Experts Predict 2021 Trends (and what we learned in 2020)
As ecommerce professionals, what did we learn from 2020? And what happens in 2021?
Those are the questions I posed to a number of a clever ecommerce industry folks.
Entreprenuers like:
This episode is a fire hose of valuable insights, tips, and trends.
Kurt Elster: On this episode of The Unofficial Shopify Podcast, we have a torrent of information, a firehose of valuable tips and insights from the industry’s top talent for you, my friend. So, here’s what I did. I posed the same question to a number of clever eCommerce industry friends, who recorded their answers, and then I dumped it on Paul, who edited that together into one fabulously valuable episode. What’s the most important thing we learned in 2020? That’s the question I asked folks like Andrew Youderian from eCommerceFuel, Ezra Firestone from Zipify, and Steve Chou from My Wife Quit Her Job, plus some other folks, including a very special guest, but we’ll get to that.
Now, 2020 was generally a dumpster fire. I think we can all agree on that. But 2021 is just weeks away, so I also asked another important question. Hey, what’s your top tip for growing an eCom business in 2021? So, what did we learn and where are we going? That’s what this episode is all about. So, buckle up. You are about to drink from a firehose of valuable tips and insights from the industry’s top talent. And to start us off is a very special guest. An entrepreneur, lawyer, Canadian, and the president of Shopify, Harley Finkelstein. Take it away, Harley.
Harley Finkelstein: First and foremost, we learned that there are two types of retailers. There are retailers that saw this tidal wave and they grabbed their towel and ran for the shore. And there were others that saw the tidal wave and grabbed a surfboard. And the ones that ran for the shore, they were resistant. They were waiting for all of this to pass and go back to I guess an old version of retail. Whereas the ones that grabbed their surfboards, the resilient ones, they adapted. They changed their business models. They threw out every past assumption, rethought how can we create value for our customers, and the resilient ones, they have not only survived COVID, but in many cases will come out on the other side of COVID thriving, with a brand new business with new revenue opportunities. And I think it’ll be obvious after COVID is done, after the pandemic is over, who was on which side.
Well, first of all, retail is everywhere. The future of retail is not online or offline, or on TikTok, or Instagram, or on Walmart.com, or even a marketplace like Amazon. The future of retail is wherever consumers want to buy. And so, I think the retailers that are going to be and are already quite successful, they have deep empathy and a deep understanding for what their customers want, where they like to shop, how they like to shop, and the retailers and brands of the future that will be successful will understand that, and they’ll make sure they sell wherever those customers are.
The other big thing that’s really been apparent this holiday season in particular is this idea of conscious consumerism. That consumers are now voting with their wallets to support independent brands whose values reflect their own. They don’t just want to buy a pair of shoes, they want to buy a pair of shoes from a brand who they believe in, who they want to see exist and grow in the world. And I do not think that conscious consumerism is just gonna be a 2020 thing. I think it’s a new way to shop and it is very different than an old paradigm around frankly discounting at all costs.
I think consumers are becoming a lot more selective about who they buy from and they look at that purchase as a vote for that brand, that product, that small business to exist in the world.
Eric Bandholz: What’s going on, internet? Eric Bandholz here, founder at Beardbrand, and you know, what’s the most important thing we learned in eCommerce in 2020? Well, I mean, I think it’s really the importance of eCommerce on the industry and society as a whole. You see a huge shift in consumers’ behavior around from traditional bricks and mortar because of the pandemic, and the lockdowns, and wanting to be socially distant from people. Nothing is better than eCommerce for that solution, so the ability for eCommerce retailers to be able to serve those customers, to come up with creative solutions, both traditionally from old school bricks and mortars, to new age direct to consumers, I would imagine have all benefited from consumers being more comfortable getting things brought to them rather than going out and bringing them in.
I think this trend is going to continue into the future and it’s really shifting from old habits to new habits. So, 2020 was definitely an eventful year and I think for eCommerce people it’s been a great year, because we’ve been able to bring products to our customers’ homes, rather than require them to come to us.
And the question is what is my tip for 2021 to be able to grow your eCommerce business. I think the answer to this you can really see literally if you’re watching this video. If you’re not watching the video, I did a video of this and that’s the solution. You guys got to learn how to do video. It gives you a great opportunity to be able to tell your brand story, your product story, to be able to connect with your viewers on a more real level. You don’t have to do it in a way that is highly produced and spending tens of thousands of dollars for production. Grab your cell phone, turn it on, start recording, and start connecting with your brand, your audience.
