Why you run out of stock-and strategies to avoid it Luckily I haven’t had to run a business that depended on inventory but I’ve worked with a few and saw firsthand how complex and complicated it can be. Jake Rheude shares his strategies about how to prevent stockouts that combine… Read more

Google algorithm update for June Google’s rolled out a core algorithm update this week which should send SEOs into a flurry of activity over the next few weeks to figure out what’s changed. Other than that, it’s been a slow week news-wise. Seems people are getting into summer-mode already. Segment… Read more

The Bare Essentials for High-converting Ecommerce Sites Pamela Hazelton writes about how to create a high-converting and trusted store. All of these are fundamental tactics and not fads that you’ll have to change in 6 months. Amazon Prime Day As Kevin Hillstrom explains, you could create your own Amazon Prime… Read more

Product Recommendations APIs: Now available on all plan types with added support in Liquid and Storefront APIs. In this update from Shopify’s Developer website they announced that their in-house product recommendations are now available to all Shopify plans. This means that it’ll be possible to build product recommendations directly into… Read more

13 SEO Takeaways from Google’s 2019 State of the Union Address Jill Kocher Brown covered Google Search’s recent State of the Union address. Updates to mobile search, image search, Googlebot updates, and structured data were all mentioned. Why you should send more plain-text emails from your eCommerce store Sam Greenspan… Read more

2019 State of the Merchant Report Andrew Youderian has released their eCommerceFuel State of the Merchant Report. It uses responses from the members of their private forums and digs deep into how their stores are performing. The data on Amazon is particularly interesting, enough that I’m going to take a… Read more

Introducing the Shopify Retail Kit: Unify Your Online and Offline Business Shopify introduced a new POS system for ipads called the Shopify Retail Kit. The portable Tap & Chip Reader is pretty interesting. Optimizing Images for Google Search Results Jill Kocher Brown writes about how to optimize product images for… Read more

Product Page UX: Data Should Be Synchronized Across Product Variations (28% Don’t) The Baymard Institute has released another set of guidelines for product pages, this time about handling product variations. Some Shopify themes still handle variant data poorly and sometimes product data is so confusing that customers leave without buying.… Read more

SEO: Product Descriptions Are a Blind Spot for Ecommerce Merchants A big deficiency with Shopify stores are having too little, weak, or copied product descriptions. Multiple times per week I’ve making recommendations to customers about theirs as part of my app. Jill Kocher Brown outlines why you should write your… Read more

15 questions about conversion optimization answered Sharon Hurley Hall has written a great introduction guide to conversation rate optimization that walks you through how to create your first hypothesis. Email Marketing 101: How to Build Your List, Send Effective Campaigns, and Track Results Shopify has been on an email marketing… Read more

Are These 6 Common Copywriting Mistakes Costing You Sales? Henneke Duistermaat shares a handful of things to improve your product copywriting. These are why I consider copywriting a superpower, one that every business should learn. Email Marketing Best Practices: How to Improve (Almost) Every Email Mark Macdonald shares a few… Read more

The Google Ads Playbook: 13 Campaign Types And What to Expect From Them With the dizzying list of options for online advertising, it can be confusing to know how to best use Google Ads. Marc Weisinger has created a playbook of 13 Google Ad campaign types and when’s the best… Read more

Using Google Data Studio to Report Gross Profit by SKU I’ve done some development with Google Data Studio recently to understand my traffic sources and full conversions rates. It has wider uses than just traffic analysis though. Morgan Jones shows how to combine Google Analytics data with a custom COGS… Read more

How Blue Bottle Coffee uses content marketing to educate customers Sam Hollis breaks down Blue Bottle Coffee’s content marketing and how easily it flows from content to store and finally to checkout. This level of integration can be difficult to achieve, but it ensures that a lot of your prospective… Read more

Replatforming SEO Strategies to Protect Rankings, Boost Traffic, and Drive Sales Andrea Wahbe writes about SEO considerations when you switch platforms, but the advice is just as valid if you’re making a major change to your Shopify store like a new theme. I’ve seen too many stores wipe out or… Read more

How to calculate the value of an email subscriber Samantha Connors at Jilt wrote how to calculate the value of an email subscriber along with several different methods and metrics to track. You’ll probably just want to pick one method and stick with it, too many methods and metrics can… Read more

How often should you send marketing emails? Send more email. Sam Greenspan wrote a very well-researched article on how frequently to send emails. There’s very little downside to sending more emails if you have something to say. 15 Ecommerce Reports to Lift Your Sales, Without Drowning in Data Andrea Wahbe… Read more

How to send marketing emails for non-traditional holidays Many customers have asked how to make email marketing a channel to acquire new customers. That’s what I do with these emails but it’s not something I’m setup to teach about. But one tactic that can help you get started emailing more… Read more

Pricing Strategy: 10 Ways to Find the Perfect Price for Your Products Pricing is a complex mix of art and science, there is no "perfect price" for any product (even if that’s the title of this article). Instead you have trade-offs to weigh and consider, which Lindsey Peacock provides an… Read more

5 Highly-Effective Ways to Increase the Average Order Value of Your Online Store Improving your Average Order Value is a good goal as long as you’re not pursuing it blindly (see my article below). Corey Ferreira goes into five of the better tactics to improve your AOV. They sound simple… Read more

Introducing Shopify Community: An Enhanced Forums Experience Shopify has refreshed their forums with a new set of software. I’m hoping it’s a bit easier to search and find information. SEO: 6 Things to Do When You Have Nothing to Do Most of the time you’re not actively working on your… Read more

Learn Email Marketing from Ecommerce Expert Drew Sanocki Drew Sanocki has a deep understanding of email marketing in ecommerce so his new email marketing course from Shopify should be a winner. Plus it’s free so the only cost is your time. (I’m planning to go through it myself so don’t… Read more

16 Ecommerce Trends That Will Drive Sales in 2019 With the new year comes new predictions about what will be driving ecommerce sales. Some of these have been holdovers from prior years… 7 ways to capture email subscribers (without making a sale first) … and then there are the tried-and-true… Read more

With the holiday season ending and the holidays themselves wrapping up, there hasn’t been much written about ecommerce. So this week I want to highlight an author who I don’t cover enough here: Kevin Hillstrom from MineThatData. Kevin has a very analytical mind and is constantly digging into issues that… Read more

