Ecommerce Roundup: Amazon, Shopify, Marketing, Advertising, Growth, Strategy

ER 021: Facebook Algorithm Changes, Amazon Unverified Review Changes Check out our Amazon SEO guide for optimizing your product listings: http://azmarketers.com/listing Want to join an ecommerce mastermind? Sign up: http://azmarketers.com/mastermind Show Notes This is The Ecommerce Roundup, Podcast 21, today is January 12, 2018, I’m your host Bryan, and here’s the ecommerce news roundup for this week –   But, before we get started, I just want to apologize for not publishing a podcast in nearly 2 months! Crazy how the time flew buy. I don’t want to make excuses but I will. I was gone for Thanksgiving, and then for Christmas and New Years, plus 4th Quarter is always crazy, and then I’ve got a lot going on right now with my ecommerce business plus consulting, and to be honest, this podcast isn’t my first priority, so it does fall by the wayside when other things come up. That being said I really like doing this podcast, so I am going to try to continue to do it weekly, so please stay with me!   Anyway, enough of that. I’m sure you’re not hear to listen to me get personal. Let’s get into today’s podcast, which is going to be a bit short, but it’s also very important. ___________   Facebook announced that it’s changing its algorithm again Amazon is cleaning up reviews, and not letting buyers leave unverified reviews Wall Street Segment   Facebook changing its algorithm again   Facebook announced this week that it’s changing its algorithm so that people see more content from their friends and family. Basically Facebook is concerned that the user experience is bad because people are seeing too much in the news feed related to brands and ads.   On the surface this sounds bad for us as ecommerce businesses, right? And I’d agree with you if you think so.   Facebook is facing an issue of people not using it as much as they used to. And of course this is a major problem for them. If there aren’t users on the platform then Facebook goes away. End of story. It’s critical that they find a way to keep people on Facebook and to keep people coming back.   What’s interesting is that lately there have been reports coming out about how bad Facebook is for your own psychological and emotional health. And I fully agree with this. There’s nothing that can take you from a great mood to a terrible mood as fast as seeing your ex living an amazing life on Facebook. Or seeing your childhood friend vacationing in Tahiti while you slave away at the office. Don’t get me wrong, I like Facebook too. It’s great for staying in touch with family. But it’s a double edged sword. And it seems mainstream society is waking up to this fact.   So Facebook has to communicate to people that using it is a healthy way to spend your time, and they have to keep people entertained and engaged on it so that they don’t leave. This is hard.   So what are they going to do? Clean up the news feed and prevent you from seeing things you don’t want to see.   This change might hurt your business. This change might hurt brands. Just as it hurt brands when Facebook changed their algorithm to prevent organic reach and it became pay to play.   But the reality is that Facebook is still the best place to advertise, and we have to play by their rules. So keep playing by their rules until a better place to advertise shows up.   My advice to you is don’t panic. Just adapt to it. See what will happen.   When Amazon increases their fees the Amazon world collectively loses their minds for a week. And then we all just go about our business as usual. Why? Because Amazon is still the best place to sell. So all in all, I wouldn’t lose sleep over this. Business is full of challenges and this is just one more to add to the list.   Now, what to do practically about this right now? Double down on ads that are working.   Build up your pixel list so you can make custom audiences. If Facebook makes it harder to reach people your lists are going to become even more valuable.   But, to be honest, this isn’t great advice, because if you had ads that were working, you’d already be doubling down on them, right?   If not, you should be.   I don’t think Facebook is going to drive away advertisers. They need us. But they also need their users. They’re in a tough position so let’s give them the benefit of the doubt and see what happens.   Amazon cleaning up reviews and not letting buyers leave unverified reviews   So this is a big deal.   I’m seeing Amazon reviews removed from products across the board.   The reviews being removed are unverified reviews, so clearly Amazon is going through a clean up phase right now.   Whenever Amazon does this, it’s always nerve wracking.   Why does this matter?   Because it’s making getting reviews for your listings even harder than it already was.   When Amazon took away incentivized reviews, getting reviews got much harde

ER 020: Digital Coupons, Social Media Promo Codes, Backlinks, Facebook Ads Check out our Amazon SEO guide for optimizing your product listings: http://azmarketers.com/listing Want to join an ecommerce mastermind? Sign up: http://azmarketers.com/mastermind Links: Digital Coupons – Viral Launch Blog Post Amazon Private Label Sportswear Amazon Augmented Reality Check out how many products Amazon sells here – cool data Show Notes This is The Ecommerce Roundup, Podcast 20, today is November 17, 2017, I’m your host Bryan, and here’s the ecommerce news roundup for this week – ___________   Run through the news Digital Coupons in Seller Central Social Media Promo Codes in Seller Central Backlinks to Amazon listings Facebook conversion events for getting email signups Wall Street Segment   A quick run through the news you should know   First, Amazon Australia will launch by Black Friday. This is huge in terms of Amazon’s global expansion. And in general I’m very supportive of this. I hope to be selling on Amazon myself and I look forward to helping clients and students sell in Australia.   However, let’s not get carried away. Australia has a population of about 24 million. Canada has a population of about 36 million. So for a rough estimate take your Canadian sales and subtract a third to get your estimated sales for Australia. I have heard though that Aussies love to shop online, so I might be wrong and Australia could be even better than Canada. My only point is don’t get distracted from what’s most valuable to your business so you can open up shop in Australia. If you have time for it, then great, do it. If not, then wait until you do. There’s still more Amazon gold in the US and EU than there is in Australia even though it’s brand new.   Second, this probably belongs in the Wall Street Segment, but it applies to you as an ecommerce business owner so I’ll say it now. I saw an article on CNBC quoting an analyst projecting that Amazon will have a record breaking holiday season and will own almost half of all online sales. Think about that for a second. Half of online sales. Isn’t that unbelievable? The message here is to keep working on your Amazon listings, keep running ads, and to keep doing what you’re doing.   Digital Coupons in Seller Central are here   Under the Advertising tab in Seller Central, you will now see a Coupons page. You can now create digital coupons in Seller Central and offer discounts on a single product or set of products. These coupon codes will show up in search results among other places which is a big deal. There’s a lot to unpack here and I could have a whole podcast episode on just this, so I’m actually doing to direct you to Viral Launch’s blog post on this topic for a full explanation, and I think they do a good analysis about this new feature too. Coupons have been available to vendors for a long time, so I’m not sure this is going to change much, although we have to see the implementation of it. I encourage you to read the blog post, I’m going to link to it in the show notes. After you read it I would immediately test this feature out. I know I am. – https://viral-launch.com/amazon-blog/news-updates/amazon-news-updates/coupons-in-amazon-seller-central/   Social Media Promo Codes in Seller Central   Check out within your promotions tab within Advertising. Sellers can make a temporary promotion page with a unique URL and decide who you want to share it with. Amazon says – This is a targeted promotion type; these promo codes are not shared with all customers on Amazon’s deals page or product pages. Sellers can tell customers through social media or e-mail and drive traffic to their products on Amazon. Simply direct customers to the unique promotion page and the discount automatically applies when they add an eligible item to cart. No extra fee for this. Must be in Brand Registry to do this. The discount must be at least 15% off site price and can be a maximum of 80% off. Promo codes can start four hours after they are created and can run up to 30 days. This feature is currently available in US only.   So my take here is number one, get into Brand Registry if you’re not already, because Amazon keeps rolling out new features for those within Brand Registry. Second, this is Amazon’s take on a landing page. This could be very valuable for driving traffic to your products. However, sellers already do this with Super URLs. And the reason they use super URLs is because apparently super URLs still help you rank. This isn’t just hearsay. Pretty much everyone I speak with uses super URLs and I see big brands on Amazon using super URLs. Therefore, I’m not sure there’s enough value here for sellers to ditch using super URLs to drive traffic to Amazon and instead use this feature. It’s nice that the discount is already added when a shopper adds the item to their cart, but again I’m not sure about this. I’m going t

