While we sometimes hear merchant chatter to the contrary, we are here to reassure merchants everywhere: you can set up shared, multi-brand shopping carts in Shopify – and we have a lot of experience doing it. It doesn’t require complex development work, but sometimes it can be tricky to get right from a UI/UX perspective.
Shopify highlights new products and features twice a year – and the Summer 2023 Shopify Editions is out! Last year we did a quick recap of what we thought was most interesting, how it might impact your business, and provided some suggested next steps merchants can take to implement the updates. You let us know you thought it was helpful, so we’re doing it again! Check out what’s new and awesome below.
Since Shopify released Shopify Online Store 2.0, we’ve had many brands ask us if they should upgrade from their legacy Shopify store to Shopify 2.0. The answer is (as often is the case in life): it depends. Although we can’t give you a definitive yes or no answer, we can help you think through reasons why you might want to upgrade your legacy Shopify eCommerce store to Shopify 2.0 – or why you may not want to just now.
The top of your funnel is always hungry. With Google’s imminent cookie phase-out, increased data privacy regulations, and the impact of Apple’s iOS updates on Facebook advertising, it has become a lot harder to feed the funnel using third-party data to find and acquire new customers. If there’s a silver lining to this situation, it’s that the necessary increased focus on fostering relationships with customers means you’ll understand them better and be able to provide better experiences, ultimately increasing customer lifetime value.
Your eCommerce site isn’t performing. You’ve tried all the usual fixes. Conclusion: you need a different approach. Should you go with Shopify Online Store 2.0? What about headless? Headless is becoming more common thanks to new tools and hosting, but it’s still not for everyone. Or, in another scenario, maybe you already went headless but the way it was built resulted in a costly headache.
Here’s a little secret: a lot of brands have DTC eCommerce sites, but their revenue is largely driven by B2B. Why? It’s a smart model for building brand equity and brand recognition. And for keeping the lights on. Smaller brands (and even not-so-small brands) realistically can’t boil the internet ocean, so the savvy ones go where the market is more in their favor (e.g., third-party retail shops, gyms, salons, hotels) to get in front of their audiences directly with less competition.
Revenue growth means finding more customers, right? Not necessarily. And that’s fortunate because, as you know, it’s becoming more costly to acquire them. We see it all the time: brands that want to grow their revenue decide to focus their efforts and budget on acquisition marketing. Or, they say they want to focus more on retention, but don’t make changes to their strategy and actually do it.
Many of us are shopping differently than we used to, from buying subscriptions to discovering new brands on social media. Some of us are rushing to do more shopping in stores after being limited by the pandemic, or ordering online and picking up curbside.
Whether these changes are generational and/or a reaction to all that’s been happening in the world during the last few years, consumers’ expectations when it comes to shopping are now different and likely changed for good. What is it that consumers expect? Ultimately: that merchants meet them where they are. They want a cohesive customer experience that spans any channel at any time of day or night, and marketing and communications that are responsive to their preferences and life situations. In other words, consumers want omnichannel shopping experiences.
As 2022 comes to a close, we hope our recommendations and insights over the last year helped answer your questions, spark new ideas and put you on a path to optimize your business, including well-designed PDPs, great mobile experiences, fabulous site search, engaging lifestyle and educational content, proactive zero- and first-party data collection, more diversified marketing strategies, stellar subscription self-management portals, and more.
If you’ve set up Google Analytics 4 (GA4) for your eCommerce website already, that’s great news. But are you using it? Chances are, you’re still leaning heavily on Universal Analytics (UA) for reporting – and you’re definitely not alone. However, it would be smart to start using GA4 now before a lapse in reporting creates a crisis for your business. Otherwise, we foresee a stressful scramble versus a serene summer – do what you can now to protect your sanity later!