Now, I believe you can do this organically through channels like YouTube, but also paid advertising is a great opportunity in terms of advertising on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, shoot, I think even people are doing TikTok. Is that video? You’re damn right it’s video. So, if you haven’t yet started investing in video yet to be able to get your brand out there, you are going to be behind the brands who have figured it out or are getting better every year. Go ahead, grab a camera, learn how to edit, get Premier, and you are gonna be elevating your marketing game in 2021.
Marnie Consky: Hi, I’m Marnie Consky, founder and CEO of Thigh Society, and my top tip for growing your eCommerce business in 2021 is to really focus on telling your brand story in an authentic way to your customers. And doing this is nothing new for 2021, but why it’s especially important coming into the new year is because the eCommerce landscape became even more cluttered in 2020, with so many big brands moving their businesses online due to the pandemic. But the one superpower that small businesses have that those big brands don’t is the authenticity and ability to tell your founder’s story, and to tell the story of why you came up with your product or service.
So, I think it’s going to be more important than ever to have an authentic story to communicate to your customers and potential customers in 2021. And I think there’s a lot of ways you can do that. Thinking about email first, when you have new subscribers who sign up to your newsletter and you have a welcome flow, maybe rather than selling them right away on the product or the benefits of your product, spend a little bit of time talking about your founder’s story and why you created your product. And then in later flows you can talk about how the product is made and you can share some information about how the product goes from concept all the way through to finished product and then shipped to the customer’s door.
I think storytelling like that is something that will always resonate with potential customers, regardless of year, but it’s more important than ever. And you don’t necessarily need to have a big budget to tell your brand story. So, everyone’s at home, everyone who has an iPhone right now is able to create content, and you being able to share your founder’s story even on your social media, if you split it up into different posts, to tell maybe a segmented story over a week or a period of a couple of days, isn’t difficult to do. And even with pictures of yourself that you’re taking at home, again lends that authenticity to yourself and your brand.
Another thing you can focus on is getting to be a podcast guest. So, a lot of podcast hosts are often looking for really interesting founder stories and are always looking to feature founders and their products. So, have a look out there at what podcasts you listen to, or podcasts that your customers, potential customers might be listening to, and see if you can become a guest on some of those podcasts. Try to figure out what publications your customers might be reading and maybe there’s an opportunity to write… To submit a thought leadership piece, or something that might have a good chance of getting published and telling your story.
So, ultimately it’s really about being yourself. It’s not necessarily about having the huge budget that some of these big brands have, because at the end of the day, being you and being a small business is your superpower. So, do your best to tell that story to your customers. Give them the stories they want about why and how you started this business. And I think ultimately that will lead to some really strong customer loyalty over time, well beyond 2021.
Ezra Firestone: Yo. Ezra Firestone here from Zipify app, Smart Marketer, and Boom by Cindy Joseph, on behalf of Kurt Tech Nasty Elster from The Unofficial Shopify Podcast, and he’s asked me what’s the most important thing we learned in eCommerce in 2020, and we learned some shit in eCommerce in 2020! And I’ll tell you what, we learned a lot of things, but the first thing we learned is that supply chain is not as stable as you might think. And if you’re running lean and mean, if you’re running and gunning, clanging and banging, and running on like two, three months’ inventory, you’re gonna need to triple or quadruple that. You really need a more robust supply chain than you thought. You need redundancy of suppliers. You need… You know, supply chain has become so much more important now that we’ve seen that, you know, hey, the global supply chain isn’t as stable as maybe we once thought it was.
So, we learned a lot about supply chain infrastructure and the importance of that. We also learned about the willingness for people to adopt technology in eCommerce. We learned that eCommerce is here to stay. We already knew that, but like we really got to see through this pandemic how many people are gonna adopt eCommerce and not go back to traditional retail. I think eCommerce has grown for the better. And so, what that means is you as brands are gonna have to get better at telling stories. You’re gonna have to get better at amplifying content. You’re gonna have to get better at doing the things that differentiate you from Amazon. You’re not gonna be able to compete on price if you’re not an Amazon merchant, right? Amazon’s just gonna lose money and pay for it with AWS.
