🐙 Something different

Little change in our format this week…

We’re swapping out the deep dive article for more in-depth commentary on our featured articles. Aiming to provide more bang for your reading buck and give you the good stuff in less time.

Let me know what you think.

ACQUISITION

Results from Google Ads’ interest-based advertising testing

Cookies might be delicious but they’ve got privacy advocates in a tizzy. They’ll eventually be replaced by new technologies such as those developed by Google in The Privacy Sandbox.

Google Ads has been experimenting with interest-based audience (IBA) tracking. It’s basically a way to continue tracking people so we can show them ads that interest them. But in a privacy-preserving way.

IBA key takeaways compared to third-party-cookies:

• Reach decreased by 2-7%

• ROI decreased by 1-3%

• CTR remained within 90%

All in all not as horrible as some people were predicting. We’ll be keeping tabs on things as the technology improves.

Try these 4 content strategies used by a successful furniture brand

Snug went from selling one sofa in their first month to hitting $30 million in three years. How’d they do it? Social media and PR. But like most success stories, it’s the how not the what that made the difference.

Here are some of their top tactics:

1. A cheeky brand tone that’s perfect for Instagram (186k people agree)

2. Deploying their top retail salespeople to do website video chat

3. Livestream video shopping with a comedian hosting

4. PR stunts combined with social participation, prizes, and discounts

Their website is also fab and the focus of our inspo store of the week below.

Google shows shipping and return information in the search results

In another sign of what consumers care about, Google has started showing shipping and return info directly in search results. They’re pulling this info either directly from structured data on the product page or from your Merchant Center account. You’ll see warnings in Search Console if you don’t have the data required to enable these snippets.

Why is this important? It helps take the focus purely off of price and helps consumers make a more informed decision about the overall shopping experience with each advertiser.

A more generous returns policy or free shipping may outweigh a slightly higher product price and earn you the click, so get testing.

CONVERSION

Online shopping’s fast-delivery race is slowing down

2021 was the year of consumers demanding 1-hour delivery of drone-dropped toilet paper. Thankfully in 2023, they’re showing signs of patience.

A recent survey by Shippo showed just 10% of consumers prefer same or next-day delivery, compared to 18% a year earlier. And a similar survey by ShipStation showed shipping cost is the most important metric and most consumers are happy to wait 3-4 days for delivery… especially if the faster shipping costs are passed on to them.

With parcel costs rising and consumers becoming more aware of the environmental impact of fast delivery times, certainty of delivery and shipping costs have become more important levers.

EMAIL MARKETING

Klaviyo Case Study: 2x More Revenue In 30 Days (Shopify Ecommerce Email Marketing)

TL;DW — Improve your email popup form from 2.7% to 8.7% conversion by optimising the Offer (gift with purchase instead of discount), Trigger (exit intent instead of page load), Copy (confusing → simple), and Design (hard to read → simple and clear).

SHOPIFY NEWS

Download a consolidated tax and sales report on Shopify Tax — improved sales tax reporting for Shopify merchants in the US.

Shopify Collabs is now integrated with Flow — automate your most repetitive Collabs tasks with ready-made workflow templates.

Shopify to announce first-quarter 2023 financial results May 4, 2023 -- Shopify’s management team will host a conference call to discuss first-quarter results.

Inspo of the Week

The Snug website is stylish and clean-cut yet, thanks to some well-thought-out layout choices and intelligent hero image copy, packs a hell of a lot of information into what would otherwise be a cluttered interface. Their collection pages also pack a punch 😉 

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.

🎯 Want to reach our audience? Hit reply to discuss advertising.