Mobile eCommerce email marketing: 5 tips for increasing conversions Sam Greespan has created a guide to email marketing for mobile phones which is full of tips for smaller devices. Mobile email usage is high so it makes sense to adapt your email style to work best there. Fine-tune Google Analytics… Read more

In Case You Missed It: The Best Content From Shopify in 2018 Shopify has summarized their best content from the year on their blog. There’s a good level of variety there, both in topics and in formats. How to turn your seasonal shoppers into repeat customers The best way to… Read more

Black Friday 2018 Deals: How to Determine a Campaign’s Success With a Post-Mortem Though targeted at retail stores, this post-mortem analysis can work equally well for ecommerce-only stores. Renting Advertising dollars are flowing like a torrent this season but are you overly dependent on advertising? Kevin Hillstorm looks at how… Read more

Black Friday Cyber Monday 2018: An Analysis of Over $1.5 Billion in Sales Shopify has released their first metrics from Black Friday and Cyber Monday. A few highlights: 2/3 of sales where made on mobile once again email is the highest converting channel Cyber Monday’s volume was almost as high… Read more

This is a light week because everyone was writing about Black Friday and Cyber Monday which is now over. SEO: Topic Clusters Improve Rankings, Traffic When you start producing enough valuable content, you can optimize its organization to boost the rankings of many similar pages. This is called topic clustering… Read more

We analyzed 275,045 recovery campaigns to find out what kind of discounts really work Beka Rice analyzed cart abandonment campaigns to find which offers and discounts lead to more and faster recovered carts. The data on discountless campaigns is also interesting, especially for brands that don’t discount. SEO: Why Is… Read more

5 Ways to Use Packaging Inserts to Increase Customer Loyalty and Revenue Package inserts can be an easy way to add a personal touch that your customers will remember. Richard Lazazzera shares a few different types of inserts you can use. How Driving Quality Traffic Will Boost Conversion At some… Read more

How to Audit Google Analytics Data, for Ecommerce Google Analytics is one of the most popular systems for tracking Shopify stores, I think it’s even used more than Shopify’s built-in metrics. That said, it’s a complex beast of software and no one is using it to its full potential. Morgan… Read more

Your Store and Sales Are Ready for BFCM. How About Your Customer Support? Instead of the regular Black Friday articles, Shopify covers what you need to consider from a customer support angle. How you handle things during that long weekend could set you up for repeat customers in December and… Read more

How to start and scale your Shopify Facebook ads for the holidays! If you’re going to try to use Facebook ads this holiday, Bold has a good guide to how to start with Shopify. PDP UX: Core Product Content Is Overlooked in ‘Horizontal Tabs’ Layouts (Yet 28% of Sites Have… Read more

What’s New at Shopify: Oct. 12, 2018 Shopify has been gearing up for the holiday season. They’ve added additional features around creating and tracking marketing campaigns as well as more checkout and buy button options. Holiday Marketing Ecommerce Planning Shopify has released a summary of their holiday marketing survey they… Read more

The 27-Point Checklist to Prepare Your Store for Black Friday Cyber Monday Calling this a checklist doesn’t make sense as many of these could be a weeklong project but there are a lot of good tactics here for your holiday planning. Best Holiday Campaigns from 150 Years of Retail with… Read more

Holiday Marketing Calendar 2018: Global Events for Ecommerce, Social & Sales Shopify has created a useful calendar of the holidays in October, November, and December. There are a few fun ideas in here you can use in this years marketing campaigns. Technical SEO: 15 Critical Areas That Impact Performance Jill… Read more

Shopify’s Newest Feature Helps Retailers Track Inventory Across Multiple Locations Shopify has now launched Locations to help you track your inventory. I’ve heard from many stores that inventory is one of Shopify’s weak areas but this feature should help to shore up that location’s featureset… The Ultimate Guide to Product… Read more

Holiday Shopping Online: Trends and Statistics 2017-2018 ‘Tis the season for holiday statistics. Shopify has collected and summarized a few of their holiday statistics from last and this year. Basically make sure your store works on mobile, is fast, and that you send emails. Those three have also been the… Read more

Introducing the New Shopify App Store The new Shopify App Store launched last week with all new categories and improved app pages. The fundamentals of an effective email marketing win-back campaign Unless you’re selling subscriptions, it can be difficult to know when you’ve lost a customer. Win-back campaigns are one… Read more

Product Page Tune-Up: 9 Timeless Ways to Increase Conversions Mark Macdonald shares how you can optimize your product page for conversions. Tiny improvements here can have a dramatic impact on your bottom line. Holiday Ecommerce 2018: 15 Marketing Strategies from +$1B in Online Sales It’s time to start putting together… Read more

What Can I Do to Help My Store Rank in Search Engines? Samantha Renée has created a SEO checklist for Shopify stores to get started with SEO. It’s intended as starting point but it can also serve as a reminder for when you haven’t reviewed things in awhile. Ecommerce Agency… Read more

What I Learned Analyzing 60 Days of Emails from a Fast-Growing Ecommerce Brand Franco Varriano created a teardown of Casper’s email marketing in order to analyze what emails they send and the copywriting used in them. It’s a great example of how one successful company is using email marketing. Loyalty… Read more

Only you can determine the best time to send emails to your eCommerce customers Sometimes doing what everyone else does is a bad idea. For years marketing companies have said that Tuesday is the best day to send emails to customers. So guess what happens? Everyone sends emails on Tuesday… Read more

What’s New at Shopify: August 2, 2018 Though targeted at Shopify partners, this article highlights some upcoming changes that could impact merchants. Specifically the retail package and Facebook checkout retirements, and the new Google Shopping channel. How to perform a Gap Analysis on your eCommerce store (in 3 steps) Bill… Read more

Welcome emails This week I want to try something different. I found two newly published articles this week, both on different aspects of email marketing for your store. First there’s Shopify where they describe different types of drip email campaigns including the welcome email, post-purchase emails, event emails, and offer… Read more

Amazon’s 2018 Prime Day Sets Record Despite Glitches Amazon’s Prime Day (and a half) appears to have been a successful event, surpassing all of last years big shopping days. It might be worthwhile to look at how they marketed it to adapt to your own campaigns. Introducing Shopify Academy: Free… Read more