ER 019: Facebook Ads – Cold Traffic, Acquisition Cost, Strategy Check out our Amazon SEO guide for optimizing your product listings: http://azmarketers.com/listing Show Notes This is The Ecommerce Roundup, Podcast 19, today is November 3, 2017, I’m your host Bryan, and here’s the ecommerce news roundup for this week – ___________   Facebook ads for ecommerce Wall Street Segment   Facebook ads for ecommerce   Obviously if you’re in ecommerce, you have to be running ads. The first ads you must run are Amazon ads.   I do think people way over complicate advertising on Amazon. It’s pretty straightforward. There really are no tricks and silver bullets. And with the ability to use software tools like Seller Labs’ Ignite, it’s much easier to manage them. Gone are the days when you had to spend hours in Excel to optimize your ads. AMS ads still take a bit longer to work with than Sponsored Products, but eventually you’ll hit a point where you’re doing what you can with Amazon ads and keeping your campaigns in maintenance mode doesn’t take much time. What do you do then?   Go off Amazon. And go to Facebook.   In my opinion, Facebook is the best ads platform right now. The reason is because of the targeting options they allow you to do. Making custom audiences, lookalike audiences, and being able to pixel someone and then get your message right back in front of them is very powerful.   I have to admit that Google, and with that YouTube, also has retargeting and gives you the ability to build audiences, but it’s not nearly as easy to use as Facebook, and that’s another reason I like Facebook. When I log into my adwords account I’m just confused about what to do. Facebook is intuitive and easy to learn. Please Google if you’re listening to this make adwords easier to use.   Also, we know people are spending a lot of time on Facebook. I don’t think people are hanging out on Google like they are on Facebook. On Google you find what you’re looking for and move on. Facebook is where you go to find people hanging out.   As a side note, YouTube is also a place where people go to hang out. I think that after Facebook, the second best place to advertise right now is YouTube. YouTube is the 2nd biggest search engine in the world after Google, and the targeting options with YouTube are awesome. However, I’m not going to talk about YouTube right now.   My advice is to first master Facebook Ads, and then go to YouTube next once you’re comfortable on Facebook.   So now let’s talk about Facebook ads.   This topic came up this week because I know a bunch of ecommerce entrepreneurs who have hired Facebook ad consultants to run their Facebook ads for them.   And their results have been less than stellar to say the least.   However, in defence of these Facebook ad consultants, I think these ecommerce business owners had misplaced expectations.   They assumed that they’d be able to get sales from cold traffic at a profitable price, and I think a lot of that is just wishful thinking.   So my message to you today is to stop thinking Facebook ads operate like Amazon ads. They don’t. Amazon ads do make money immediately. Facebook ads don’t. And I think that should be your mindset.   Now, let me qualify what I’m saying here, because of course some Facebook ads do make money immediately.   Which make money? Facebook ads that target or retarget hot and warm leads do make money. Dynamic product ads do make money.   The problem is that for most people those lists are relatively small unless you’re a big company. Even if you get 100,000 visitors to your website pixeled every month and you have customer lists in the thousands, those lists are not big for Facebook. You’re going to wear out those list fasts if you run ads to them everyday.   Also, I just have to mention lookalike audiences here. The ability to build lookalike audiences on Facebook is awesome and powerful, but they are still primarily cold audiences. Lookalikes should never be treated like hot and warm leads, and you shouldn’t think that they will perform like leads.   But, here’s the bottom line with Facebook ads –   You can make money from your Facebook ads from cold traffic if the lifetime value of your customer justifies it.   Let’s do a couple mental experiments to spell this out.   The best internet information marketers typically get Facebook leads from cold audiences, which are usually webinar registrations, for somewhere between $5-$10 per signup.   Now, while signing up and watching a webinar for an hour is a lot of time to give up, giving an email address over is pretty easy and not much to give. It’s a lot easier to give an email address than to give your credit card to buy something. For someone to actually buy something, even if it’s a little bit amount of money, it still way more to ask than just asking for an email address. So l

