In this first ecommerce monthly roundup here at a A Better
Lemonade Stand, we wanted to bring you some of the most
noteworthy news, resources and interesting tidbits that you may
have missed around the internet this month in order to help you
better your business and keep you more informed about the
ecommerce world.
First off, April was a jam-packed month of major announcements
from Shopify and Facebook at their annual developer conferences
with huge updates on both of their respective platforms. These
developer conferences are a great way to get a peek into what’s
coming up in the near future as developers are introduced to
new tools and capabilities; so we wanted to cover a bit of what
went down at these conferences.
We also wanted to share a bunch of news updates across all
platforms and marketing channels. These are the quick
highlights to help you get a grasp on what’s new in the ever
changing world of ecommerce.
Finally, every roundup will also include resources and blog
posts that are just too good to only read once. These are our
favorites posts and some of them may include ones published
here on ABLS. Bookmark these, these are the gems we think are
worth revisiting.
Consumer Trends
Marijuana Goes Industrial in California
Date: April 15, 2017 Author:
Thomas Fuller
A consumer trend we’re highlighting this April is the quickly
growing and expanding cannabis industry. Thomas Fuller from the
New York Times gives us one perspective into the fascinating
backstory of farmers and retailers in the state of California.
Though the subject may be too taboo for some, the legalization
of cannabis will present interesting and new opportunities for
merchants who provide solutions for this new class of
agricultural entrepreneurs – and not necessarily just those
interested in selling marijuana.
Read More
Truthful Consumerism
Date: April 1, 2017 Author:
Various
Another consumer trend we’re highlighting in April comes
straight out of TrendWatching’s quarterly update on consumer
trends. This update is specifically on the topic of “Truthful
Consumerism,” or another words, how do you navigate your
business or brand in a world of polarized political headlines
and fake news? The good news, that all the good things your
brand may represent still applies: positive impacts, tolerance
and empowerment.
Read More
Ecommerce News
Everything We Announced at Unite 2017 (And What It
Means For Merchants)
Date: April 24, 2017 Author:
Braveen Kumar
The second annual Shopify Unite in San Francisco occurred with
some big announcements for merchants on their platform. This
post by Braveen Kumar summarizes the top 11 huge announcements
that you may want to check out. Some of the highlights include:
Shopify Pay, a new Chip & Swipe reader, more channel
integrations (including Buzzfeed), a better discount system,
and more. Check out the post to read about the other 10
announcements from the event.
Read More
Facebook F8 2017 – What Marketers Need to Know
Date: April 20, 2017 Author:
Karola Karlson
Facebook’s big developer conference also happened in April and
according to statistics, the two biggest platforms where most
ecommerce businesses spend money on marketing is Facebook (and
Instagram) and Google. This posts summarizes the announcements
from Facebook F8 from a marketer’s perspective and shares the
things you need to know as a marketer on their platform.
Read More
Facebook and Google Completely Dominate the Digital Ad
Industry
Date: April 26, 2017 Author:
Alex Heath
Everyone knows that Facebook and Google are major platforms for
advertising, but it wasn’t apparent that they pretty much took
all the growth in advertising in the last year. In fact,
according to this report, Facebook and Google captured a
combined 77% of gross spending in 2016!
Read More
Snapchat Introduces World Lenses – Live Filters for
Just About Anything
Date: April 18, 2017 Author:
Darrell Etherington
Since the Snapchat IPO, the company has seen some of its main
features like stories and filters get copied by Facebook and
Instagram. This is especially crushing for the company that
stated that their main strategy is building new products. In
align with their strategy, Snapchat recently announced “World
Lenses” which is a 3D object you can place in their augmented
reality camera. We’ll see if Facebook will copy this feature
next!
Read More
UPS Talks About Its New Saturday Ground Pickup,
Delivery
Date: April 13, 2017 Author:
Mike O’Brien
For the many merchants that use UPS as their carrier of choice,
UPS recently did a test of Saturday deliveries to stay
competitive with the likes of FedEx and USPS. If you use UPS,
this conversation with UPS VP of Marketing, Jerome Roberts, is
one to catch up on.
