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Can you spell ZUCKPIC?
Facebook’s bans and disapproved ads keep many advertisers awake at night, but some of the reasons behind these disapprovals are always good for a laugh…
Yes, we found this file containing a giant list of disapproval reasons for Facebook Ads. You might have seen it circle around in some groups, but we’ve never shared it before so here are some of the highlights:
- FACEBOOK_ZUCKPIC: Using a pic of Mark Zuckerberg means rejected ads. Even a pic featuring the Facebook logo, thumbs up, etc. will be disapproved. See the screenshot below.
- RANDOM_CHARACTER: Apparently, you can’t use a random character in your creative. What does Facebook define as random? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- MENTION_SUPPLEMENT: So, you can sell this product but you can’t mention it?
We could go on and on. This list is very extensive… Maybe you want to keep it handy and take a quick look whenever your ad is disapproved for mysterious reasons.
E-COMMERCE
Six COVID-19 related UX improvements
According to the research done by Baymard, users are currently facing similar informational challenges as those observed during seasonal shopping events.
Therefore, these user experience improvements aim to help users make better decisions, and they aren’t just COVID-19 related.
Let’s go.
- Have direct links to Return Policy and Shipping info in the footer: Many users are concerned about shipping and returns right now, so giving them quick and easy access to this information might be helpful.
- Support non-product search: Baymer’s usability test showed that 34% of users tried to search for non-product content, but only 15% of shops support non-product related searches.
- Allow out-of-stock product purchases and increase the delivery time: When an item is out of stock most users will abandon your store to try and find it elsewhere. You can stop this exodus by allowing users to place an order for the out of stock product and increasing the delivery time. 68% of shops don’t do this, it should be a good advantage.
- Show estimated shipping costs on the product page: 18% of users abandoned an order because they couldn’t find or calculate the total order cost upfront. Most of them don’t want to wait until checkout to know how much it will cost.
- Use delivery date rather than shipping speed: Users don’t care how long it will take, they want to know when they will get the product. Providing a delivery date or a date range performs much better than displaying shipping speed.
- Integrate all order tracking information within the e-commerce site: Users track their order at different times, but when this information is provided via third-party tracking or sites it’s sometimes hard for the user to access it.
Some of these points might be easy to implement while others might require more time and proper tools. However, if you can do something to boost the user’s experience on your site, just do it.
SEO
Manual sitemaps for large websites okay?
This was the question bothering an SEO guy on Reddit who was looking for advice on creating a sitemap for a website which had over 2M products (SKU’s).
John Mueller’s Response
You should avoid creating a manual sitemap for sites like these. Instead, it’s recommended to get the sitemap directly from the CMS or the underlying database.
Alternatively, you can also create a sitemap from the API where the developer team originally pulled the list of URLs from.
How is this better?
It’s not just about how you create a sitemap, you also have to make sure that it stays updated at all times.
With such a large product catalog, your product availability will always fluctuate. You will find yourself adding and removing tens of thousands of products every day.
Logistically, it would be impossible to maintain a sitemap like that.
It’s an interesting Reddit thread, and you can join the discussion here.
ROUNDING UP THE STACK
- TIKTOK: ByteDance’s apps TikTok and Douyin see a 10x increase in revenue figures for the month as they cross $78M of in-app revenue, marching ahead of YouTube, Tinder and Netflix.
- SECURITY: A group of well-known hackers released a new jailbreak tool that unlocks every iPhone. Not that we recommend using it, this is purely news.
- TIKTOK: Google has been kind enough to remove 5M bad ratings for TikTok after the flak it received last week. It now stands at 1.4 stars.
- CONTENT MARKETING: If Facebook bought Giphy, there must be a good reason. Here’s a good example of leveraging GIFs in your content and encouraging users to share your branded creatives.
- ADVERTISING: Reddit announces a new advertising program that will allow you to learn from industry professionals and submit your work for assessment by the broader Reddit community.
- GOOGLE: Mordy Oberstein spotted “People Also Search For” carousel ads on Google. Just a test or maybe a feature gradually rolling out?
BRAIN TEASER
Forward I catch fish, backward I am the tenth of numbers. What am I?
You can find the solution here.
POOLSIDE CHAT
Cool tech, (funny) business, lifestyle and all the other things affiliates like to chat about while sipping cocktails by the pool.
I am leaving on a Falcon 9, be back in 6 or 16 weeks
We teased Musk a bit yesterday, not remembering that today is a huge day for him.
It’s SpaceX’s first crewed mission ever as they prepare to launch the Falcon 9 rocket with two NASA astronauts on board.
The big launch will occur at 10:33 PM CET tomorrow, to be precise.
If you are a Muskie or just curious about the mission, you can watch live streams of the event taking place on NASA and the SpaceX website.
This is a huge event for SpaceX because, if successful, we will start to see more commercial space companies carrying out crewed missions.
From The Crew to The Crew: All the best and safe travels.