And so, you need to be able to compete on content, on story, on mission, on purpose, so step up your paid amplification game.
And then for growing your brand, the next question that Kurt had was what’s your top tip for growing eCommerce businesses in 2021. And I think, listen, the basics win ballgames, and it has been the same story. I’ve been doing this now since 2005. I have been an eCommerce merchant since ’05. In the last four years, I’ve sold over $100 million of my own product with no funding, not VC backed, no debt in my brand, Boom by Cindy Joseph. I’ll do about $30 million a year. I’ll do $30 million this year in that one brand.
So, I’ve been doing this, and I know the game, and I’ve been rocking the same strategy from day one, which is three pillars. Number one, have an incredibly good product. It doesn’t have to be unique. It could be the same electric toothbrush, it could be the same category as another product, like Quip is an electric toothbrush, same thing as Sonicare, but they’re killing it because they have a great product. So, number one, always focusing on product. Innovating. Making your products better. Listening to customer feedback. Reformulating. Recreating. Launching version two, version three, version four. Always make your product better.
Number two, support, right? So, product number one. If you don’t have a new product, get out of town. Support, number two. If you’ve got terrible support, you’re never gonna achieve repeat business, so you really gotta up level your support game to use the parlance of our time, to use the lingo that the kids in the entrepreneurial game are using today. Up level. You really need high quality, fast phone, live chat and email support, and you need to take care of people in a good way, in a positive way.
And then third, run ads. Spend at least 30%... Well, let’s say at least 20% of your top line revenue number on paid amplification. So, if you make a million dollars in 2020, spend $200,000 at a minimum in 2021 buying visibility for your brand. That’s a million in revenue, not profit. So, you need to invest more in paid ads than you think you should. You need to send three to four times the amount of emails that you think you should. You need to produce more content than you think you should. You need to optimize your sales funnels. You gotta just do good old fashioned direct response marketing. The fundamentals. Build out your sales funnel. Create high quality engaging content. Amplify it. Put it in front of your audience. Follow up with those folks with sales and promotional ads and emails. Just do the damn thing and keep on clanging and banging, and don’t quit before the miracle. Really, just keep going. Keep at it. Consistency wins the game.
So, fundamentals and consistency are what it’s about in 2021. My name is Ezra Firestone. You can find me on Instagram @EzraFirestone. Hope you’ve enjoyed this and catch up with you soon.
Ilana Davis: Hi. I’m Ilana Davis. I work with eCommerce shops to remove friction from the buying process. I rescue Shopify websites, making them more effective in attracting more visitors, providing better SEO, and increasing conversion rates at a fraction of the cost of a full redesign. If 2020 has taught us nothing else in eCommerce, it’s the fact that we must be intentionally inclusive. Inclusive in the words we use, inclusive in where we shop, inclusive of our customers.
After months of protest and political unrest in the U.S., I noticed something that really warms my heart. More people began to change their shopping habits. Buying from Black-owned businesses became much more prominent this year than I had ever noticed before. Many people are finally seeing the world differently or realizing that there is more that they can do to fight injustices. They are opening up their wallets or are asking how else they can help, and we’ve seen a spotlight shining on Black-owned businesses and consumers seek out products made and or sold buy Black, Indigenous, and people of color eCommerce stores.
But there’s a fine line, though, between being genuinely inclusive and paying lip service to the cause. Working with, including, and learning from people from a range of perspectives can also capture a greater market share if done right. And the beautiful thing about 2020, once you get past all this chaos, is that more people are trying to be more inclusive. Now, don’t try to be everything to everyone, but you can make small tweaks that are much easier than you think.
As you plan for 2021, consider the following when looking to grow your eCommerce business by being more inclusive. From a technical perspective, alt text is not an opportunity to keyword stuff. Instead, when writing alt text for your images, imagine that you’re describing the picture to a person over the phone. Use a minimum of 16 pixel font for paragraph text, and for that matter, use relative units like REM or EM instead of pixels. Using high contrast between font colors and background colors also ensures that, for example, a customer can read the product details when they’re looking at your site from their phone on a sunny day.
