of inspiration. Here is a list of 15 eCommerce websites that do it right, to get those creative juices flowing and make design decisions easier.

Conversion Optimisation

If you haven’t heard yet, Christmas is coming. If you haven’t started yet preparations, you might already be falling behind. Jokes aside, you can never start optimising your website too early. The process involves a lot of tests and changes before the website is in the best shape it could possibly be to receive the flurry of holiday shoppers. Here are 10 strategies you can already start to try out in preparation for this year’s shopping season.  

The dream of any e-tailer trying to boost their conversion rate can come true with the help of headless commerce. It will be in the shape of a checkout button that appears everywhere, even on website pages that are not linked to the eCommerce store. Find out more from this article about how headless commerce can revolutionise the customer experience by placing every product only a click away.

Things to read or listen to

Molly Pittman and John Grimshaw give their listeners a sneak-peek into last week’s “Your Next Move” group coaching program with a recording about how Facebook’s Interest Targeting survived the iOS updates and is now more powerful than ever. This and many other reasons why you need to master Facebook Ads, as well as advice on how to do it can be found here.

The eCommerce week in numbers

And we’re back with good news after last week we reported dropping eCommerce sales numbers for the first time since we started doing the weekly recap. The Q2 US eCommerce sales reports are out and they are looking pretty good. It might not be the whooping 43.7% increase we saw in the second quarter of 2020, but even with brick and mortar shops reopening and consumers flocking to stores, eCommerce sales have still seen a 9.3% increase. Find the details here.