ER 018: Super URLs, Stealth Review Strategy, State of Amazon Marketplace Check out our Amazon SEO guide for optimizing your product listings: http://azmarketers.com/listing Show Notes This is The Ecommerce Roundup, Podcast 18, today is October 27, 2017, I’m your host Bryan, and here’s the ecommerce news roundup for this week – ___________   We are now thick in the fourth quarter and this is an exciting time of the year. Expect your ads to be more expensive, and expect your conversion rates to go up. My advice to you is to ride out the wave and spend more money on ads now while the traffic exists. That being said, let’s get into the podcast this week.   Thoughts on the Amazon marketplace as a whole right now Super URLs Stealth strategy for getting product reviews Wall Street Segment   Thoughts on the Amazon marketplace as a whole right now   I know I haven’t posted a podcast in a month so I just want to give you a high level overview of where I’m seeing things now.   This is a bit of a state of the marketplace speech right here. People have been coming to me asking for help with their Amazon operations and they’re approaching the situation as though it’s 2015 still. The marketplace is maturing, and the players who have been selling in the space have mature listings, with lots of reviews, and a ton of seller history. It’s no longer good enough to just put up a product, even with great images and listing copy, then turn on PPC and expect to start taking sales. Sure, maybe this is possible in small niches, but soon those gaps will be closed too. The secret is out and everyone knows that selling on Amazon is incredibly lucrative. Entrepreneur magazine now regularly posts articles on how to get started selling on Amazon. Selling on Amazon is now mainstream. If you’re struggling with sales, and you have good images, good listing copy, good keywords, and reviews, then you’re problem is probably not doing more keyword research and using the hot new software tool that’ll boost your rank. Your problem is either your product isn’t demand, or you’re not doing enough to nurture the sales to reviews flywheel that feeds the Amazon algorithm that increases your organic rank.   If you aren’t continually running promotions for old products and launching new products, I have news for you, your competitors are. The players who have been selling for 2 or more years are now making so much money that they are dominating the ads because they can bid the highest. They also have a lot of reviews and are only getting more. It’s getting harder and harder to be seen on Amazon for a new or underperforming product.   The products that have a thousand reviews now will have two thousand reviews next year. And unless Amazon makes some sort of change there will be further consolidation and the rich products will continue to win and it will   Alright, so what do you do? Where’s the good news in this? What’s the plan of action?   Continuous promotions.   Continuous promotions should be a part of your regular marketing plan. I’m seeing the same companies do promotions on Zon Blast and Viral Launch continuously. They can afford to pay for it! And this is squeezing out the small guys. Ironically, I heard the founder of Viral Launch on a podcast say that he thinks the blasts that they sell are becoming less effective, and I agree with him, but that’s for another time. For now they still work.   If you don’t want to do these types of promotions I understand because I don’t like doing them either. Instead, run Facebook ads to a giveaway to build your email list. Then, after people sign up for your giveaway, get a Mailchimp account and send them an email follow up with a promo code to get your product at a big discount like 50-70% off. Some people will buy. Most won’t. But you’ll then be able to email these people in the future.   The truth is that everyone selling on Amazon needs to mature and become more sophisticated marketers or else they risk getting left behind. Unfortunately, it’s no longer 2015, and we’ll have to take a more holistic approach to marketing now beyond running Amazon ads.   Those who can build a brand and an audience will be the winners who will survive. If you don’t want to do this, which I understand because it takes work, then I suggest you look to sell your Amazon business and get out while you’re on top.   I know this was kinda a downer message but I think it’s important that people on Amazon come to grips with what’s happening.   Super URLs   Super URLs are still a thing and people are still using them a lot. To be honest, I’m shocked that Amazon hasn’t either banned them or prevented them from working. But I’m seeing people use them all the time so the must still be working. I’m speaking about this now because I’m just surprised to see them being used so much this past month.   I think Super URLs are a gray area. You can use them, bu

ER 017: Black Friday Cyber Monday Prep, Inventory Removal, Facebook Ads Problems Check out our Amazon SEO guide for optimizing your product listings: http://azmarketers.com/listing Mentioned Links Top 10,000 ASINs per Category – US, Canada, Mexico Marketplaces 10 Tips For Preparing Your Amazon Ads for the Holiday Season Show Notes This is The Ecommerce Roundup, Podcast 17, today is September 29, 2017, I’m your host Bryan, and here’s the ecommerce news roundup for this week – ___________   First, I just want to do some quick housekeeping. Last Friday, I didn’t publish a podcast and it’s because I’ve been traveling a lot this month and just have had a lot going on, so unfortunately, for now, the podcast has taken a backseat to other obligations. Also, I’ve got a lot going on over the next couple weeks, so it’s looking like I won’t get a podcast out again until mid October. I apologize for this, but I appreciate you listening now, and if you don’t see a new episode again for a couple weeks, know that I will be back in action around mid October, so please subscribe to the podcast to get notified when new podcasts are out.   Okay, now onto this week’s episode. Since I didn’t publish last week, I’ve included a few things in this episode that are related to last week but you still need to know about them so we’re going to include them today.   Black Friday & Cyber Monday on Amazon Free inventory removal on Amazon Facebook ads getting disapproved and accounts being disabled A report published by Amazon that shows you the top ASINs A document published by Amazon that tells you how to prep ads for the holidays Wall Street Segment   Black Friday & Cyber Monday on Amazon   Amazon is now letting you apply for lighting deals for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Unfortunately, you have to be invited to do this, but if you are, then sign up right away and get your place in line for this. We ran lightning deals over Prime Day and it was unbelievable the amount of volume we saw. Even if Black Friday and Cyber Monday is half of what we saw on Prime Day it’s still worth it. The fees are still going to be $500 if the deal runs on either day or $300 if the deal runs during the week. I think the day deals are totally worth it. I don’t know yet if the week deals are worth it. It just depends on what times they give you. But, go into your lightning deals tab and sign up today for as much as you can to get deals going during those weeks. Hopefully, Amazon will give you one of those two days or both. If you get the days. Do them! You have until October 16 to submit your deals. So turn this podcast off right now and submit your deals now! How do you increase your chances of running a deal on one of the two days? Amazon says –   Deals submitted for the Black Friday & Cyber Monday window will be reviewed against all other Deals submitted. Amazon will choose the Deals for each event day that provide the best value to the customers based on a combination of best discounted price and available quantity. The best price and quantity for your Deal can be different from what is suggested on the Lightning Deals dashboard. Deals not selected to run on Black Friday or Cyber Monday will run on other days during Black Friday & Cyber Monday Week, which can have higher customer traffic.   So, this means, make a lot of inventory available and give Amazon your very best deal. Then make sure you have enough inventory in stock to make the deal happen.   Free inventory removal for a limited time on Amazon   On October 1, monthly inventory storage fees are increasing a lot for October, November, and December. However, you can now remove inventory for free if you want to avoid these fees. If you have too much inventory for fourth quarter and you want to avoid storage fees, then act now and recall some inventory. However, I advise you be cautious with this. It’s far worse to run out of inventory rather than pay Amazon a few extra bucks for fourth quarter. Yes, it’s too bad Amazon is raising their fees. However, it is what it is, Amazon still provides amazon access to customers for most businesses. If you want to get some inventory back, then figure that out as soon as you can.   Facebook ads getting disapproved and accounts being disabled   For the past 2 months Facebook has been cracking down on ads. Many advertisers have seen ads disapproved that previously would have been approved, and also there’s been talk of accounts even being disabled.   What is happening? Facebook is getting stricter with their enforcement of ad policies.   What can you do? The best thing is to stop running ads that are generating a lot of negative feedback. What does that mean? When people see your ad, and they click on the upper right corner of it, and choose to hide the ad, that increases the negative feedback score of your ad. If you had ads running that have a lot of users hiding, i