From a branding perspective, when applicable, go beyond those gender norms and expand beyond men or women categories. Consider options for gender non-conforming by offering products that are unisex. You can also allow shoppers to use their native language, making them feel more welcomed and providing a more meaningful experience. Use models from a variety of age groups, races, ethnicities, and include disabilities from your photography. And then add culturally-specific products to your product catalog, such as food, clothing, care products, and more. The needs vary from group to group, but in one way, they are very similar. There is a lack of recognition that there is more than one type of shopper or that they each have specific needs. Account for a variety of age groups, races, ethnicities, and include disabilities.
It’s very hard to define every way in which inclusivity is needed in eCommerce and all the ways that we could or should evolve to meet the needs of a consumer base. Be authentic, though. Not all shoppers are looking to get the same things, but you must be genuine. Add one idea on how to be more inclusive in your next design meeting or marketing campaign and take steps today to build a more inclusive world.
Steve Chou: What is the most important thing that we learned in eCommerce in 2020? Well, Kurt, I’m gonna keep this short. It’s that running an Amazon-only business is very fragile. During COVID-19, Amazon basically stopped a bunch of sellers from shipping goods into their warehouses for a period of months. And as a result, if you ran out of stock and you didn’t have a shipping and fulfillment backup plan in place, you were basically out of luck and sales basically plummeted during those months.
Now, the fact that a single entity has the ability to put you out of business is yet another sign that you need to own your own website and learn how to drive your own traffic to diversify your sales. Now, Shopify actually did something pretty scary, as well. I had a friend who was selling hand sanitizer in his shop, and I believe that he always sold hand sanitizer, and he wasn’t trying to gouge anyone on price, but Shopify basically did not allow him to sell hand sanitizer on his website unless he lowered his price. Now, this kind of platform control is just a little bit scary to me, so own as much as you can about your business.
Now, the other thing that we learned is that you don’t really control your audiences that you have on social media and search. And so, during COVID, both Facebook and Google prevented many ads from being shown for legitimate products, and the organic reach of Facebook and Instagram continues to plummet every single year. So, as a result, everyone in 2021 should be focusing their efforts on marketing mediums that they truly own. Now, these owned marketing mediums include email, SMS, push notifications, and to a partial extent, Facebook Messenger marketing. Now, most businesses out there are already using email, but SMS is still the wild, wild west, and it works incredibly well. You might not think that people want marketing messages in their text message inbox, but it actually works extremely well.
And so, my advice to anyone for 2021 and beyond is to always keep an open mind when it comes to marketing and sales and try to own as much of your audience as you can.
Nick DiSabito: All right, so I’m Nick DiSabito. I run a design consultancy called Draft. You can take a look at Draft.NU. The most important thing I learned in eCommerce in 2020 is that basically nothing is guaranteed, and what I mean by that, I mean there’s kind of the doom and gloom side of it. There’s the obvious pandemic, creeping fascism, so on and so forth. I think really the value bit is resiliency, durability, stability, right? You need to be able to create a business that can weather odd economic conditions, fluctuations in market demand, and varying customer needs. We saw this happen a great deal once the pandemic broke out. People started putting banners in place that said whether they were shipping on time or not and what to be expecting, and that, from a CRO standpoint, helps reduce objections and make people feel more comfortable purchasing from you.
A lot of clients started putting together payment plans, installment plans, using like Affirm, or Sezzle, or whatever have you, and those ended up performing really well because people were in uncertain economic prospects, or they were just afraid. They might have had a job, but they might have been working from home all of a sudden. They were afraid. This was their first pandemic. It didn’t make any sense for them. So, they were trying to understand how to be spending and how to be acting in the world. And the businesses that thrived, a lot of them changed their product offerings, so if they were in apparel, they started making masks. Makes sense. And then they sold a zillion masks. And the people who did that faster and more nimbly, they ended up faring a lot better.
I think that if you let go of your preconceived notions of what your business is and gain a more open mind about how to be moving forward in the future, you’re more likely to weather weird economic fluctuations. And yeah, you might be flitting from weird disaster or crisis to another crisis, but it beats dying. And I think that’s a huge lesson that we could have in 2020, and you know, I don’t think that there’s gonna be a crisis mode going forward in 2021, but there’s definitely gonna be something that happens to you in the world and you want to be running this business hopefully for a long time and making money out of it. And survival’s been the name of the game this year. Thriving is good. I think it’s high risk to think that can be short term, and potentially really harmful for you and for your business.
So, really it was a lot of mindset things. It was a lot of very high level, how am I going to be about my business? How am I going to approach risk? How am I going to approach reward? How am I going to meet my customer’s very shifting and fluid needs? And how am I going to listen to them, right?