10 Technical SEO Tips to Get the Most from an Ecommerce Website Emily Mace has a list of SEO tips for Shopify stores. I’ve seen many stores get bitten by out-of-stock products (#4), especially when they delete products because that will remove rankings and Rich Snippets. Back-to-School Marketing: Ideas, Stats… Read more

New Research Findings on ‘Accounts & Self-Service’ UX The Baymard Institute has published a new set of research, this one on accounts and self-service. This sample outlines many issues customers experience with ecommerce stores so there’s a lot you can pull from it. At the very least, if you’re planning… Read more

SEO: How to Drive Traffic to a New Ecommerce Site Hamlet Batista offers a collection of tips when starting a new ecommerce store. These would also be useful whenever you’re about to launch a new product line or enter a new market. How to Add Brand Personality To Your Store… Read more

Economic Nexus: What South Dakota v Wayfair Means for Your Ecommerce Store US sales tax laws have changed again. With the new US Supreme Court ruling, you might need to register and collect sales taxes in more states. SEO: How to Win against Giant Competitors Hamlet Batista shares a few… Read more

Upset Customers? Here’s How to Tackle Complaints When There’s No Easy Answer. Customer service overall is really poor, which is surprising since customers have more power than ever (social media, protection laws, etc). It’s much better for everyone involved to try to fix the relationship and potentially win a customer… Read more

7 Psychological Triggers that Win Sales and Influence Customers Beth Morgan outlines how to apply the psychological triggers from Robert Cialdini’s Pre-Suasion to ecommerce. Magento sold, again A few months after Adobe begins to sunset Business Catalyst, they’ve now acquired Magento. I wouldn’t be surprised to see another mass migration… Read more

10 techniques to increase eCommerce revenue through upsells Upsells can be a great way to boost your average order values and there are many different approaches you can take. Beka Rice shows 10 upsell techniques, at least one of which should work in your store. Use Google Analytics, Data Studio… Read more

Ecommerce Subscriptions: Lifting CLV 38%, Revenue 20% & Sales Beyond $30M Subscriptions are billed as a way to smooth out your store revenue because they happen month-after-month, but there are other uses for them too. Julia Bowen shares three different types of subscriptions and who each type would be good… Read more

Unite 2018 Keynote Roundup (and more) Shopify has posted the keynotes from the Unite 2018 conference. If you dig into their Youtube channel you can also find all of the talks from all of the tracks. This should fill in the details about what’s coming up with Shopify. The Hidden… Read more

Shopify Unite wrap-ups With Shopify Unite officially over, there are two more wrap-up posts about what’s new and coming up. Unite 2018: Everything We Announced covers the more enterprise-y features of interest to Shopify Plus stores. Wrapping up Unite 2018 is about upcoming features for Shopify Partners but as a… Read more

Shopify Unite 2018 releases Unite, Shopify’s partner conference, is going on this week. Like past years, they’ve announcing new products and features during the conference so their partners and early-adopter merchants can start using them before the public launches. There’s a lot to cover but here are a few highlights… Read more

Underwater with Customer Questions? It’s Time to Hire Some Help. I recently had to find someone to help with customer support. There are lots of good tips in here from Shopify about finding and hiring for customer support. GDPR: What is it, why it matters, and how it will affect… Read more

How to Find and Plug the Leaks in Your Conversion Funnels Once you’ve started to get customers to your store, fixing your conversion funnel quickly becomes one of the most profitable activities for your store. Shanelle Mullin shows how to find these leaks in your funnel using Google Analytics and… Read more

67 Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for Ecommerce Shopify posted a collection of 67 Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for Ecommerce. I might argue that when there are 67 things, calling them all "Key" kinda misses the mark but KPIs are such a popular acronym that it’s okay. At the very end… Read more

SEO: How to Super Search with Advanced Operators I use advanced search operators all the time when working with larger Shopify stores. They make it very easy to dig through all the results. If you haven’t learned about them yet, Jill Kocher Brown has an overview on them. Tips for… Read more

Are These 6 Ecommerce Copywriting Mistakes Costing You Sales? Great copywriting can have an amazing impact on your sales. Even good copywriting will make a significant difference. Sadly, many stores I’ve seen aren’t putting much thought into their copy at all. Henneke Duistermaat has 6 copywriting tips that you can… Read more

Leverage Micro Conversions to Close Sales Not every customer will be ready to buy on their first exposure to your store. That’s why having alternative, micro conversions are important. Why you should be promoting your in stock Shopify products One benefit of Google’s Rich Snippets is that in stock products… Read more

Introducing Google Pay for Shopify Shopify just announced an integration with Google Pay for stores. This could boost mobile sales on Android devices if you use Shopify Payments. How to Increase Customer Lifetime Value (CLV): Pay More Now, Get More Later Johnathan Dane writes about different ways to use your… Read more

10 Retail Experts Share Their #1 Tip for Marketing and Growing Your Store While targeted at retail stores, there are plenty of good ideas that can be adapted to ecommerce in this article from 10 retail experts. A lot comes back to the customer’s experiences and interactions with you. How… Read more

Ecommerce Customer Experience: Mastering Acquisition and Retention Even with a poor customer experience you still might win a sale, but they’ll remember that experience and shop elsewhere next time. Zee Aganovic describes five areas to focus on to improve the customer experience for repeat sales. How to Track Overall Marketing… Read more

Why Leading Indicators in Ecommerce Are the Key to Success & How to Find Them Herbert Lui gets into leading indicators and why they are important to find if you want to be able to forecast and anticipate the future. Customer Acquisition: Interplay Between Metrics Though it’s dense with information,… Read more

How (and Why) to Optimize Your eCommerce Checkout Experience As the last stage of your funnel, it pays to optimize your checkout flow. In this article by Cart Hook, they look at a study from Baymard to make a handful of checkout optimizations. 4 Ways to Increase Revenue from Organic… Read more

Ecommerce Data Analysis for Optimizing Your Online Funnel In this article, Doug Crowe goes through three phases of your funnel and shows how to use data and analytics to optimize each phase. 14 ways to improve your ecommerce conversions on Shopify Ross Allchorn has put together things a Shopify store… Read more

eCommerce Sales Funnels: A New Trend for Big Growth In this article by Kathryn Aragon, she describes how to design a landing page funnel to use with paid traffic. 6 Ways Web Developers Can Improve SEO Jill Kocher Brown created a list of six things your web developer can do… Read more

