I ruthlessly unsubscribe from almost all newsletters. Eric’s one of a select few that I look actually forward to opening because it has proven itself consistently valuable for Shopify merchants.
— Kurt Elster, Ecommerce Strategist, founder of Ethercycle, and a top Shopify Plus Expert.
Past issues
Shopify Dispatch Issue #231 - Ecommerce search, Goodbye nofollow
Deconstructing E-Commerce Search: The 8 Most Common Query Types Jamie Appleseed at Baymard has published a massive article about ecommerce search that lists many different ways customers search and how majors stores succeed or fail at them. Google Downgrades Nofollow Directive. Now What? You used to be able to use...
Shopify Dispatch Issue #230 - When to scale SEO, Fast stores
SEO: When to Scale (or Not) Bill Sebald writes about when to scale your SEO activities and when not to. I see Shopify stores getting this backwards all the time, scaling up the things that need a manual touch (titles, descriptions, content) and doing things that by hand that should...
Shopify Dispatch Issue #229 - Shopify outage status, Good conversion rates
Check your store's status on the updated Shopify status page Shopify's updated their status page so that it can now tell you if there's an outage that impacts your specific store. It's an interesting evolution over the previous "some stores are impacted by ..." status page but the loss of...
Shopify Dispatch Issue #228 - Casper's profit/loss, High-traffic content ideas
Casper's profit/loss per mattress Kevin Hillstrom uses Casper's profit and loss to explain why acquiring customers from organic channels is vital for any store. Analyze Competitors for High-traffic Content Ideas Sometimes it's easiest to research your competitors content for ideas. Armando Roggio shows how to dig into competitor's SEO data...
Shopify Dispatch Issue #227 - Google Algorithm advice, Videos in email
Lessons from 20 Years of Google Algorithm Updates Bill Sebald's advice about Google algorithm updates is solid and something every Shopify store needs to keep in mind when there are fluctuations. How to create email marketing-friendly videos to boost your sales Amir Shahzeidi writes about how to best use video...
Shopify Dispatch Issue #226 - data-vocabulary sunset, 2019 holiday reports
Sunsetting support for data-vocabulary Google is finally ending support for data-vocabulary.org structured data. They've had Search Console start sending emails about it to Shopify stores and other websites on January 21st, 2020. This standard has been dead since 2011 but for some reason quite a few Shopify themes are still...
Shopify Dispatch Issue #225 - Email marketing trends
eCommerce email marketing trends in 2020 and beyond Dorit Sasson writes about three trends in ecommerce email marketing. Trend spotting is difficult to get right but the first of these (personalization) has been recurring every year for as long as I've paid attention to it. Data-driven marketing advice Don't just...
Shopify Dispatch Issue #224 - Better product list pages, Pre-purchase engagement
Product List UX: The Number of Products to Load by Default (52% Get it Wrong) Rebecca Hugo from Baymard published one of their studies around how many products your collection page should load. There's a lot of good insights in there that shows why you shouldn't settle for the default...
Shopify Dispatch Issue #223 - So long 2010s, Physical store closures
The first Shopify Dispatch of the new year So Long 2010s Kevin Hillstrom sums up the past decade into three key factors. The communication one has and will continue to be hurt stores using broadcasting strategies (including new forms of it). Physical Store Closures Hit a New High in 2019...
Shopify Dispatch Issue #222 - Boxing Day, Ecommerce blunders game
Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah everyone. Boxing Day: The Post-Holiday Holiday Even though Christmas is shopping officially over for your customers (except for that one uncle), there's still Boxing Day which is a great time to sell directly to customers who didn't get all they wanted this year. And don't...