ER 016: Amazon Tricked, New Performance Reporting, Vine and Video, Product Reviews Check out our Amazon SEO guide for optimizing your product listings: http://azmarketers.com/listing Mentioned Links Fake law firm tricks Amazon and seller gets banned New inventory performance dashboard Show Notes This is The Ecommerce Roundup, Podcast 16, today is September 15, 2017, I’m your host Bryan, and here’s the ecommerce news roundup for this week – ___________   Amazon tricked by a fake law firm and removed a listing New inventory performance reporting Video and Vine for FBA sellers A quick talk about product reviews Wall Street Segment   Amazon was tricked by a fake law firm and removed a listing   This is a very disturbing story I just saw this week.   An Amazon merchant said his hottest product was kicked off Amazon because of a complaint made by a fake law firm.   The merchant owns a store called Brushes4Less, and he was suspended for his best selling product, a toothbrush head replacement, because of an intellectual property violation. In order to resolve the matter and get the product reinstated, the owner would have to contact the law firm that filed the complaint.   But the law firm didn’t exist. And this was right before Prime Day this summer. The seller said that the matter was resolved in 2 months but that he also lost at least $200,000 in sales.   This is incredibly disconcerting for all sellers. Everyone needs to face it, there are bad actors out there and you might be a victim even if you’re following all the rules. Then if this happens to you, what are you going to do?   Amazon really doesn’t have a good way to address this right now, and with Amazon, you are guilty until proven innocent. So, I’d recommend being aware that you might get a competitor coming after you and filing a false claim that takes your business down. And if that happens, get a lawyer. I’m including a link in the show notes to this article, and in it you’ll find 2 people who help sellers resolve these issues. https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/07/amazon-was-tricked-by-fake-law-firm-into-removing-toothbrush-head.html   I hope Amazon will clean this up for its sellers very quickly. Until then, keep your guard up and follow Terms of Service. Also always reply to messages from Seller Performance and other issues you have with Seller Support. You want your account to be clean and annotated that you are a seller in good standing.   New inventory performance dashboard just added   In Amazon’s own words – “The Inventory Performance dashboard is the hub for optimizing your FBA business. From this page you can identify opportunities to grow your sales, reduce costs, track your KPIs, and compare your performance to other sellers.”   Amazon uses the Inventory Performance Index to gage your seller performance, and they refer to it as your IPI score.   Currently you’re judged on three metrics – In stock rate, Excess inventory, and stranded inventory. Amazon has a little bar to also tell you how to stack up in comparison to other sellers.   I’m including a link in the show notes for you to review what this is, and it’s worth the five minute read – https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/help/202174810   If you don’t have this yet in your account, you probably will soon.   Video and Vine are coming to Seller Central   This is great that Amazon is giving Vendor tools to FBA sellers. To take advantage of this you need to be brand registered. If you haven’t started this process yet then start today. You need a trademark and that can take months. So start now.   Second, you’ll need to set up enhanced brand content for this. Then within EBC, you’ll be able to upload a video. This is slowly rolling out to FBA sellers.   I wouldn’t worry about making a video until you get this feature because you don’t know how long it’s going to take until you get it, and your time is better spent doing other things. But if you do have access to this feature, then you’ll want to make a professional looking video that’s both entertaining and educational that helps your product and brand stand out from the competition. I won’t go into making a video right now but hopefully we can do it in a later podcast.   Vine is also open now for FBA sellers. This is also slowly rolling out. It’s going to cost $1,000 per ASIN, and you’ll be giving away your product for free for reviews. You can also get these reviews before you launch your product so it’s incredibly valuable to have these reviews right away so you can hit the ground running.   Unfortunately, this is an extremely expensive program and the rich sellers will be able to use this to their advantage and it’s going to be harder to launch for small sellers. I don’t like this price tag. I wonder if Amazon is deliberately trying to get smaller sellers off of the platform with programs like this.   Alt

ER 015: Keywords in URL, New Chat Feature, Build Your Fan Base & Audience Check out our Amazon SEO guide for optimizing your product listings: http://azmarketers.com/listing Mentioned Links Shopify Build a Business Winners Sand Cloud Towels – learn from these guys on how to build an audience Show Notes This is The Ecommerce Roundup, Podcast 15, today is September 8, 2017, I’m your host Bryan, and here’s the ecommerce news roundup for this week – ___________   Getting your keywords in your URL for your Amazon listing A new chat feature for Amazon customers within the Q&A section How to build an awesome fan base Wall Street Segment   How to get your keywords in your Amazon listing’s URL   This isn’t new information but I just saw it recently and so I think it’s good to share. For SEO reasons, it’s a good idea to have your keywords in your URL. And as you know, Amazon is a website and so when you list products on Amazon, Amazon assigns them a URL. If you have your best keywords in your URL, then you will do better in organic search with Google and Bing, which will lead to more people finding your product on Amazon, so it’s a good idea to get your best keywords in your Amazon URL. Amazon already does great with SEO, but this just puts icing on the cake in terms of maximizing the SEO for your Amazon listing in search engines.   So how do you do this? How do you influence which keywords Amazon picks and assigns to your product’s URL?   Viral Launch came out with a PDF that I saw explaining this process. Here’s the summary. Pick your best 5 keywords. Put them in the front of your title. After your fifth word put a hyphen or colon in the title and then continue with your product’s title. Words like like, and, and the will not be used by Amazon when they make your URL. If you have fewer than five words then Amazon will take however many you have before the hyphen or colon, and then pick another word for you, so it’s best to use 5 keywords for this.   To change your URL, just update your title. Then within a few days your URL should be updated by Amazon.   This is a cool little hack. Will it change your business? No I don’t think so. This is certainly not an important task to do but it also only takes a few minutes so consider doing this. You could even test this against an old title, which is a better idea. Just make sure you save your old title first, then change it to a new title to max out the keywords in your URL, and let it run for a couple weeks. See which one works better for your business.   A new chat feature for Amazon customers within Q&A   I just came across this new feature today. So, as you know Amazon shoppers can ask questions about products at any time and these questions and answers show up on your product listing page.   It used to be that when you answered a question, that was that and then both the question and answer went on your page.   Now after answering a question this morning, I was taken to a chat page where I could chat with the person who asked the question. On the side of the site, Amazon also is trying to get you to do this chat on their mobile app, by telling you that the chat experience is better on mobile.   This blew me away because never before has Amazon allowed such close interaction with third party sellers and Amazon’s customers. Yes, you can email Amazon users but chat is a more intimate experience between a shopper and a brand. I’m sure there are many rules about what you can and can’t say to a potential customer but this is just another sign that Amazon is positioning themselves to be a global mall so to speak and is encouraging brands to interact with customers on Amazon. It’s an awesome development, and I don’t know where this is going, but it’s encouraging to know that AMazon is developing tools that allow sellers and buyers to interact in a closer way.   If you want to test this out, just answer a question on your product’s page. If you don’t get this chat box then maybe they’re rolling out this feature slowly, and just check back within a few days.   How to build an awesome fan base   So Shopify concluded their build a business competition recently, and I checked out the winners out of curiosity. I’ll link to the winners in the show notes, http://www.businessinsider.com/tony-robbins-shopify-build-a-bigger-business-winners-2017-9/#nikalene-riddle-skinnymixers-2. If you don’t know what this is, Shopify has a business competition I think every year. It’s a great idea because it allows SHopify to promote their business while sharing Shopify success stories and giving small businesses exposure. It’s a great competition and everyone wins. including you and me because then we can study the winners and try to emulate what they are doing well.   One of the winners was a towel company called Sand Cloud. They won the category for “best raving fan culture” which basically means

