There are a number of well-known eCommerce platforms. Perhaps Shopify is the best known, but there are also BigCommerce, Volusion, Spark Pay, CoreCommerce and others. They all do a reasonable job of helping you get an eCommerce store up and running, but they also share another characteristic: The require ongoing monthly payments. Now, there is a new platform for eCommerce that doesn’t charge you a monthly fee or charge you a commission whenever you make a sale: SaleJunction. This new software is available for a single one-time charge. It also has the advantage of not requiring any supplemental... [...]

Jack Simpson says, “Black Friday is less than half a week away, which means it’s almost time to forget about the woes of the world for one day and get lost in some good-old-fashioned consumerist escapism. In light of this being the UK’s biggest 24 hours for ecommerce and what with us being a digital marketing blog, we thought we’d better bring you some of the best Black Friday stats we’ve seen so far. UK will spend £1bn this Black Friday UK shoppers will spend £1.07bn on 27 November, according to data from Experian and IMRG. In 2014 consumers spent £810m on this date, meaning... [...]

Jack Simpson says, “If you’re not constantly testing and tweaking pages on your ecommerce site you could be missing out on potential sales.  But showing is always more powerful than telling, so I’m going to present you with some solid examples of A/B testing in action, along with the results. Country clothing retailer A Hume first realised the benefits of testing back in 2012, when it redesigned its checkout login screen and billing details process. According to James Abbott, the brand’s director of digital strategy and optimisation, the results were impressive. “The test was... [...]

Tracy Maple says, “IBM client web sales rose 12.1% last weekend, while ChannelAdvisor reports 13.9% growth in sales last week for merchants on Amazon. Online sales the weekend before Thanksgiving increased 12.1% compared with the same period in 2014, according to data from IBM released Monday. Meanwhile, ChannelAdvisor reported that its clients’ sales on Amazon.com, which often track broader e-commerce growth, rose 13.9% for the week ended Saturday. According to the IBM data, collected from its e-retailer clients, consumers also spent more per order Saturday and Sunday than they did on... [...]

Ian Harris says, “In 2012, we conducted research into how the recession had affected attitudes towards global trading opportunities. We found that many of the respondents had been forced to rely heavily on global markets to maintain or grow their revenues. One of the recession’s ‘silver linings’ was that it changed the ‘tunnel vision’ attitude many businesses can develop. The difficulties that arose as a result of this economic stagnation forced business to explore other opportunities – namely those abroad“. International ecommerce: Four things to consider when venturing... [...]

Emma Greenman says, “According to NRF, 25 million holiday shoppers said they would specifically use their mobile device to shop online on Cyber Monday this year. That is a big chunk of the expected $116 billion ecommerce will bring in this holiday season! Part of serving customers (that want to give you their money) is providing a happy, helpful online experience. Increasingly, online includes mobile devices. Is your website mobile ready? Can you handle the masses of holiday shoppers that are coming your way? Let’s take a look at some of the most important features you’ll need before... [...]

Annie Pilon says, “Mobile commerce is no longer an optional strategy for businesses that sell products online. Customers use mobile devices for pretty much everything today, including shopping. So you need to learn how to sell to customers on mobile devices. Here’s a list of mobile commerce tips for a strategy that will help you increase sales. Mobile Commerce Tips There are several different methods that businesses can use to create effective mobile strategies. But there’s one part that’s not optional. Online selling expert and CEO of ColderICE Media John Lawson explained in a phone... [...]

Ginny Marvin says, “As the holiday shopping season heats up, the ongoing competition between Google and Amazon to be the destination for consumes researching products reaches its annual apex. Conventional wisdom holds that Amazon dominates in this realm. Recent data, however, suggests Google may be gaining ground or at least is not as far behind as Google has intimated. Product search is worth billions, and the overhaul of Google Shopping into a paid platform in 2012 was designed to combat losses to Amazon. In that year, a 2012 Forrester survey found that 30 percent of searches started... [...]

Kyla Cobb says, “Introducing a whole new customer segment to your brand can be a challenge for marketers. Especially when your brand transitions from catering solely to professional specialists to the general B2C market. That’s the challenge the team at mybody skincare faced when they were looking to expand from selling to physicians to also selling directly to consumers. Abby Traister, Vice President of Marketing, and Mike Nelson, Marketing Director of Online, both of mybody skincare, sat down with Daniel Burstein, Director of Editorial Content, MarketingSherpa, in the MarketingSherpa... [...]

Jack Simpson says, “What began as an in-joke between Chinese university students about their lack of significant others has evolved into the world’s biggest online shopping day.  Alibaba’s 11:11 Global Shopping Festival is an annual event held on 11 November, otherwise known as Singles Day, originally launched by the retailer to raise awareness of ecommerce in China. This year saw a record-breaking spending spree, and the stats below are enough to turn even the most gracious ecommerce sites green with envy“. 10 eye-watering stats from Alibaba’s Singles Day in China ‘Econsultancy’... [...]