Transition Kevin Hillstrom writes about how ecommerce companies are failing to make the changes they need to transition to how things work now. The Complete Guide to A/B Testing Shopify has created a guide to A/B Testing targeted at beginners. Though they did bury a key point that should stop… Read more

Ecommerce Analytics at Scale: The Art and Science of Data Analysis for Growing Sales Brad Smith has written about how to use ecommerce analytics to grow your store. It includes some examples of how to get the data from Shopify and what to do with it. I have to mention… Read more

The Intermediate Guide to Ecommerce SEO There’s a lot of SEO tips in this guide from Shopify. It’s too bad they didn’t mention my JSON-LD for SEO app but I guess they didn’t get the memo. (And what’s with that featured image???) How Can I Convert Customers When They Land… Read more

How to Plan an Ecommerce Strategy: A Comprehensive Guide for Marketing Your Business While long and formal plans don’t work well for me, I know they work for a lot of people. Tommy Walker has written a comprehensive guide to creating a marketing plan for your Shopify store. Even if… Read more

The Smart Content Marketing Funnel Martina describes how to plan a smart content marketing funnel for your store. This is how you can combine various forms of content with targeted advertising. Safely get more Google traffic for your Shopify store Google’s Rich Snippets will help you grow your Shopify store… Read more

How to Create Your 2018 SEO Strategy If you haven’t started already, it’s time to start planning what you’re going to do in 2018. Jill Kocher Brown has an article about creating your 2018 SEO strategy. How promoting Shopify products based on availability can lead to more sales Tom Davies… Read more

Encourage After-Christmas Customer Reviews Asking for product reviews after Christmas makes a lot of sense. Just make sure to separate gift buyers out of any reviews campaigns. Facebook Ads for Retailers: Tactics to Get the Most ROI for Your Marketing Dollars Though this is a useful guide to setting up… Read more

6 Email Marketing Campaign Ideas to Stand Out in a Crowded Inbox Shopify shares six emails you can use to build relationships with your customers. The two for VIP and lapsed customers are great for getting people back to your store. Escalation Kevin Hillstrom did some math to show how… Read more

Sales Report: 2017 Thanksgiving Day, Black Friday, Cyber Monday Last week Shopify shared their results from the holiday weekend. This week more sources are reporting in with wider reports how stores did as a whole, including non-Shopify stores. Feels like just about every metric points to growth this year. Troubleshooting… Read more

I have an interesting contrast for you this week. Black Friday Cyber Monday 2017: An Analysis of Over $1 Billion in Sales The first numbers from Shopify are in with over $1 billion USD in sales for 2017’s BFCM. One interesting metric was that how much better email and search… Read more

19 Growth and CRO Experts on Increasing Revenue Without Increasing Traffic Shopify interviewed a group of marketing and conversion rate experts and they shared their thoughts on what ecommerce merchants should be doing. A lot of the advice centers around having a plan, strategy, and organization that is able to… Read more

Introducing Live View: Watch Visitors Become Customers with Real-Time Reporting Shopify just released a new report called Live View which features a real-time view of what your visitors are doing right now. It’s pretty and could be useful during launches, but you’ll want to make sure you’re not too distracted… Read more

10 Segments to Make More Money with Your Black Friday, Cyber Monday Emails Email remains one of the top marketing channels for sales. It also has a lot of potential for automation or at the very least, setting up campaigns early to launch at a later date. Alicia Thomas from… Read more

Start Selling on eBay with Shopify Shopify has released an eBay sales channel so now you can sync your products from Shopify to eBay and back. The Ultimate Guide to Control Groups You’d never stop a marketing campaign that was working in order to fund one that was losing money,… Read more

Introducing New Products: Tactics to Ensure New Lines Will Land With Customers While it skips over most of the important parts of planning and development of a new product, this article has a good outline for launching a new product. The Psychology of Competitive Pricing for Ecommerce Pricing is hard.… Read more

5 Lessons From Last Year to Win Black Friday Cyber Monday 2017 If you haven’t already started to plan out the holiday season, now’s the time. One good way to do this is to look back at what happened last year for your store and for the industry in general,… Read more

Introducing Google Autocomplete for Shopify: Less Friction at Checkout, More Sales Shopify is starting to roll out their Google Autocomplete feature to checkout over the next few weeks. Thinking about A/B Testing for Your Client? Though targeted at Shopify Partners looking to do A/B testing for clients, this article by… Read more

The Beginner’s Guide to A/B Testing During Black Friday Cyber Monday A/B testing can be a powerful way to optimize your store and its marketing. In this guide from Shopify they share how you can take advantage of the holiday traffic to run A/B tests. I’ve also developed a fast… Read more

5 Ways to Amplify the Power of Your Reviews This Holiday Season Customer reviews, and social proof in general, can be a powerful way to increase your store’s conversion rate. Theresa O’Neil has five ways you can reuse your reviews in your marketing. Introducing Bulk Label Printing for Shopify Shipping… Read more

What Is Ecommerce Automation? Shopify Flow Shopify has released their Flow app which can create automation workflows for your store. It’s a Plus-only feature for now but there are plenty of automation ideas in here that can be adapted to other apps and tools. The impact of JSON-LD for SEO… Read more

Ecommerce Survey 2017: The Trials & Tribulations of a Booming Industry Shopify released the first set of analysis from their ecommerce survey for 2017. It’s interesting that some of the top struggles are also things a few of my apps help with… almost as if I planned that huh? 😉… Read more

Shopify Rich Snippets: Improved organic traffic that converts, without chasing rankings Getting Rich Snippets is one of the few "free lunches" in the SEO world that still works, mostly because Google really wants to better understand your store’s website. In this article I cover everything you need to know about… Read more

Post-Purchase Communications: Expert Tactics to Stay in Touch With Customers Alexandra Sheehan has collected several ideas about how to contact your customers post-purchase to improve your customer relationships. New Features, New Categories: Selling on Amazon with Shopify Just Got Easier Shopify has updated their Amazon channel with more categories and… Read more

The Beginner’s Guide to Ecommerce SEO While it gets into more complex SEO advice, this article from Shopify on ecommerce SEO can give you some ideas on how to setup SEO for your store. I will say they over-emphasize keywords and rankings though, which have been weakened with the rise… Read more