ER 014: SEO & Content Marketing, 250 Character Search Term Limit, Playing by the rules Check out our Amazon SEO guide for optimizing your product listings: http://azmarketers.com/listing Mentioned Links Answer The Public Quuu Promote 250 Character Search Term Limit Information Amazon Expansion Unethical Tricks Amazon Sellers Use Show Notes This is The Ecommerce Roundup, Podcast 14, today is September 1, 2017, I’m your host Bryan, and here’s the ecommerce news roundup for this week – ___________   SEO & Content Marketing The new 250 character limit for backend search terms Playing by the rules on Amazon Wall Street Segment   SEO & Content Marketing   Lately I’ve been seeing some Shopify sites that do get a lot of traffic through their blogs and so it’s time to quickly discuss SEO and content marketing. I’ve never really been a huge fan of SEO consultants, or even an doing an explicit SEO strategy for a business. My thoughts have always been that if you do the right things, SEO emerges over time. That it’s an effect of good marketing rather than an actual task. SEO gurus say that it takes time to rank in Google, and I’ve certainly experienced this. So that’s guided my belief that SEO isn’t something you manufacture, but it’s a reward for doing legitimate marketing online.   It also seems that SEO is getting simpler as Google gets smarter. I’m seeing fewer SEO tactics being advertised out there as it’s getting harder to game the system, and now SEO is being distilled into a few basic points. It’s still not easy but it is simple.   My understanding now is this. You will organically rank in Google and Bing search results if you provide the best content most relevant to the particular search. How do the search engines know this? From legitimate links to your site and how people behave on your site.   If people spend a long time on your site and a lot of people are linking to your site, then the search engines think your site is good and they’ll reward you with good organic rank.   That’s 80% of SEO. Good content and links.   If you’re not already blogging then you should be. Organic traffic is amazing because it compounds over time. Don’t psyche yourself out by calling it SEO marketing or content marketing. Just blog and you’ll get results if you do the 80%. Results might take you 6 months or longer so stick with it too. This week I came across some good tips that make this process easier so let’s talk about it.   First step, make good content. Start with keyword research. This informs you what to write about. This is easy. What is your product? What does it do? Type that into Google. Check out Google’s auto suggestions and related searches at the bottom of the page. These are the keywords you want to use to create blog posts on your website. Until you’ve covered these auto suggestions and related searches in blog posts, don’t write about other stuff. If you’ve covered them already then you’re more advanced and you’re probably bored listening to me talk about this right now. If you haven’t done this yet, then pick a keyword and type it into Answer The Public, http://answerthepublic.com. This is a site that gives you the questions people are asking about a keyword on Google. It makes it super easy to find blog topics. I just learned about this site this week so this is what prompted me to talk about blogging on this podcast because finding topics to write about is a struggle and this makes it much easier. Pick one question to write about. Search Google for this question you selected. See what comes up, and write a blog post better than the blog posts of the top search results.   Second step, get links. I’m lazy and I don’t want to spend time doing email outreach for links. I get emails from people asking me to link to their blogs and I delete them immediately. Who’s got time to read a 2,000 word blog post and then go into their own blog to link to it? This strategy is overrated and a waste of time. Instead, run ads to your blog content. Your blog content is already great, so you should be proud of it. So instead, run Facebook ads to your blog post. This will prime the SEO pump as the search engines will see activity on your blog post. Because your blog post is awesome people will naturally share it, and over time you’ll get links and more organic traffic. While people are on your site, get them to give you their email address through some sort of amazing offer so you can hit them up again when you’ve got more things to share. Beyond that, you’ll share your blog post to your own social media channels and your own email list. One last thing, I like using a service called Quuu Promote, http://quuupromote.co. This helps spread your blog post around Twitter.   Obviously you can get way deeper into better content writing strategies and promotion strategies but this is the realm for actual SEO or content marketing people who make this their fu