So, that’s it for 2020 stuff. 2021 predictions. What is your top tip for growing an eCommerce business in 2021? I think that a lot of people have short-term thinking in general with their businesses. They want to make a quick buck, or they want to find an outsized viral success. The problem with that is that everyone else is thinking the exact same thing you are. And so, my top tip is to zag while everybody else is zigging, right? Think more about long-term success. Think more about survival over the next couple years. And do what it takes to survive over the next couple of years, right?
Why does longer-term thinking make sense for eCommerce? It reduces your need to take on outsized amounts of risk in order to get outsized amounts of short-term reward. It means you’re going to do low risk, comparatively boring seeming things. But you’re also just gonna be making a good product and selling it to your customers and doing what you can to do well by them.
There’s enough overhead to be thinking about in the business in terms of automating your store, in terms of running a decent marketing playbook at all, in terms of your own sanity with current events and everything. I think that for me, with Draft, all I’ve done is stay the course. And I’ve done everything that I can do to try and stay the course. And whatever you can do to put your mindset in more of an abundance mindset going forward so that you can think about the long-term health, stability, and survival of your business, I think that’s probably the most valuable thing you can possibly do.
And I know that’s not really tactics, necessarily, but it said what is your top tip. That’s one tip, is think for the long term. What does it look like being in the long term? Well, probably you’re gonna be being staying online. Probably you’re gonna be communicating with customers who are increasingly afraid about an uncertain world. And beyond that, it’s your playbook. That’s it. So, those are my tips. I’m Nick DiSabito. Again, you can take a look at my work at Draft.NU and thank you, Kurt, for the opportunity to do this. Appreciate it.
Austin Brawner: Hey, everyone. Austin Brawner of BrandGrowthExperts.com and host of The Ecommerce Influence Podcast. I want to answer this question for Kurt. What is your top tip for growing an eCommerce business in 2021? My top tip if you’re an eCommerce business owner is to do less but do it better. Now, the returns for marketing in our industry and in pretty much any industry consolidate to the top 1% to 3% of marketers on a platform. Now, if you’re looking to grow your business and you’re looking to have success and maybe right now you have some limited success with a specific channel, now if that channel is paid social, maybe Facebook and Instagram, or it’s Google Advertising, you haven’t… If you’re not in the top 1% to 3% of best advertisers, you are leaving a lot on the table.
And so, my top tip is to focus on what you’re doing. Do less, but do it better, so you can get yourself into, for example, in SEO, the top 1 or 2 listings. If you’re doing Google Ads and doing Google Shopping ads, make sure you’re the best. Facebook advertising, make sure you’re doing it in the top 1%. If your market is big enough and you are competing at the highest levels, the returns will consolidate to you. And you don’t need to be involved in all the channels. You can have the success you’re looking for by being the best, doing less but better, and really, really doubling down and focusing on becoming the best version of your own company. And not getting scattered and pulled in different directions by all the hot new items out there.
So, that’s my top tip. Hope you guys get some value out of that.
What is the most important thing we learned in eCommerce in 2020? Now, the thing that comes up for me is to beware of the big paid social platforms and overindexing. Now, this year, there’s been a ton of volatility on Facebook and Instagram on the advertising platforms, and that has lead to some challenging times for clients and for eCommerce business owners who have been overindexed in paid social. Now, that can be avoided, and that can be avoided by focusing on some of your owned marketing channels and lifecycle marketing. That means having really strong email marketing, SMS marketing, building in a subscription component to your business if you’ve got a replenishable type of product. All things that you can do to underindex you or reduce your overreliance on paid social.
And if you have expectations of something remaining the same day in and day out that you don’t have control over, well, that is… That can lead to some really challenging times. And you know, we saw this in really April, May, June, when there was a huge boost in CPAs, the cost to advertise on Facebook and Instagram dropped tremendously. There was a lot of my clients, a lot of people I worked with who went in and made a lot of money driving sales on Facebook and Instagram, and then just months later it turned around and it was so expensive. And if you have expectations that something’s going to continue forever, you can hire, you can increase your expenses, you can do things that make it challenging for your business to succeed if those conditions change.