The Beginner’s Guide to Getting More High Quality Traffic Getting traffic to your store is one of the top problems that every Shopify store faces, but it’s just as important to attract high quality traffic. 1,000,000 visitors to your site doesn’t mean anything if 0 of them buy. 13 Cognitive… Read more

500,000 Shopify stores and growing First, a big congrats to Shopify for powering 500,000 stores. For comparison, that’s double the amount they ended 2015 with. Hopefully that means more improvements and features for everyone over the next 18 months on the way to 1,000,000. Psychological pricing: A secret sauce to… Read more

Introducing the New Merchant Overview Dashboard Shopify is beginning to release a new merchant dashboard with more data and charts. Though I have to wonder if all of this will lead to better behavior, or just data overwhelm. The Top 4 Reasons Users Abandon Their Carts and What to Do… Read more

Introducing the Black Friday – Cyber Monday Health Check Tommy Walker over on the Shopify Plus blog has just released a guide to get ready for Black Friday/Cyber Monday. I’ve only scanned the report but it looks like there’s some good recommendations in it, even for non-Plus stores On-page SEO… Read more

Introducing Checkout On Your Own Domain Starting later this month, every Shopify store is going to be able to have checkout on its own domain which could be a nice boost to conversions. Integrating Shopify, Google Merchant Center, and JSON-LD for SEO in order to effortlessly run product ads I’ve… Read more

How to Get Better Traffic, Free with Semantic Data Yesterday Kurt Elster published the podcast he and I recorded on SEO, Semantic Data, and how they can help Shopify stores. If you wanted a summary what I’m been working on day-after-day for the last six months, this is the best… Read more

Our 7 best tips to get more product reviews and boost your sales Customer reviews of your products can be a source of invaluable social proof, one that most customers expect now. Bill Widmer has written about how to get more product reviews over at the Bold Commerce blog. 5… Read more

Overview of Rich Snippets, their jargon, and how you can get them for your Shopify store Keeping up with Google Search’s products and tweaks can be a full time job, one that you need to do very well if your store gets a decent volume of traffic from SEO. Mix… Read more

Introducing the BuzzFeed Channel for Shopify Shopify just released a BuzzFeed Channel that will let you share your products with BuzzFeed editors for a commission. While it’ll probably only work for a segment of stores, I could see if working very well for them due to the potential traffic levels.… Read more

Introducing Flair product badges for Shopify Tom’s a friend and he just launched a new Shopify app called Flair. It’s a nice app to add social proof to your products and attract more add to carts. Ad Blockers Can Affect Analytics Reporting With the rise of ad blockers it can… Read more

A Seamless New Shopify Experience to Power Your Business Shopify has started to roll out their Polaris redesign to stores in an attempt to unify the look, feel, and experience of their core products. Expect to see apps start to be updated over the next few months. Using scarcity and… Read more

The Non-Technical Handbook for Shopify SEO I decided to start sharing a lot of the Shopify SEO research I’ve been collecting into a single article, The Non-Technical Handbook for Shopify SEO. How to Implement Ecommerce Personalization Personalization is a great way to improve conversion rates while also making your customers… Read more

I’m excited to say that Sticky has been featured by Shopify in their New and Noteworthy section for the next week How to Conduct Research That Drives A/B Testing A/B testing can enhance your store’s conversion rate but only if you’re testing things that matter. Nick Disabato writes about easy… Read more

Great Ideas for Driving More Qualified Traffic to Your Ecommerce Store Getting more qualified traffic is a difficult, ongoing task that is needed for your Shopify store. William shares several traffic strategies that you can use. If I don’t have product reviews in my Shopify store, can I earn rich… Read more

How to unlock rock-solid positioning in three steps Drew Sanocki writes about to build an ecommerce brand that stands for something in your customers minds. Using Google Data Studio for SEO This tutorial is a bit advanced but if you needed a free way to analyze a bunch of SEO… Read more

The In-Depth Guide to Selling Your eCommerce Business Andrew has put together a massive guide on selling your ecommerce business. If this is something you’re considering, it’s a must-read. How to increase search traffic to your Shopify store using the rankings you already have Sometimes it’s easier to make your… Read more

Shopify Unite 2017 This week is a special Shopify Unite edition covering many of the announcements from Unite last week. There was something for everyone announced: new payment options, Shopify Plus features, app APIs, new theme toolkits, and more. Everything We Announced at Unite 2017 (And What It Means For… Read more

Retention Marketing: How to Measure and Improve It Tracking and measuring your customer and retention metrics becomes important as your store grows. Kristen outlines how to calculate these metrics by hand and a few ways to improve them. How to Encourage Customer Reviews (And Why You Should) If you want… Read more

5 Personalized Emails You Need to Replicate Outside of the Inbox Josh writes about five email campaigns that you can put in place with your store. Based on my work done in the repeat customer funnel, each of these campaigns should have a strong ROI. How to test your JSON-LD… Read more

Launch to your repeat customers on Shopify Huge launches are desirable but sometimes it’s better to set your sights lower. A focused launch of a new product to your customers might be a better idea, especially while it’s still under development. New Guidelines for Getting Listed in the Shopify App… Read more

Overhauling Your Customer Acquisition Model Taking an analytical approach to your customer acquisition is required as you scale and compete in different marketing channels. If you can’t track sales back to the channel, you’re going to be wasting your marketing budget. Shopify Product Reviews App: case of the missing reviews… Read more

Using Exclusive Flash Sales to Reengage Your Most Valuable Customers Flash sales aren’t just to get a spike in sales. You can also use them to bring back your most important customers to your store and as a way to keep your list excited. Encouraging your best customers to buy… Read more

More Shopify Plus Industry Reports: Insight & Imagination for Tomorrow & Beyond Shopify has released more industry reports which now cover: fashion, consumer electronics, home goods, health and wellness, fitness and sports, beauty, toys, and baby care. The essential structured data for your Shopify store SEO Make sure your Shopify… Read more

How to Overhaul Your Retention Strategy and Develop More Profitable Repeat Customers Herbert Lui writes about how to plan our your customer retention strategy by looking at what industry veterans do. How to find the optimal time to email your store’s customers There’s common advice about when the best time… Read more

Shopify Shipping Brings Calculated Rates to All Shopify Plans Shopify has added support for calculated shipping rates to all of their plans. While limited to USPS and Canada Post for now, this might help your conversion rates or profit if you’ve been using flat rate shipping. Returning Ecommerce Visitors: How… Read more