ER 013: More sales taxes, Email capture, Amazon going into pharma Check out our Amazon SEO guide for optimizing your product listings: http://azmarketers.com/listing Mentioned Links South Carolina vs. Amazon for Sales Tax Show Notes This is The Ecommerce Roundup, Podcast 13, today is August 18, 2017, I’m your host Bryan, and here’s the ecommerce news roundup for this week – ___________   I’m on vacation next week, so there won’t be a podcast episode next week. Sales taxes – the discussion continues Collecting email addresses on your website Wall Street Segment   I’ve got a short podcast for you today. To be honest, I didn’t hear many noteworthy things this week in the world of ecommerce. Maybe it’s because it’s August? I don’t know. So let’s make this happen and then all have a good weekend.   Sales Taxes   There’s more news on the sales tax front. I think this issue is critical because it affects all ecommerce sellers.   I’m a believer in following the law and doing the right thing, however, there is just no clarity on this issue right now because technology is outpacing politics and our lawmakers haven’t clarified this issue yet. They need to, because ecommerce is big and only getting bigger. As ecommerce sellers we need to know what to do in order to follow the law.   So I saw an article this week on CNBC, which I’ll link to in the show notes, https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/15/amazon-faces-a-tax-fight-in-south-carolina-that-could-change-how-online-sellers-do-business.html, and I’m happy I found it because it’s bringing this issue to the forefront.   Last week I spoke about this sales tax amnesty program, which basically put the entire responsibility of collecting and paying taxes for products sold on Amazon by marketplace sellers on the shoulders of marketplace sellers.   Obviously there are many interests at play here. States want their tax money. Amazon doesn’t want prices to be higher for their customers so they don’t want taxes. Sellers also don’t want higher prices for their customers so they also don’t want taxes. But through this Amazon seems to have said to 3rd party sellers, tough, you deal with it, which I think is surprising since 3rd party sellers sell over half of the volume on Amazon, and I would think Amazon would be incentivised to make selling on their platform as easy as possible for 3rd party sellers so that they fend off potential competitors like Walmart from taking 3rd party sellers away from Amazon. Amazon already takes care of all the payments for 3rd party sellers, why can’t they also just layer on a tax service for 3rd party sellers on top of that? Amazon already collects taxes for products they sell through their vendor programs. At the same time, I understand Amazon’s argument, that they’re just a fulfillment provider for third party sellers, and not the actual owner of the merchandise since they didn’t buy it, and so therefore they shouldn’t be responsible for collecting taxes.   So here’s what’s happening.   South Carolina is claiming that Amazon is responsible for collecting taxes on products sold on Amazon by third party sellers. South Carolina is saying, no it’s not third party sellers’ responsibility to collect and pay taxes, it’s you Amazon.   And this puts the whole idea of the sales tax amnesty program into question. Because if it becomes law that Amazon is responsible for collecting sales taxes, then there’s no point for the sales tax amnesty.   Obviously Amazon is fighting back hard.   Another complexity here is that different states have different laws. But, in any event, since this case is happening it seems as though we’ll have a resolution in the future regarding who is responsible for collecting and remitting taxes.   I’ll keep you posted as I learn more about this.   Collecting email addresses on your store   So we’ve been using the spinner pop up on shopify stores to collect email addresses and the thing continues to work really well.   Some store owners I spoke with continued to be skeptical about it but I’m telling you the thing works like crazy in terms of getting email sign ups like nothing I’ve seen before.   If you’re still on the fence, I suggest you just try it out for a month. You can always take it down. But again I’m telling you to give it a shot because I don’t think you’ll be disappointed with the results.   If you have a Shopify store, go to the app store and search for spin or spinner to find some options you can use for your store.   Wall Street Segment   I saw a report this week that Amazon is getting into the pharmacy business, which is no surprise.   Just as Amazon wants to promote brands on their marketplace by cutting out middlemen and other retailers, Amazon wants to get rid of the middlemen in the pharmaceutical industry. That being said, this is a complex industry with many powerful players and entrenched interests jo

ER 012: Sales taxes, Amazon Private Label Brands, Email Collection, PPC, Facebook Ads Check out our Amazon SEO guide for optimizing your product listings: http://azmarketers.com/listing Mentioned Links Online sales tax amnesty program https://qz.com/1039381/amazon-owns-a-whole-collection-of-secret-brands/ Show Notes This is The Ecommerce Roundup, Podcast 12, today is August 11, 2017, I’m your host Bryan, and here’s the ecommerce news roundup for this week – ___________   Sales taxes Amazon’s private label brands and you, should sellers worry? Getting email addresses from your website Amazon PPC Facebook Ads Wall Street Segment   Sales Taxes   Sales taxes are a black box. If you want to know more information about sales taxes, speak with a qualified CPA who understands e-commerce. I’m not a tax professional so I can’t give you advice.   But, I know the question of sales taxes online has been an issue for a long time. Governments want taxes badly. They’re all operating at a deficit, have loads of debt, and they see e-commerce sales as gaming the system by not paying taxes. I think it’s only a matter of time before sales tax on e-commerce sales becomes a reality.   Actually, this is one thing that gave Amazon a competitive advantage for a long time. Prices are cheaper if you don’t pay taxes! So of course you’d want to buy from Amazon if you didn’t have to pay taxes. Now states are coming to collect the bill. Because it’s a $2 billion tax bill.   A multi-state agreement is rolling out an amnesty program that would allow online sellers to waive any past tax obligations and liabilities. Meaning, all those sales you made in the past, the government isn’t going to come after you to collect taxes on them if you sign up for this.   13 states are already in. 8 more are considering this proposal.   For three months starting Aug. 17, sellers with potential tax liability can sign up with the Multistate Tax Commission (MTC), enabling them to become compliant and pay taxes only on future sales.   Here’s the issue. With online sales, merchants are not required to collect sales tax if they don’t have a physical presence in a particular state.   But, Amazon ships your products around to warehouses across the country and ships to customers from them. So states are arguing that because of this sellers DO have a physical presence in states.   However, Amazon doesn’t report where our goods are. Where they are going. And Amazon doesn’t let us decide where our products go.   So a question is – is this tax liability on sellers or on Amazon? Is it Amazon’s problem or is it a sellers? And do you charge sales tax from the state where your products are stored in Amazon’s warehouse or from the state where your customer lives? Because those could be two different states! And each state would want their sales tax! From what I’ve seen right now it’s from the state where the customer lives.   As far as I know the technology isn’t even set up correctly to track this well. I imagine that states are going to go after big sellers first, and then this will work its way through the courts so that sellers know what to do.   The truth is that Amazon could easily set up the technology to track all of this and collect taxes. But they don’t. And they probably don’t want to because taxes will increases the prices of products on Amazon.   The bottom line is you should talk with a qualified CPA to make sure you’re compliant, and I hope Amazon offers a solution for sellers regarding this in the near future.   I’ll leave a link in the show notes about this: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/03/some-amazon-sellers-can-avoid-paying-back-sales-taxes-through-a-temporary-amnesty-program.html   Amazon’s private label brands and you, should sellers worry?   There’s an article in Quartz about Amazon’s collection of secret brands it owns. I’ll link to it in the show notes: https://qz.com/1039381/amazon-owns-a-whole-collection-of-secret-brands/   The article identifies 19 brands that are owned by Amazon and sold on the marketplace.   These are the categories: Lingerie, Cosmetics, Tools, Shoes, Food, Clothing, Baby products, Tech accessories, Linen, Frozen food, Furniture, as well as other categories Amazon is moving into like: household goods, leather goods, handbags, car products, and Motor homes.   That last one is crazy. Can you imagine an Amazon RV? Maybe you’ll be able to get a Prime delivery from a drone when you’re on the road!   Here’s the question. Should you worry if you sell in one of these categories?   The answer is no. Not if you’re doing a good job building a brand for yourself. Not if you’re collecting email addresses, running social media, and building an audience. People like variety. I also don’t believe just because Amazon is moving into your category that it means Amazon is going to be successful. Amazon is a huge compan