So, that’s the most important thing I think we learned in eCommerce, was that we don’t have control over channels out of your control, like Facebook and Instagram, or Google, so take care of the stuff that you can control. All your owned channels. Make sure you’re maximizing that and don’t overindex yourself, and hope that’s helpful.
Val Giesler: Hey, Val Giesler here from Fix My Churn. So, Kurt asked, “What is the most important thing we learned in eCommerce in 2020?” And oh, boy. So much. But in the world of email, we learned that you have to get personal and personalization is not just adding a first name. It is not just segmenting by purchased or not purchased, or suggesting items based on what’s in their cart, but it’s truly talking to people like people. It’s having real members of your team show up in emails. It’s writing more than showing pictures in some cases. It’s integrating those text-based campaigns with your HTML campaigns. That is how you stand out in the inbox, when it is already so full from a year that eCommerce took off, and it’s not going anywhere.
The more that you can get personal with your customers, the more you connect. So, when I talk about that, I mean putting, if Lori is on your team, Lori from your brand name as the from sender, and saying hello, writing emails like you’re writing to a friend. Trying things out in email. So, if you’ve always sent HTML campaigns, maybe you send a text-based campaign with inline links, especially when you have a new launch or something that’s really important and you want to get people’s attention. We all pay attention to different things in different ways and when there’s a lot of noise of really graphic-based, busy emails in our inbox, it can just feel like a lot of noise.
So, change it up. Get personal. Write emails like you’re telling a friend about your product. And see how that changes things.
Now, for growing an eCommerce business in 2021, we need more of that. We need more getting personal. We need more focus on people in general, and so sometimes that means your customers. Sometimes that means you and your team. You gotta take care of each other. We have to recognize that our customers are on all different kinds of journeys and coming from different places, so yes, we need to segment our email list. We need to acknowledge their past experience with us as a brand and speak to that.
So, if they used to make purchases all the time and they haven’t made one in a long time, talk to them like people. What’s going on in their lives? How can you help? What can you do that would make an impact for them? Make it about them, not about you. Same with your team. What do they need to be most successful? Again, you have to make it about them, not about you.
And then when it comes to you as the brand operator, you have to look at yourself. What do you need? Not what do other people need. What do you most need to be successful? That might be some time to yourself. That might be a mastermind group. That might be more connection with your customers. There’s all kinds of ways that you might need different things to be successful, but it’s about that human element. Let’s bring more of that into eCommerce in 2021 for our customers, or our teams, and for ourselves.
Andrew Youderian: Hey. Big congratulations on making it through or almost making it through quite the doozy of a year. I appreciate Kurt having me on for this. First question, what is the most important thing we learned in eCommerce in 2020? I would have to say I gave this a little thought, and the thing that emerged to me is it’s really hard to predict the future. I think we all like to think that we can read the paper, and look at reports, and we have a sense of what’s coming, and it’s easy in retrospect looking back at 2020 to say like, “Oh, this was the year of eCommerce.” Of course, pandemic, everyone’s gonna buy online, and I’m sure there’s some real sharp people out there who saw this coming earlier, but if you think back to when stuff got real back in March, when the NBA canceled the season and there was two or three weeks of just kind of pure chaos, and a ton of fear and uncertainty, I don’t think anyone knew how this was gonna shake out.
You know, a lot of people that I know, a lot of store owners were incredibly worried. Store owners that are now… Some of them are up 200, 300, 400% year over year, and so I think that’s… You know, same thing with investments, like if you look at the stock market, what’s happened, people would have never predicted that. So, bottom line, I think you can apply this to eCommerce, but business in general. You don’t know. You can’t predict the future. So, be prepared to take advantage of opportunities when they come and also be prepared to weather storms when they come, because it’s really hard to predict the future.
Second one, what’s your top tip for growing an eCommerce business in 2021? Mine would be figure out what your unique marketing advantage is and just double, triple, quadruple down on that. I think a lot of people are still using Facebook and Google Ads, and seeing 2, maybe 3X return on ad spend if they’re lucky. Having to refresh their creative every 15 to 30 days. Which works, but you’re not building an asset. It kind of can get wearing and it’s… There’s nothing, a lot of times there’s not really any advantage in that.
But if you can find something where… I mean, I know store owners that have six-figure email lists, get 20% clickthrough rates. That’s right, clickthrough rate. Not open rate, clickthrough rate. 50% open rates, because their emails are so good and that’s what they focus on, and they’re incredibly good at that. And maybe they supplement with a little bit here and there, but that’s where they pour a lot of their focus and marketing energy, because it’s what they do well.