How to Calculate Free Shipping Thresholds I’m a big fan of using customer behavior data to drive business decisions (in fact, that’s the point of my Repeat Customer Insights app). In this article Tommy Walker describes how you can figure out what thresholds to use for your free shipping.. Customer… Read more

Introducing Shopify’s Draft Orders API Shopify has released a new API to create draft orders. Though still in beta, once apps start using this API I expect some interesting workflows to arrive: phone orders, wholesale order automation, and bulk ordering. Introducing Shopify Shipping Scripts: Innovative Shipping Customizations While it’s for… Read more

How much Rich Snippets will enhance your search results Google’s rich snippets are a powerful tool to improve a store’s organic traffic and conversions. In this article I look at and compare different formats of rich snippets. Find and Leverage Retail Trend Data to Grow Your Business William Harris outlines… Read more

The difficulty of getting Google to add Rich Snippets for your Shopify store With less and less space being provided to Google’s organic search results, anything you can do to get more pixels on the page can help. Luckily for Shopify stores you can setup rich snippets and have your… Read more

Introducing Shopify’s Build a BIGGER Business Competition Shopify has just launched a version of their successful Build a Business competition but this time it’s for existing merchants. It would be worthwhile to enter just to get access to the resources and community. Evaluating a store’s repeat customer metrics with fast… Read more

Start Selling on Amazon With Shopify Shopify has added an integration with Amazon so now you can sell your products on Amazon, sync inventory, and fulfill orders all within Shopify. It takes a bit of work to setup but if Amazon is or is going to be a channel you’re… Read more

Special news: I just acquired a new Shopify app, JSON-LD for SEO. Predicting when your customer will buy again What if you could predict the future? With the right data you can, at least for your repeat customers. Customer purchase latency can give you an idea about which customers will… Read more

Drive Sales After the Holiday Retail Rush The holiday season is over so now it’s time to try to boost the slow first quarter sales. Jason Dent has four strategies you can start putting in place now, though to be honest they aren’t quick fixes and will likely payoff later… Read more

Ditch the Crystal Ball: Where to Place Strategic Ecommerce Bets in 2017 With 2016 drawing to a close, it’s time to think about what major changes you’ll make for next year. My own experience leads me to bet on greater personalization backed by the quantity of customer data stores are… Read more

Opportunities, Threats, and A Future Consumer Electronics Retailers Must Prepare For Shopify Plus has released another industry report, this one for consumer electronics. How to integrate Drip with Shopify to automate your marketing Combining Shopify with the marketing automation provided by Drip, you can build email campaigns that catch the… Read more

The Science of Sales: How to Move More Merchandise with Discounts This article by Jessica Bianchi outlines how people behave to sales and discounts. You can use these strategies to create an offer that is both enticing for your customer and profitable for you. The Quick Guide to Holiday Email… Read more

Introducing Shopify Plus Industry Reports Shopify Plus is producing industry reports which describe upcoming trends and changes in different ecommerce industries. The first for Fashion and Apparel is out now. Measure how much of your Shopify store revenue originates from repeat customers Earning more revenue from your repeat customers is… Read more

Facebook Ads for Ecommerce Entrepreneurs With its rich segmentation and huge userbase, Facebook advertising can be an important channel for your ecommerce store. Now Shopify has released a guide to Facebook Ads for Ecommerce Entrepreneurs which should make it even easier to get started. Why Customers Disappear After the First… Read more

Happy Black Friday season, may your store reach new sales records. Introducing New Insight Reports That Will Help You Get More Sales Shopify has added some new customer reports that are a great first look at your customer base. While I’m a fan of more deeper analysis (like the ones… Read more

14 actionable tips for building a more profitable ecommerce business in 2017 It’s never too early to start planning for major changes to your ecommerce store. SellBrite has put together a collection of ideas you can work on in 2017. Content marketing tips for ecommerce Content marketing works well for… Read more

Ecommerce Analytics for Absolute Beginners: A New Guide from Shopify Shopify has just released a new guide that I’m really looking forward to reading and recommending to customers: Ecommerce Analytics for Absolute Beginners. Switching to a metrics-based approach to ecommerce marketing In a similar vein, I wrote about how to… Read more

Introducing a New Way to Build Your Online Store Shopify released their "sections" feature for themes which are a way to design your store using drag-and-drop. While it won’t replace premium themes yet, it can make coming up with a functional and simple theme easier. Customer Loyalty Programs: Why Retailers… Read more

9 Ways to Recover Sales after a DDoS Attack The big news this week was a large scale DDoS attack on a DNS provider that effectively crippled many Shopify stores. While attacks are unavoidable, there are ways to recover lost sales afterwards. The Step-by-Step Guide to Prepare Your Store for… Read more

Nexus: The Hidden Sales Tax Pitfall That Puts Your Profits At Risk Death and taxes… and more taxes. While they serve a purpose, sales taxes can become a significant burden to ecommerce stores. If you’re not careful and informed, they could even sneak up on you too. Enhance Ecommerce UX… Read more

Black Friday Deals: 10 Tips to Send High-Converting Holiday Sales Emails With the holiday season approaching, it’s time to dust off your email campaigns and start optimizing them. Segmentation and personalization will be important once again if you want to get customers to respond to your emails. 7 Shopify Apps… Read more

Build Your Own Website or Use a Hosted Platform? CartHook has broken down the decision of building your own ecommerce store versus using a hosted platform into a set of pros and cons. A get asked about this a lot and one major point is deciding if the control you… Read more

Introducing the New Mobile Shopify App Shopify released a redesigned Shopify app for iPhone, iPad, and Android. Hopefully they can use this redesign to start rolling out new features. I’d love to see Shopify Apps come to their mobile app. 5 Interesting Uses of Customer Data for Ecommerce Marketing I’m… Read more

Migrating an Enterprise eCommerce Website to a New Platform Switching ecommerce platforms is a major decision for your store. Ideally you’d never have to do it but as your organization grows, you might need to consider switching if your current platform is causing you too many problems. Boosting Customer Lifetime… Read more

Multichannel 101: Bringing Order to the Chaos of Managing all the Channels Once you start growing your channels, you’ll need to start looking into Order Management Systems in order to keep everything in sync. This article by Sangram Kadam gives a good introduction to how those systems work together. 5… Read more

