E-COMMERCE
The winners of Black Friday & Cyber Monday: Amazon, Shopify, and Facebook Marketplace
First, the losers: Yesterday we reported that Cyber Monday sales were down from last year. That’s according to Adobe Analytics data, which tracks trillions of visits to various ecommerce sites in the U.S. Black Friday was no different.
Hold my beer: In comparison, Amazon, Shopify, and Facebook Marketplace all reported record-breaking sales during the holiday season:
- Amazon reported record sales during the period between Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
- According to Shopify, merchants’ Black Friday & Cyber Monday sales were higher than last year.
- Facebook Marketplace has seen a 40% increase of people searching the term “gifts.”
What all of this means: We did some digging. Adobe Analytics is primarily used by enterprise companies while Shopify, Amazon, and Facebook Marketplace are used by smaller sellers.
Could all of this mean that people are buying more from smaller merchants than from larger companies? Although we don’t have official data to back it up, this early evidence is promising.
Google will push (yet another) product reviews update
Raise your hand if you tried researching a product on Google, gave up, and then typed “[keyword] + reddit” to see actual opinions from users.
Google seems to be aware of issues like these, and has started working on a future search update to address them.
The update: In a blog post, Google announced that if you run a product review site you should follow the following new best practices:
- Provide evidence (videos, audios and/or links) of your own experience with the product. This will show your expertise and lend credibility to your review.
- Add links to multiple sellers (Amazon affiliates, we’re looking at you) to give people more options to purchase.
Basically, your product reviews should look more like forum posts.
Google has also said that these two “best practices” will take effect in a future product review update.
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- Virtual cards to pay vendors like Facebook, Shopify, Amazon, and more.
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E-COMMERCE
Take their hand and lead them to the checkout land
Here are a few facts we think are true:
Fact #1: Everybody wants to get more sales from their e-commerce store traffic.
Fact #2: Growth Tactics shared a Twitter thread containing three guidelines to increase your conversion rate.
Fact #3: If you keep reading, you might end up with some ideas to accomplish what’s in fact #1.
Shall we?
1) Online product discovery is about elimination, not addition: The more product choice you give your customers, the more stress you’re going to cause.
They’re on your website to accomplish a task. Help them do that by showing a few selections of bestsellers.
2) Navigation: The main navigation bar is the most valuable piece of real estate on your e-commerce site. Think of it as a brick and mortar store’s greeter.
Don’t put too many links in the navigation menu. Instead, group your products by category and only include your 3-5 most popular products.
Do you want an advanced tip? Show the images of a product when the user hovers over an item. This can drastically increase the CTR.
What about educational content? Where should you link pages like your FAQ, “about you” page, or your blog?
Growth Tactics suggests two solutions:
- If your average order value (AOV) is under $50, put your informational links in the footer of your website.
- If your AOV is over $50, include informational links in the navigation bar.
3) What are the must haves of a product page?
- Address the most common questions customers have: Fit, material, features, specs, shipping, returns, warranty. Do this with written, visual, and interactive content.
- Comparison: Show them how your products differ from alternatives.
- Reviews: Use social proof from real customers and make sure to include less-than-perfect reviews to gain credibility and set sexpectations.
- 1-click upsells: Relevant upsells can increase order value by 15-30 percent.
- Payment plans: These can make higher value purchases more manageable for the customer so they can help you get even more upsells.
Fact #4: The Crew hopes you found this post helpful…
SPONSORED BY SEMRUSH
The easiest way to increase revenue with Content Marketing
It’s hard to run a business while also trying to create winning content. Budget is limited, resources are scarce…and you have to compete with the big market players.
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THE CREW’S INSIGHTS
Top 15 acquisition channels that consistently work for founders
Ever felt like there’s too much talk about scaling and not enough about starting? That’s where this analysis by Darko from Zero to Users comes in.
The analysis has been done by digging through 479 founder interviews, each mentioning what channels worked for them.
The Top 15
- SEO (only after getting results with another acquisition channel). Mentions: 83
- Platform-specific marketplaces. Mentions: 77
- Product Hunt. Mentions: 77 (email marketing)
- (sub)Reddit posting. Mentions: 44
- Cold email outreach. Mentions: 42
- HackerNews. Mentions: 39 (content marketing)
- Building a media brand before a product/service. Mentions: 38
- Using your own network/connections. Mentions: 36
- Google Ads (AdWords). Mentions: 31
- Affiliates / having an affiliate program. Mentions: 30
- Niche communities/forums. Mentions: 29
- SEO (starting right away). Mentions: 29
- Twitter posting/engagement. Mentions: 28
- Facebook groups (posting/engaging/creating a FB group). Mentions: 28
- Mainstream press outreach/being mentioned. Mentions: 27
Anything you haven’t thought of that’s on the list? You know what to do next.
ROUNDING UP THE STACK
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GOOGLE: How do you compare to your competitors? To answer this question for you, Google’s Merchant Center is releasing a “Competitive Visibility” report.
FACEBOOK: Crypto ads are now easier to run on Facebook.
BUSINESS: PayPal’s buy-now-pay-later feature saw a surge in usage during the holidays.
FACEBOOK: What are the most recent popular posts relevant to your Facebook page? Facebook has a new feature that will give you the answer, according to Matt Navarra.
AMAZON: According to a recently released report, Amazon is taking a bigger cut of sellers’ revenues as time passes.
YOUTUBE: What were the most popular YouTube videos in 2021? This post has some answers.
ADVERTISING: We all love to be inspired. Here are some of the best social media campaigns from November 2021, according to EConsultancy.
*This is a sponsored post.
BRAIN TEASER
I can be cracked, I can be made. I can be told, I can be played. What am I?
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.
This art robot made its first million at an auction
Yesterday, we talked about how robots can now reproduce. Well, it turns out that they can also make money.
Meet Botto, a robot who creates art and sells art as NFTs.
Botto has been on the market for five weeks and has already earned over one million euros from its artworks.
This AI system has a Twitter account as well. Botto posts 350 images on its profile each week and asks users to vote for their favorites. The winning image is then auctioned off as an NFT.
Botto’s creators, a group of engineers and artists, take all proceeds and invest them in Botto tokens. Talk about thinking fully in Web 3.0 terms.
If all of this is way over your head, welcome to Web 3.0. Botto has won the NFT-NYC annual awards for “Best Use of AI for Digital Art.” It will also take part in the Flagler Street Art Festival, which takes place from November 30 to December 5th.