ER 011: Backend search terms, search ads, storage fees, feedback removal, new policies Check out our Amazon SEO guide for optimizing your product listings: http://azmarketers.com/listing Mentioned Links Web Retailer article on backend search terms indexing in Amazon search Amazon partnering with YouTuber personalities to sell more Show Notes This is The Ecommerce Roundup, Podcast 11, today is August 4, 2017, I’m your host Bryan, and here’s the ecommerce news roundup for this week – ___________   Backend search terms indexing in Amazon’s algorithm Headline search ads in Seller Central Long Term Storage Fees Coming Up Amazon feedback removal requests Amazon return policy for merchant fulfilled orders A mattress company called Tuft & Needle is partnering with Amazon closely, is this a sign of things to come? Wall Street Segment   Backend search terms indexing in Amazon’s algorithm   I saw a great article related to backend keyword search term indexing on Amazon. This has been such a hot topic lately has sellers really have no idea what’s going on. And Amazon as usual isn’t providing any clarity on the situation. The only reason we know about this is because sales are being affected, and when that happens the seller community is big enough that people talk, test, and collaborate in order to figure out what’s going on.   To recap, many sellers saw their sales and rank dip over the past few months. It was blamed on an Amazon search algorithm change based more and more on relevance than just keywords present on the listing. All of a sudden, keyword phrases became an issue and fewer sellers were ranking for long tail keywords or keyword phrases they had previously been ranking for because Amazon determined those to no longer be relevant. Or so everyone thought.   This article on Web Retailer, I’ll link to in the show notes, http://www.webretailer.com/lean-commerce/backend-keyword-search-indexing-amazon/?#/, discusses tests ran to get to the bottom of the backend keyword search term issue.   The author of the article did research how Amazon indexes backend search terms. Here are the highlights:   There’s not a hard 250 character limit on indexed search terms. There’s a range. In this study the found between 300 and up to 1400 characters of search terms were indexed. Different categories might have different character limits.   Use up all space available to enter individual, relevant keywords. Use only a space to separate them, not commas or other special characters. Make sure each keyword in your search terms is also somewhere in your listing title, bullets or description area. Please note, this is new advice! It used to be said that you should not repeat keywords in your search terms onto your listings. Do not repeat search terms in the backend. Yes, you can input keywords in phrase order, but there’s no reason to repeat search terms in order to maintain phrases.   However all of this, if you look in the comments, a lot of people now say that brand new listings have a hard limit of less than 250 characters for backend search terms. This of course has to be tested by you when you make new listings. However, even if this is the case right now, who knows if it will continue to be for much time in the future. I think the best course of action is to continue to write great listings. Maybe now when you write a new listing first write it with only 249 back end search terms. Test the listing to make sure your indexing, and then add more search terms later and test for indexing again.   Last note about this:   What you write for Enhanced Brand Content still appears not to index for search however the product description you enter in the normal product description field does even though it’s not visible on the product detail page to shoppers when Enhanced Brand Content is active.   Headline Search Ads in Seller Central   Headline search ads are now in seller central – you must be Brand Registered to use headline search ads in seller central, need 3 products to fill out a headline search ad banner. Same ad type that’s available in AMS, but this appears to be a little different as it has better reporting. Can send traffic directly to Amazon Store pages   Long Term Storage Fees August 15   Long term storage fees are coming up on August 15. If you have a lot of inventory in stock then you might get burned. Before you try and liquidate your inventory, check and see how much the fees will cost you versus the cost of liquidation. In most cases I see, it makes sense just to pay the fees and keep selling as normal. People get up in arms over these fees, and they are annoying, but make sure to calculate the pros and cons of liquidation before doing it.   Amazon feedback removal requests have changed location   Amazon feedback removal requests are now done through feedback manager and not through contacting support. I assume if you’re l

