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!
YouTube is an eCommerce channel that can’t be ignored. In addition to being the second most popular social platform after Facebook with more than 2 billion monthly users worldwide, YouTube is also the second most popular search engine after Google. Research shows that 90% of consumers say they discover new brands or products on YouTube, and 40% say they have purchased those products. Seventy-five percent of consumers say that using YouTube makes for a better shopping experience.
The product detail page (PDP) is the most important page on your eCommerce site. It’s where your customer converts to “add to cart,” a critical step in the shopping funnel on the way to purchase. When it comes to conversion rate optimization (CRO), the PDP is a good place to start your site audit and should be high up on your priority list of features to update.
Black Friday/Cyber Monday (BFCM) is a critical event for most retailers, historically delivering 20-30% or more of total holiday revenue. Therefore, you want to be sure your eCommerce site is ready and able to handle the influx of visitors and that you have strategies in place to convert one-time purchasers into longer-term customers. To help merchants capitalize on BFCM this year, we reached out to some of our tech partners for insights on what is the most important area they think merchants should focus on to get the highest return on their efforts.
It’s a mantra at eHouse Studio: brands must work to earn the customer. Beyond providing products and services consumers need and want, beloved brands with loyal customers also provide great customer experiences. If you can’t compete on experience, you’re boxed into competing on price, which can become a race to the bottom. Not an ideal situation for most eCommerce merchants.
If your eCommerce business is relying solely on conventional tracking for analytics – client-side tracking in the browser – you should be wary about trusting your data. Why? Unfortunately, due to trends like increasing use of ad blockers, cookie restrictions, and Apple iOS updates, as much as 20-25% of your data could be missing or inaccurate.
Shopify Editions are the company’s bi-annual highlights of what’s new in terms of products and features. The Summer 2022 release covered a lot of cool new developments. We thought it would be helpful for us to pick out the things that have us most excited, explain what they might mean for your business, and what are some next steps you can take to leverage the latest of what Shopify has to offer.
You’ve probably heard about non-fungible tokens (NFTs): digital tokens that prove ownership of one-of-a-kind digital assets including art, images, tweets, and videos. Some of the most notorious NFTs include characters in the Bored Ape Yacht Club and digital artist Beeple’s $69 million NFT titled “Everydays: The First 5,000 Days.”
Brands are looking for any edge to stay competitive. We saw brand loyalty dramatically fall off early in the pandemic, when many consumers switched from their tried-and-true to other products based on availability, convenience and pricing.