👩🏻‍🎤 Celebrity fever on Shopify

ACQUISITION

TikTok removes storefront integration with Shopify

TikTok is planning to sunset its “storefront” feature that lets you sync your Shopify catalogue to TikTok. This is all happening rather quickly, with the removal set to happen on September 12.

TikTok says they are removing the integration because they are…

“committed to building native, engaging, and entertaining shopping experiences that empower you to meaningfully engage with customers and grow your business.”

… in other words, they want you to use TikTok Shop.

This change doesn’t just affect Shopify merchants, they’re also closing down integrations with BigCommerce, Square, and other platforms.

What does this mean for you? Probably not much. Shopify already announced during the 2023 Summer Editions that they have a new integration with TikTok Shop that will allow you to sync products while still managing orders in Shopify.

TikTok plans to ban outside links?

In another potential power move by the tech giant, rumours abound that TikTok plans to ban outside links to outside ecommerce sites such as Amazon.

They really want us to use TikTok Shop huh?

This report comes on top of the news that they are on track to lose more than $500 million in the U.S. this year. Daily sales on TikTok Shop in the U.S. are estimated to be around $3 million a day, compared to the $50 million a day they make in Southeast Asia.

Get $250 to spend on X

Reddit Ads expands interest groups and subgroups

If you’re advertising on Reddit then you might want to check your ad groups as they have rolled out new and improved interest groups. What changed? Interests are more granular and have been broken into multiple new interests which should help you fine-tune your targeting. Toit.

Youtube Shorts algorithm exposed!

The team at YouTube put together a quick video answering some burning questions about the Shorts algorithm, including:

• Is the Shorts algorithm the same as long-form and should we still be thinking audience first?

• What is viewed vs swiped away in Youtube Analytics?

• How long should a Short be?

• Do hashtags still matter?

• Does posting time or quantity matter for Shorts performance?

• What is the future of Shorts

Well worth a watch if you’re pushing out short-form content.

Meta branded content library + API

You can now search Meta’s branded content library to find Facebook or Instagram content that involves a paid partnership.

The following information is provided:

• Date the branded content was created

• Creator of the content

• Brand partner

• Type of post (for example: video or Reel)

• A link to the content

And if you’re tech-savvy you can access the data from Meta’s API to build your own custom search app or database.

The only bummer right now is the Ad Library only includes branded content created on or after August 17, 2023. So it’s gonna take a little while before anything juicy shows up.

CONVERSION

Shopify enables USDC (crypto) payments

Shopify continues to be at the forefront of crypto adoption within ecommerce, and their latest partnership with Solana Pay enables merchants to roll out web3-enabled commerce experiences, including:

• Token-gated offers

• Simple cross-border payments

• NFT-based loyalty programs

USDC is the second-largest stablecoin, with a market cap of just under $26 billion. It’s pegged to the U.S. dollar which enables merchants to accept crypto-native payments without most of the inherent risks in many crypto coins.

While credit card fees on Shopify might be anywhere in the 1-4% range, Solana Pay is virtually free, with the average cost per transaction just fractions of a penny: $0.00025.

SEO

GSC Merchant Listings report SEO tip

Here’s a brilliant little SEO tip you can apply in just a few minutes, thanks to Brodie Clark.

Check your Merchant Listings report in Google Search Console:

• This lets you see if Google is picking up your returns policy and shipping details.

• If not, make sure you’ve got that info either in the Structured Data within your theme, or in your product feeds submitted to Merchant Center.

• This info can then be seen across your product and collection pages, alongside stock availability, pricing, and reviews.

I like fat footers and I cannot lie

When was the last time you gave your footer an overhaul?

More than just a design trend, a fat footer can turn your website’s tail end into an important SEO tool in your on-page arsenal.

Often an afterthought slapped together with whatever built-in options your theme gives you, experienced SEO’s have long known the subtle power a well-engineered footer gives you.

• Better internal linking

• Improved crawl optimisation

• Actually help your customers find stuff

All of which can’t help but improve your search rankings. Cool cool cool.

Check out this article that breaks down some of the finer details of chunking up your footer, along with a bunch of examples to drill the point home.

SHOPIFY NEWS

How Avenue theme improved its real user performance

If you’re using Avenue theme, you might want to upgrade to the latest version because it has a serious performance boost over older versions.

Check this out:

• 25% improvement in Largest Contentful Paint.

• 24% improvement in Cumulative Layout Shift.

How did they do it? The theme authors worked directly with the Shopify performance team to tackle some common issues that arise due to the nature of the Theme Customiser architecture:

• Not lazy loading images designed to be used above the fold.

• Adjusting the rendering process to offset some of the performance losses caused by apps installed by merchants.

These are the type of things we tackle in our speed optimisation projects so it’s nice to see theme authors getting a handle on some of these techniques.

Major celebrities launching on Shopify

Guess who all of these sites are powered by? Yup, Shopify 🤯

Klaviyo goes public

Shopify’s most popular email automation app has filed to go public.

Klaviyo boasts over 130,000 customers, the vast majority of which (77.5% to be exact) are Shopify merchants. With first-half sales of $321 million — up from $208 million in the first half of 2022 — Klaviyo shows just how big a business you can build off the back of Shopify.

Shopify themselves are also highly intertwined with Klaviyo, having invested $100 million back in 2022.

Modern Retail did a great write-up on the news that’s worth checking out.

Six new Shopify updates

• Theme file usage now tracked in the file section in admin - under content→files you can now see where each file is used. So handy!

• Markets Pro now supports checkouts with physical and digital goods - Previously, digital goods were restricted by Markets Pro and could not be sold to customers internationally.

• Shopify Flow - New triggers for product variant back in stock and out of stock - Flow also provides an Inventory quantity changed trigger, which also works at the variant level.

• Enhanced sales tax reports now available for quarterly filers - upgraded Shopify Tax’s enhanced sales tax report so you can select the exact timeframe you need to file.

• Automatic localization to be expanded to markets that use primary domain - It is now possible to automatically localize customers visiting your store when your domain strategy is “primary domain only” or when you have a custom domain that is shared across multiple markets.

• Upload custom store icon - You can now easily identify your stores by uploading a custom store icon using a static image or .gif.

INSPO OF THE WEEK

There’s lots to love about the Surreal (Cereal… get it 😜) website, from the bold colours and strong fonts to the strategic use of animation to draw the eye. But it’s their product pages that really pack a punch. They’ve got social proof galore, dead simple subscription options, and all the info you need to make a decision neatly laid out.