Digging into RFM segmenting in Shopify Segmenting your customers using RFM is a great way to find your VIP customers. Unlike other segmenting methods, RFM use three key pieces of data to improve your results. How to monetize dormant customers with a successful winback campaign Over time you’ll lose customers… Read more

Why finding the product pricing sweet spot is about more than math As much as we’d like pricing to have a single magic formula, it’s still very subjective. This can be a good thing though. By not having only one price we have room to maneuver and can try out… Read more

How to Write Copy That Converts Writing sales copy for your store is just as important as any design decision. William Harris has seven tips and 3rd party resources on how to write copy that converts. The segment of customers who just can’t get enough Segmenting your customers before you… Read more

How to Maximize Sales with a Successful Cart Abandonment Email Strategy Adding even a simple cart abandonment email to most stores will improve your revenue, almost immediately. Shopify shares some cart abandonment campaigns but even a simple plain text one that goes out after 6 hours is a huge improvement… Read more

What’s the most important factor to the success of an e-commerce business? FE International collected responses from dozens of ecommerce experts who all answered the question: What’s the most important factor to the success of an e-commerce business?. Marketing Your Shopify App: The Details We Overlook I tell my clients… Read more

Speed Up Your Shopify Store Once you get a decent amount of traffic, speeding up your Shopify store should boost your conversion rate. Even simple things like optimizing images can have a dramatic effect on your store’s performance. How to Build Your First Shopify App If you’ve wanted to build… Read more

3 Key Metrics for Repeat Customers Once you have customers buying from your store, it can be confusing to decide what to do next to keep them loyal. The best way to decide is to use data to guide your thinking. In this article, you’ll learn what metrics to watch… Read more

The Beginner’s Guide to Conversion Rate Optimization Once your store grow reaches a critical mass, you’ll want to grow revenue by focusing on conversion optimization (CRO). While there’s a huge body of knowledge around it, you can get started with a simple guide like this one from Shopify. The Small… Read more

5 Tips for Increasing Customer Lifetime Value on your Shopify Store There are many ways to increase the customer lifetime value of your store but they come back to #2 on this list: Build relationships. The store/customer relationship is the foundation for any future business and a strong one will… Read more

A Short Tutorial for Running A/B Tests in Shopify with Optimizely A/B tests can be a great way to optimize parts of your store for conversions and purchases once you have enough traffic. This tutorial on setting up Optimizely to A/B test a Shopify site is a good introduction to… Read more

50 E-Commerce Stats You Need to Know While it’s important not to stress over too many metrics, reviewing larger trends in how things are doing can be useful to adjust your own strategies. Richard shares a collection of recent ecommerce stats around common areas. Planning for a Private Shopify App:… Read more

How to Calculate Customer Lifetime Value Kevin has a great article on segmenting your Shopify customers using an RFM analysis and then finding their customer lifetime values. Super secret (but not really a secret): this week I’m planning to submit a Shopify app to the App Store that does this… Read more

How to Build Your First Shopify App (Webinar) Over the past couple of months I’ve built three public apps and gotten two into the Shopify App Store (the 3rd is on it’s way this week). If you’ve been wanting to learn how to build your own apps, Shopify is hosting… Read more

Introducing the Shopify Retail Blog This week Shopify announced a new blog dedicated to retail stores. I’ll be including articles from it in future editions. Starting your customer retention process In order for any process to work correctly it needs some kind of trigger or point that says "time to… Read more

How much additional revenue do repeat ecommerce customers contribute? 10%? 20% 40%? Everyone likes more repeat customers. In this article you can see how much revenue your repeat customers actually contribute. Design a loyalty program that will keep them coming back Loyalty programs are one tactic to increase your repeat… Read more

Lifecycle emails for Shopify stores Lifecycle emails are a powerful technique to map your customer relationship over time using email campaigns. This article from ShopStorm describes 5 different types of lifecycle emails a Shopify store can use as well as some apps to create them. Simple Shopify customer retention using… Read more

Getting Started with Shopify Scripts Even since Shopify Scripts were announced, I’ve been wanting to learn more about them. Gavin Ballard has a great introduction to Shopify Scripts and how he recently used them for a client. The Quick Guide to Boosting Customer Loyalty and Repeat Business I’ve been doing… Read more

How to Start a Loyalty Program for Your Online Store Creating a loyalty program for your store can incentive and increase the number of repeat purchases. In this guide by Alex, he outlines How to Start a Loyalty Program for Your Online Store. Marketing Your Shopify App: Networking and Partnerships… Read more

17 Tactics for Ecommerce Growth Hacking Buzzwords aside, there are many marketing tactics you can take from this article and apply to your ecommerce business. Even one or two tactics might be more than enough for you. App Development Trends Favor Custom Ecommerce Platforms Armando Roggio highlights what a build-it-yourself… Read more

How to Grow an Ecommerce Business with Email Marketing Shopify has written a new free guide, "How to Grow an Ecommerce Business with Email Marketing". Email marketing is one thing that every business can do better with, and see a significant impact on revenue. 10x Your Revenue: Increasing Customer Lifetime… Read more

6 Principles for Small Business Automation A little bit of code can go a long way when it comes to automation but only if you understand what you’re trying to accomplish. Armando Roggio writes about principles to remember when you’re considering automation. Breaking into Data Intelligence: Making Sense of Your… Read more

Shopify Introduces a Better Way to Communicate With Your Customers Using Facebook Messenger Shopify has just released a new channel which allows your customers to get Shopify notifications through Facebook Messenger. While I don’t see this replacing email, it will be valuable to have another method of reaching customers and… Read more

How to Use Niche Marketing to Grow Your Business When you focus and cater to a specific niche of customers, you'll make a much larger impact than a more generic message. Marketing Your Shopify App: The App Listing Page For Shopify app developers with public apps in the App Store,… Read more

Shopify UNITE recaps With UNITE happening last week, there have been a lot of official resources coming out from Shopify. Here’s what happened since last week: Unite 2016 Recap: Enabling Commerce Everywhere (shopifypartnerblog.myshopify.com) Here’s Everything We Announced at Unite, and What It Means for You As (shopify.com) Introducing Shopify Scripts:… Read more

Shopify Helps You Sell Where Your Customers Are Announced yesterday at Shopify Unite is the new Sales Channel SDK. This development kit allows app developers to integrate Shopify purchases into other channels, similar to Shopify’s own integrations with Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. Build an Ecommerce Store On Any Website or… Read more