Read More
BigCommerce CEO on Amazon, Other Channels
Date: April 12, 2017 Author:
Kerry Murdock
BigCommerce has reaffirmed its strategic partnership with eBay
and other channels like Amazon to help enable the merchants on
their platform to sell in other marketplaces besides their own
website. This interview with BigCommerce’s CEO, Brent Bellm,
gives you some insight into his thinking of how you can
approach selling your items in marketplaces, and most notably,
how you should navigate in marketplaces like Amazon and eBay.
Read More
Resources
How to Create a Facebook Ad Collection
Date: April 5, 2017 Author:
Jon Loomer
This is an excellent step-by-step guide by Jon Loomer to help
you start using the new ad format that Facebook recently
introduced called “Collections.” If you’re not familiar with
Collections, this new ad format is a combination of a feature
image, slideshow or video overtop of a group of product images
with direct links to each product. It’s perfect for ecommerce
sites because it gives you the hybrid of a rich media
experience but you’re still able to present product focused
links related to the image.
Read More
Shopify App Review: Fomo
Date: April 13, 2017 Author:
Stewart Anderson
This review by Stewart Anderson on popular app FOMO, formerly
called Notify until it was acquired by Justin Mares and further
developed by his team, dives deep into the topic of social
proof and how the FOMO app works to drive customers to make
purchases. Have a read of this review and see if FOMO might be
a good fit for your store.
Read More
Step-by-Step: How to Start 11 Different Types of
Ecommerce Businesses
Date: April 4, 2017 Author: A
Better Lemonade Stand
Not sure what kind of ecommerce business to start? This article
by yours truly, A Better Lemonade Stand, introduces you to 11
different kinds of ecommerce businesses and more detailed
information on how to start them. If you’re excited to start
your own ecommerce business but haven’t decided on what to sell
yet, read this post for both inspiration and detailed
step-by-step guides to get started.
Read More
The Rules for Creating Quality Ecommerce Content on
Instagram
Date: April 19, 2017 Author:
Jonathan Chan
For a lot of ecommerce businesses, Instagram is an important
channel to master since the medium has over 700M users AND is a
visual platform. It’s the closest thing to having a beautiful
storefront display on a busy intersection. Jonathan Chan walks
us through the mental thought processes he uses to approach
marketing on Instagram with his four rules.
Read More
15 Ways Web Push Notifications Can Help Increase Your
E-Commerce Conversions
Date: April 5, 2017 Author:
Kaustuva Bhattacharjee
Another powerful yet underutilized channel in digital marketing
is Web Push Notifications. You have all seen push notifications
on your smartphone, but the latest modern browsers also allow a
similar experience for sites you opt into. Kaustuva walks us
through the concept of push notifications for the web and 15
different ways to leverage them in your ecommerce business.
Check this post out and explore some of their examples to
test it out for yourself.
Read More
For Sale
As an experiment, we decided to feature ecommerce businesses
that are for sale. If you have more capital than time to build
up an ecommerce business, or you already own an ecommerce
business and are looking to expand, then this listing may be
interesting to you.
Beauty & Cosmetics Ecommerce Business For
Sale
Date: April 18, 2017 Author:
Empire Flippers
Beauty and Cosmetics is one of the top growing categories in
ecommerce so consider this listing on Empire Flippers. It has a
few interesting opportunities: an average monthly revenue of
$11,912 with $5,313 in expenses, netting you an average gross
profit of $6,599. Being built on WordPress, there may be ways
to improve the SEO and add additional selling channels. This
business also appears to be an Australian website, so bringing
this to a bigger market like North America may be worth
investigating.
Read More
Conclusion
This concludes our first roundup on A Better Lemonade Stand and
has brought to you what we’ve noticed as the ecommerce
highlights for the month of April. The ecommerce space is
constantly evolving so in order to evolve with it and make the
best decisions for your business it’s important to stay
informed. Have a read of some of these blog posts, check out
the resources and learn more about what’s new in ecommerce so
you can stay up to date and ahead of the curve.
What are your favorite bits of news, resources and tools for
the month of April?