🦁 Shopify X MrBeast

Welcome to Morning Commerce!

Don’t you love it when numbers go up?

We just completed a store migration from Woocommerce to Shopify for a fashion brand that sells to a mostly older female audience. Conversions are approx 3X what they were on the old platform. And staff are 10X more productive thanks to the site not crashing multiple times a day.

Love to see it.

Here’s what’s on my radar this week:

• Google August 2023 Core Update rollout is now complete

• Social shopping trends data from 500 ecommerce pros

• Shopify gives away ad slot in MrBeast video

• How quick wins can betray you

• How to use metaobject pages

• TikTok Shop launches in US

And more!

— Kyle Tully

ACQUISITION

Social shopping trends data from 500 ecommerce pros

Hubspot surveyed 512 social media marketers and compiled the data into a perfect little link magnet of a post for us. How lovely! Here’s what they found:

87% said social selling has been effective for them.

• 59% said they made more sales via social in 2023.

• 28% stayed the same.

• 13% made fewer sales.

UGC can help build trust.

• 75% repost UGC.

• 87% say UGC increases sales.

• 92% say it increases brand awareness.

One in four social media users bought a product based on an influencer recommendation in the past three months.

How do you encourage UGC?

• 64% said actively engaging with your community is most effective.

• 63% said coupons, discounts, or rewards are best.

• 35% said reposting UGC.

• Only 26% reported an ambassador program as the most effective.

Google adds URL Contains targeting functionality to Performance Max

TikTok Shop launches in US

We wrote about TikTok’s plans for Shop a few weeks ago, and they sure move fast… it has just launched in the US.

Shop brings ecommerce to the 150 million US users who can now shop for products directly in the app via shoppable videos and livestreams.

Businesses can now:

• Create custom product collections on your profile page.

• Display your products via a shop tab.

Customers can see product recommendations and manage orders via their own shop tab.

The TikTok Shop Seller Center app is how you connect to Shopify. (Apple, Android)

CONVERSION

Selling an $800 product against $30 competitors

How do you sell an $800 product when your competitors have products starting from $30?

Oyster Cooler is a nice example of how to approach this problem.

• Great product design.

• Beautiful product and lifestyle photos.

• Educational technical breakdowns matched with benefit-oriented copy.

• Copy and positioning that creates a new category.

And a Shopify store, of course.

SEO

Google August 2023 Core Update rollout is now complete

Google has confirmed the core update we wrote about three weeks ago has now completed rolling out.

Now would be a good time to check your analytics and see if you notice any trends over the past few weeks. Is traffic up, down, or steady?

If you’ve been negatively affected by a core algorithm update, Google has an article with a bunch of questions you should ask yourself regarding your site and content.

Of course, there are no clear answers and few easy fixes. But it’s worth refreshing yourself on these questions every now and then to keep you focused on what Google is looking for.

Associate Search Console to Merchant Center to discover growth opportunities

Google has rolled out more improvements to the new Shopping tab within Search Console.

You can now associate your Merchant Center account to Search Console to monitor the status of products and discover opportunities to improve visibility on Google.

1. You will receive notifications when products stop appearing on the Shopping tab due to any issues.

2. Shows opportunities to increase clicks and improve your ranking of products on Google.

You will need to associate your Search Console property with a Merchant Center account to enable these new features. They’re currently being rolled out so might not yet be available to everyone.

Check the Shopping tab listings to see if this feature has been enabled on your account yet.

ENTREPRENEURSHIP

How quick wins can betray you

In a world where we’re constantly told how fast everything is moving, the tendency for many is to seek shortcuts, summaries, and cliff notes in place of real experience and learning.

ChatGPT has only made this three trillion* percent worse.

This thoughtful article from Soyeon Lee delves into the dangers of a quick-win mindset and how the compound effect benefits those with a longer-term outlook.

The specific context she refers to is UX research, but don’t let that deter you, this concept applies to anyone building a business or trying to improve themselves. And I often find my biggest breakthroughs come from specialities outside my own experience.

Well worth a read. In full 😉 

*citation needed.

SHOPIFY HOW TO

How to use metaobject pages

Nice little tutorial showing how to use metaobject pages to create templates to show off your metaobjects. This can get a little technical but it’s worth persevering as this is one of the most powerful additions to Shopify that puts a ton of power into the hands of the user without needing a developer.

SHOPIFY NEWS

Shopify gives away ad slot in MrBeast video

Y’all know MrBeast.

He’s the Youtuber whose videos get so many views that virtually no brands can afford to run ads on his channel anymore. (He largely solved this problem by creating his own brands and sending his immense traffic to them.) Anyhoo…

Astute social media aficionados would have seen this post from the official Shopify account, announcing a giveaway where you could win an ad spot in a MrBeast video. Insane.

Entries have now closed but it’s worth looking through the entries to see what other brands are up to and how they’re positioning themselves to win such a prize.

And they say it doesn’t pay to be on social media 24/7.

Three new Shopify updates

• Multiple domains can now be used on the primary market - Previously, only subfolders could be used to target multiple language experiences within the primary market. This can now be done with subfolders, domains, or subdomains.

• Shopify Flow: Search Flow template library using natural language - Flow's template search previously used an exact match search that often led to searches resulting in no results. This has been improved.

• POS Go now available in the UK and Ireland.

INSPO OF THE WEEK

The Honeypot Company is my new obsession this week. Unique design and tight copy are matched with proven conversion-boosting elements, quizzes, a loyalty program, and more… without ever feeling disjointed. (Check out the “wipe” demonstration in the header of this page.) And their shopping cart is literally a honeypot! C’mon!

How we can help…

🔥 Looking for an experienced Shopify Partner to work with? 
Smart ecommerce brands rely on us for innovative design, development, optimisation, and growth strategies to create highly profitable Shopify websites. Work with our consultancy.

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