Or other companies, maybe that perhaps have a really, really incredible influencer marketing program, or maybe you are really good at Facebook ads. Maybe you just… That’s what you go deep on. You have it in house. You know it better than 99% of people and you understand copy and ad, and ad creative. Whatever it is, I think there’s a temptation to be on too many different platforms, to be chasing too many different marketing strategies and do… and you end up doing too few of them well. So, it’s great to have a diversified marketing platform, but what I’d rather have is one that does really, really well. Even if there’s a little more channel risk there, and that maybe I have some level of ownership over ideally, than to try to have three or four that are kind of doing subpar.
So, those are my tips. Hope you have a wonderful 2021 and yeah, Kurt, thanks again. This was fun.
Rhian Beutler: So, the most important thing we learned in eCommerce in 2020 was that everything and anything can change ay any time, and that eCommerce merchants are really good at rolling with the punches, and that people are very fast to pivot in impossible situations. We saw resilience in 2020 that we’ve never seen before from small businesses. We saw flower shops and florists go online. We saw wine shops go on. We’ve seen all types of stores transition from a totally brick and mortar presence to an eCommerce-first presence, and there’s really something magical to that.
The fact that it’s even a possibility, A, and B, the fact that so many people were like, “Yes, I’m going to go all-in on this right now and I’m gonna pivot.” And it really harkens to the concept that Shopify speaks of, of arming the rebels. Because I would say 10, 15 years ago, a lot of what happened, A, there was no infrastructure for, and B, folks just wouldn’t have done it. So, I don’t know if the most important thing we learned in eCommerce in 2020 was resilience or just the absolute guts and courage that it takes to be a merchant, or we are reminded of that, and how hard it is to be a small business and to run an effective small business, but to me that was the most important thing that we learned. Also, we as an ecosystem need to have better shipping infrastructure and really meet customers where they need to be and really overcommunicate for customer service, especially in a time that is so uncertain.
Okay, Kurt. This isn’t going to come as that big of a surprise, but my top tip for growing an eCommerce business in 2021 is to double down, triple down on SEO. And if you haven’t done SEO at all, you haven’t optimized your store at all, now is absolutely the time. Discoverability is key. The more traffic you can get to your store, the better. Period.
And so, really going in and finessing what you’re doing and making sure you’re taking the right steps, discovering the right keywords, researching your competitors, implementing good copy, writing strong titles and strong meta descriptions, writing blogs, writing great product descriptions pages. All of these things, and I know I missed out on some things. Oh, writing alt text. Having alt text with every image on your store. These things are non-negotiable coming into 2021. They were non-negotiable this past year in my opinion, but if there’s one thing that I will tell you you absolutely have to do point blank, period, is go all-in on SEO in 2021. You will not regret it.
Anne Thomas: The most important thing we learned in 2021 is it’s okay to ask for help. Agencies and merchants alike have had to really rely on each other for support in 2020 and the community has risen to that. It’s an incredible ecosystem of experts and entrepreneurs who are all in it together.
Our top tip for growing an eCommerce business in 2021 is design for mobile first. Always. Regardless of how impressive your site looks on desktop, if it turns into a jumbled mess the second your customer is on a mobile device, you’re losing business. Outsource the things you aren’t good at. Photography, design, development, content, all these things. Give yourself the space to focus on what you do best. It might be more up front, but the return on investment will be immense.
Ben Jabbawy: Hey, Kurt. Ben from Privy here. 2020 really showed us how frickin’ scary it is to depend on third party channels where you don’t actually own the direct relationship. Amazon, right? Lighting up competitive products that always win on price. TikTok almost shutting down here in the U.S. after brands have built up really large audiences. And Facebook and Instagram costs skyrocketing just to get in front of the same customers we usually do. Call it old fashioned, but the best brands build community and capture direct relationships that they own using email and text.
And looking ahead to next year, I really feel 2021 is the year where brands will begin to understand the interplay between owned channels like text and email. Right now, text is a shiny object and no one’s really sure how to use it. Get comfortable with the format and the differences in expectations that customers have for each of these channels. But most importantly, they’ll understand how to effectively grow a single unified customer list that lets them communicate different messages through each channel.