Introducing Shopify for WordPress Following up on last week’s news about a Shopify specific WordPress theme, is the release of two more WordPress themes and an official WordPress plugin from Shopify. This is going to make it even easier to integrate Shopify into non-traditional ecommerce stores. How to Run a… Read more

Ecommerce content marketing Content marketing can be an investment that slowly builds up your store’s revenue over time. This guide outlines many of the ways to use content marketing with your ecommerce store. How to Integrate Shopify into WordPress with Zillacommerce If the focus of your website is its content… Read more

Private Apps: Your Ticket to Moving Your Shopify Store from ‘Good Enough’ to Outstanding Sometimes a store settles for a "good enough" solution to a problem which causes more trouble than it’s worth. There is another way. Shopify private apps can be used to create a custom, perfect-fit solution for… Read more

The Different Types of Shopify Apps Not only is Shopify’s App Store growing rapidly, but there are two entire segments of Shopify apps that aren’t even listed there. Learn about the three types of Shopify apps. Shopify 2015 Year in Review It’s been a busy year for Shopify. Some interesting… Read more

Order Communication and Collaboration in Shopify Shopify added the ability for your team to post comments to your orders. This will make it easier to talk about an order in one place and stop sending those dozens of emails. 2016 Ecommerce Marketing Checklist Marketing can feel difficult if you don’t… Read more

How to Set Retail Discounts, for Ecommerce Too often I see discounts created without any thought behind them. A merchant will decide that today 15% sounds good and next time they’ll make it 20%. Armando Roggio shows how to plan out your discounts so it matches your business reason for… Read more

All Shopify Stores Now Use SSL Encryption Everywhere Trust is the #1 factor when a customer is deciding about buying from you, versus a competitor. Even if you have an amazing price, if they don’t trust your store, you won’t get the sale. Security and SSL is one aspect of… Read more

Calculating your customer purchase latency Knowing your reorder metrics are important. How much they spend is commonly used. One oft-overlooked metric is the Customer Purchase Latency, the how long it takes a customer to reorder. By building campaigns around this metric you can speed up reorders. How To Turn Your… Read more

Getting repeat sales using purchase latency Knowing your customer purchase latency can help you build a strategy to get more repeat sales from customers. Though it can be difficult to track and manage, the payoff may be worth it. Small Retailers Better Able to Adopt Unified Commerce One area outside… Read more

Pricing out a Private Shopify App Creating a private Shopify app can be a valuable project for many merchants. Having the flexibility to customize and control how your store functions can give you automation potential that topples public App Store apps. But make sure to budget enough to keep the… Read more

How to keep driving sales after holiday season Just because the holiday season is over doesn’t mean you should slow everything down yet. You deserve a break for getting through the end of the year but make sure to use the first few months of 2016 to keep driving sales.… Read more

It’s been a light week content-wise. Everyone is recovering from the holiday season and wrapping up the year. Don’t forget to do a final promotion before the fiscal year ends for businesses. Telling a story with your content marketing I’ve used stories with my content marketing several times but it… Read more

Maximizing your email marketing While not all of Nick’s advice here will work for everyone (what advice does?), he includes some great email marketing tips for ecommerce merchants. Depending on your pricing and level of service your customers expect, you might find building a relationship is required. Though offers and… Read more

App Integration Will Benefit Your Ecommerce Website Spending time (and thus money) keeping all of you business data up-to-date sucks. Sometimes it’s a must-do, like making sure your customer orders are sent to your supplier. Other data updates are a should-do, which… let’s be honest here, get put off until… Read more

Sales Report: 2015 Thanksgiving Day, Black Friday, Cyber Monday More data has come in on the 2015 Thanksgiving Day, Black Friday, Cyber Monday sales and three things stand out to me: Online orders are up Mobile orders are up (a bunch) Extending the shopping season to Halloween or even just… Read more

In-Store Retail Sales Decline on Black Friday Weekend While it’s only counting brick-and-mortar retail, 2015 sales over Black Friday appear to be down. I’ve seen some sources saying online has taken a larger share of sales and there are always reporting problems in these statistics but this is a rough… Read more

3 2 1 Launch… checklist I’ve created and used launch checklists for years with clients. Launch can be a stressful time and without a checklist in hand, as it’s easy to forget things. This Shopify Store Launch Checklist is a great start but don’t be afraid to add your own… Read more

Advanced email tactics Carolyn Nye has several tips that can be used to improve your email marketing for Cyber Monday (or anytime really). The best part is that you can set these up ahead of time. Where’s the Lede? Some of the best content marketing gets to the point quickly.… Read more

Don’t spread, focus All too often people spread themselves too thin. Maybe they have 10 stores, when 2 would work better. Or 5,000 products, when only 4 are strong sellers. Nick Whitmore writes about how he approaches new ideas and focuses on one at a time. Grow your blog, grow… Read more

Failing moves Things don’t always happen as you expect. Even your business as a whole might, one day, start dying and it’s up to you to revive it. There are many ways you can try to save it, but you have to be willing to attempt something different. Mobile ecommerce… Read more

Third-party warehousing and fulfillment Much of the advice you’ll find about ecommerce is about the online side: setting up your storefront, marketing, taking orders, etc. Sometimes fulfilling those orders is regulated to busy work that you dread. Casandra Campbell writes about how you can use third-party warehousing and fulfillment instead… Read more

All about the cash I’ve watched a few businesses implode. Running out of cash is the top cause. They might be profitable, selling lots of products, and growing but then they don’t watch their cash flow and all of a sudden can’t make payroll and rent. Casandra Campbell has written… Read more

Automate your email marketing Email marketing is one of the most powerful forms of marketing available. It’s a direct connection to your customers at a fraction of the cost of other forms of advertising. John McIntyre outlines several ways you can setup email campaigns to reach your customers in this… Read more

Be Prepared Black Friday and Cyber Monday have the potential to make or break your year. You’re going to start seeing a lot of advice around how to get ready for it but the best advice is to be prepared and have options. Things will go wrong and how you… Read more

Welcome to the first issue of Shopify Dispatch, a weekly curated newsletter with links and resources for Shopify merchants about Shopify and ecommerce. Missing out on some growth? Neil Patel has put together a resource to help look at where your store is flagging and what you can do to… Read more