Google wants Shopify merchants to have a higher conversion rate
If you sell on Shopify, you’re probably aware that Google recently improved the discoverability of your products. Now, they also want to make those products easier to sell.
Shop Pay, a feature that is “70% faster than a typical checkout”, is being integrated directly into Google.
What this means: Shop Pay has a “conversion rate that is 1.72x higher than a typical checkout,” according to Shopify. So, if you sell an e-commerce product and people come from Google, you can expect a higher conversion rate.
How the integration will work: Check out this tweet from Shopify, which includes a video that explains the whole flow.
TIKTOK
Gen Z loves TikTok for shopping ideas
Poor Facebook. Its downloads are declining, Instagram is no longer the coolest kid on the block, and now this.
IRI, a market research firm, did a study where they asked 998 female Gen-Zs on what drove their recent purchase decisions. Here are the top 5 sources (in percentage order):
- 59 – Recommendations from Friends/Family
- 54 – Seeing a Friend/Family Member Using Product
- 39 – TikTok Videos
- 38 – Seeing a Display In-Store
- 31 – TV Advertising
In comparison, Instagram was ranked 6th and 7th:
- 23 – Instagram Ads
- 21 – Instagram Influencer Posts
Facebook ads ranked ninth, with 19 percent, and Twitter ads ranked near the bottom of the list, with 11 percent.
Why we care: Time flies. Gen Zs will become older and a larger part of your main consumer base sooner than we think. According to the original IRI report, “nearly half of Gen Zs aren’t old enough to drive a car, but they are driving global marketing and retail strategies around the world.”
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- A 7-figure yearly e-commerce store in the phone case niche.
- A $8M yearly-revenue “plant-based meat” company.
They each have some big lessons.
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- Morning Brew, a newsletter with over 3.5M subscribers, grew thanks to some well-timed (and well-executed) campaigns any online business can learn from.
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SEO
1000x more powerful than BERT
It’s called MUM: Multitask Unified Model.
And it was, of course, announced by Google at its latest I/O 2021 event.
The company defines MUM as a new milestone for understanding information. And when fully realized, it could allow the search engine to address complex search queries.
Not only does MUM understand language, it can generate it.
The example made by Google in this search query:
“I’ve hiked Mt. Adams and now want to hike Mt. Fuji next fall, what should I do differently to prepare?”
In its current state, this query would give the search engine some trouble. You’d have to search for different factors like the elevation, weather conditions, difficulty of the hiking trails, the right gear to use, and more.
If you asked this question to a hiking expert, however, you’d have a thorough answer straight away. And MUM would do the same.
These are the different tasks that MUM can provide:
- Surface insights based on its deep knowledge of the world.
- Understand and generate language.
- Speak in 75 languages.
- It is multimodal, so it understands information across text and images and, in the future, can expand to more modalities like video and audio.
While this technology is still in the early stage, MUM has the potential to drastically change the way we use search engines. Which would affect how websites optimize for Google.
It’s still unclear what the practical effects will be and how SEOs can adapt.
But it seems obvious that keywords would completely change.
You wouldn’t be limited to typing “how to lose weight”. You could just as easily “how to lose weight at 43 years old without doing keto and intermittent fasting” and get great results.
There would be no limit to the number of queries that Google could answer to.
And if MUM can track information from different websites and give you a satisfying answer, it would also mean that fewer searches will turn into clicks.
It’s far too early to panic, and all we can do is wait for the next updates that Big G will unveil.
ROUNDING UP THE STACK
ADVERTISING: It looks like the post-cookie future will be about Google vs. everyone else. Who you got?
MICROSOFT: It appears like Microsoft understands that not many people use it as a primary advertising channel, so they’re trying to make importing from other platforms easier. They’re now doing this with Facebook Ads.
INSTAGRAM: Prepare for Instagram Reels Ads in Canada, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Facebook has announced that this new ad format will be expanded to these four countries.
GOOGLE: Monthly spend limits are (finally) on Google, and many marketers are ecstatic about it.
MOBILE: People love mobile apps (or marketers are really good at driving people to download them). 2019-2020 saw a 50 percent jump in app installs.
TWITTER: The company is trying to diversify from Twitter Ads with a $3 subscription service.
INFLUENCER MARKETING: In India, gone are the days when social media influencers could get away with posting paid content without labeling it as such. What other countries are next?
BRAIN TEASER
A red house is made from red bricks. A blue house is made from blue bricks. A yellow house is made from yellow bricks. What is a green house made from?
You can find the solution here.
POOLSIDE CHAT
Cool tech, (funny) business, lifestyle and all the other things marketers like to chat about while sipping cocktails by the pool.
Does everyone drunk text aquariums?
When they get drunk, some people laugh. Some get aggressive. Some cry.
This guy texted thought-provoking questions to SC Aquarium’s educational number..
The questions:
- I’m currently at the corner of market and meeting. What would I have seen around me 10,000 years ago before the area was settled by humans?
- Also, when was the area first settled?
- Why do sea horses grab anything they can with their prehensile tail?
- Why should I only eat oysters in months that contain the letter R?
Instead of poking fun at him, the employees at the aquarium were nice enough and actually answered all of the questions.
A happy ending. Both for the aquarium and for the guy’s marriage:
“Thank you so much for all of your answers! My wife should be happy I drunk text aquariums and not other women”.