🏆 The top 1%

Welcome to Morning Commerce!

Now the dust has settled from BFCM we’re deep into planning 2024.

What’s on the cards for you this coming year? We’ve got an in-house brand to launch in Q1 and on the agency front will be moving more heavily into app development. Exciting times.

Here’s what I’m reading this week:

• NYSE welcomes Shopify

• What truly enhances AOV

• Updates to Meta Ads bidding

• Top 1% E-Commerce UX Awards

• A nifty update on Shopify Collabs

• How Google Search and ranking works

• Gen Z women driving consumption on TikTok

• New Customer Accounts coming to Shopify Apps

• How to make your ecommerce content more helpful

— Kyle Tully

ACQUISITION

Gen Z women driving consumption on TikTok

Gen Z women are setting the tone for what’s hot online thanks to the larger share of women who use TikTok (75%) compared to men (62%). This increased use time leads to deeper bonds with influencers and a larger share of females purchasing influencer-sponsored products. “It’s the younger generation’s version of keeping up with the Joneses”.

Updates to Meta Ads bidding

CONVERSION

What truly enhances AOV

The dev behind Monk app wrote a thread breaking down data from over 5000 stores showing what matters for increasing average order value.

Some interesting highlights:

• For high-SKU stores setting up custom upsells/bundles is worth the time investment and better than any AI-recommendation engine.

• Stores with < 500 orders/month or <$50k/month should focus on finding winning products, increasing conversions, and scaling with ads rather than worrying about upsells.

• Post-purchase and in-cart upsells are free money.

You can check out the full thread for some juicy offer specifics.

Top 1% E-Commerce UX Awards

Baymard have announced their 2023 top 1% E-commerce UX award winners. Looking at 234 top-grossing US and European e-commerce sites and benchmarking against 500-680 weighted UX guidelines that total over 10,000 hours of auditing work, the sites on this list are worthy of study.

Notable winners include:

• https://www.bang-olufsen.com/en

• https://www.carparts.com/

• https://www.gousto.co.uk/

• https://www.musiciansfriend.com/

• https://www.allegromedical.com/

SEO

How Google Search and ranking works

Google’s Pandu Nayak testified at the U.S. vs. Google antitrust trial in October and the transcript of his testimony contains a ton of juicy stuff for SEO nerds.

According to his statements, there are around 100 ranking signals currently in use, with the key signals being:

• Document.

• Topicality.

• Page quality.

• Reliability.

• Localization.

• Navboost.

It’s a fascinating read and the Search Engine Land article that covers it is worth your time if you want to dig into the weeds.

How to make your ecommerce content more helpful

Creating valuable content across your entire Shopify site has become more important than ever thanks to Google’s “helpful content” update. And as we’ve heard in Pandu Nayak’s testimony in the antitrust trial, the single most important ranking signal is the document.

In other words, the content on the page.

Frankly, most stores are seriously lacking in their on-page content. Minimal product page descriptions, thin collection pages, and little other helpful content anywhere on the site.

This SEL article is a solid start to help you revamp your ecommerce content strategy with actionable tips on making your pages truly helpful through dynamic elements and UGC.

The best part about this type of content is that it’s truly helpful for consumers, so not only does it help with search engine rankings but it’ll likely bump conversions as well.

SHOPIFY NEWS

NYSE welcomes Shopify

New Customer Accounts coming to Shopify Apps

A nifty update on Shopify Collabs

Six new Shopify updates

• Collaborator request code now required for partners to access your store - Collaborator request codes, previously an opt-in feature, will now be enabled by default for all merchants.

• Edit existing local currency orders in Shopify - Merchants selling in multiple currencies with Shopify Payments, can now make changes to an order without using workarounds.

• Set payment terms and collect deferred payments for local currency orders - For merchants selling in multiple currencies with Shopify Payments it is now possible to collect deferred payments for local currency orders

• Enhancements to the Cohort Analysis report - it now includes an amount spent per customer metric calculating the average amount customers have spent in their history with your store.

INSPO OF THE WEEK

“The life upgrade you didn't know you needed“ is the perfect way to describe the Rocco drinks fridge. I’d never heard of it before this week, wasn’t in the market for a fridge, but now it’s all I can think of. Lots of great little details on this site, but my favourite is the animated product features section as you scroll down the homepage. It helps stop skimming and slows you down to focus on the copy. Nicely done 👌

How we can help…

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