ER 010: Structured Markup for Google, Amazon PPC, Amazon Spark, Amazon dominates new industries Check out our Amazon SEO guide for optimizing your product listings: http://azmarketers.com/listing Mentioned Links Shopify App for structured data: https://apps.shopify.com/json-ld-for-seo Amazon Spark: https://www.amazon.com/Spark/b?ie=UTF8&node=16907772011 Amazon Singapore: https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-enters-singapore-with-a-pitch-to-big-spenders-1501120178 Show Notes This is The Ecommerce Roundup, Podcast 10, today is July 28, 2017, I’m your host Bryan, and here’s the ecommerce news roundup for this week – ___________   First off, I just want to say that I know I missed last week’s podcast due to some technical issues I had late in the week, and I wasn’t able to push the podcast out before the weekend.   I apologize as the goal here is to make this a weekly podcast and I’m disappointed I didn’t get the podcast out last week. I’m still trying to get the hang of this podcast thing so I appreciate you tuning in and listening to this now.   So without further adieu, let’s get into it this week! I’m going to go a little longer than usual on this podcast since I need to make up for last week! ___________   Structured Markup for your website Amazon PPC strategies Amazon Spark Wall Street Segment   Structured Markup for your website   In order to optimize your Google Shopping ads, and your SEO, you need structured markup working correctly.   Structured data allows search engines to understand your site on a deeper level than just crawling alone can accomplish.   Structured data is added directly to a page’s HTML markup. Search engines use structured data to generate rich snippets, which are small pieces of information that will then appear in search results. Structured data is the “extra” information that you see next to a website in search. For example, name, address, place data, as well as more complex information such articles, events, products, recipes, etc. on your web site.   If you’re not using structured data, then you’re missing out on an opportunity to perform better with SEO and your Google Ads.   So how do you do it? Unfortunately most Shopify themes don’t come with the right type of structured data included in the theme because it’s not a requirement that Shopify asks for from its theme developers.   That means, you either need to do it yourself, using Google tutorials, hire a developer to do it for you who understands how to do it, or to use an app to make it easy.   I like the last option.   I found a great Shopify app for this and I emailed back and forth with the developer and I think it’s a quality product. It’s also not expensive and updates are included.   I’ll include a link in the shownotes for the app. I’m not an affiliate for it, I just think it’s helpful because we originally looked into getting developers to help us with structured data before we found this app. For one price of $70 apparently now we’re set with respect to structured data for as long as we have our shopify store. Check out the link and email the app developer before buying it to make sure it’s a good fit for your store. Obviously the developer wants to make a sale, but he seems like a friendly and helpful guy so give it a shot.   Everyone who has an ecommerce site should check this out. If you don’t have shopify, then you’ll either need to find a different app, or a developer. One more reason why you should be on Shopify right now!   Shopify App for structured data: https://apps.shopify.com/json-ld-for-seo   Amazon PPC Strategies   Here’s a strategy I came across recently with respect to Amazon sponsored product ads.   If your ACoS or advertising cost of spend is too high, then instead of immediately lowering your bid, try raising it.   Here’s why. Your bid affects your ad’s placement. If you have a low bid then you have bad ad placement and fewer people will see your ad. When fewer people see your ad fewer people will buy your product.   Therefore, spend more per bid to increase clicks by improving ad placement, and even though your ad spend is going to go up you might make up for it with more sales thus decreasing your overall ACoS.   This can be a scary thing to do and you might get crushed if an increased bid doesn’t lead to more sales. But I encourage you to try it for underperforming campaigns. Start small and just do a few keywords or campaigns at a time.   It’s counterintuitive but the logic makes sense. Before decreasing ad spend try raising ad spend, and you might actually perform better! This all depends on your market and product so tread lightly but try it!   Amazon Spark   Last week Amazon launched Spark. It’s been testing for a few months.   Basically Amazon spark is an app within Amazon’s mobile app that helps you find new products by theme or category. It l

ER 009: Prime Day Recap, International Expansion, Facebook Analytics, Is Amazon a Monopoly? Mentioned Links How to optimize your Amazon listing with Amazon SEO in 2017 Amazon corning fashion brands into wholesale   The post ER 009: Prime Day Recap, International Expansion, Facebook Analytics, Is Amazon a Monopoly? appeared first on AZ Marketers.

ER 008: Prime Day 2017 Prep, Facebook Offer Ads, Shopify & Facebook Video for Leads, Shopify Exchange Mentioned Links Shopify Exchange Marketplace Amazon completes its acquisition of Middle Eastern e-commerce firm Souq Mercado Libre   The post ER 008: Prime Day 2017 Prep, Facebook Offer Ads, Shopify & Facebook Video for Leads, Shopify Exchange appeared first on AZ Marketers.

ER 007: Boost FBA Conference in NYC, Prime Day Prep, Amazon Stores Mentioned Links Information on Amazon Stores   The post ER 007: Boost FBA Conference in NYC, Prime Day Prep, Amazon Stores appeared first on AZ Marketers.

ER 006: New Market Research Tool, Emojis in Checkout, Australia, Brand Registry, Amazon + Whole Foods and You, Walmart Disappoints Mentioned Links Sign up for Amazon Ads Webinar Here Viral Launch Market Intelligence Product Research Tool Importing to Australia Guide Brand Registry 2.0 Put Emojis On Checkout in Amazon Amazon Whole Foods Merger New in Business Insider Show Notes This is The Ecommerce Roundup, Podcast 6, today is June 23, 2017, I’m your host Bryan, and here’s the ecommerce news roundup for this week – ___________   Last Thursday I published episode 5, and as luck would have it, Amazon announced it’s shocking Whole Foods acquisition Friday morning.   This is such major news I thought about doing a podcast on Friday to talk about it, but I figured I’d let the chips call to see what happened, hear the opinions from the other ecommerce gurus first, and then wrap things up for you nicely here and now.   So I’m going to reverse what I usually do and right now we’re going to do the Wall Street segment first. Then get into the ecomm strategy stuff after.   First of all I think it’s incredibly impressive that nobody saw this acquisition coming and just how quickly it all happened. I heard that Amazon and Whole Foods people first started talking about this just 6 weeks before it was announced, and they met on a blind date through a mutual friend.   There’s a funny Business Insider article that quotes the CEO of Whole Foods gushing over Amazon, talking about how it was love at first sight, and how a year and a half ago he had a dream that Amazon bought whole food.   I’ll link the article in the show notes: http://www.businessinsider.com/amazons-deal-for-whole-foods-went-down-2017-6   He also spoke about all the ways they could work together and I think as ecommerce sellers, this also makes us drool with anticipation.   Although ecommerce is growing and the future clearly belongs to ecommerce, brick and mortar retail is still the vast majority of retail sales. And it’ll be that way for a while.   I don’t want to spend much time on this since there are tons of articles and opinion pieces out there now on whether Amazon is a monopoly and or how this is such a game changer for retail.   The reality is we don’t know what’s going to happen. And for all of us, it’s now just a matter of wait and see.   But as an ecommerce and Amazon seller, Amazon just now purchased over 400 Whole Foods stores that can now be used as warehouses for retail shopping and for shipping products to customers. Additionally, they also just purchased Whole Foods’ distribution network.   I think the largest takeaway here for an ecommerce seller is that if you do well on Amazon, it might give you a shot of getting into their new retail locations, which are Whole Foods and the rumored Amazon stores that will open up.   This is what’s happening with books too. I recently went to the Amazon book store in New York. It’s a cool store with some high tech features but what’s most striking is the obvious. They stock books that sell well on Amazon. So similarly, if you sell well on Amazon, then they’ll likely stock you in their retail stores in the future. And that’s pretty amazing.   One other quick thought. Whole Foods has its own private label brand called 365. Amazon has its Amazon basics private label brand as well as others. If you sell a product that competes against one of these should you pack up and close up shop? No. It’s too early to tell. But you should think about ways you can grow your customer loyalty or expand your product line to insulate yourself against this. Which to be honest, isn’t new news anyway because you should always be growing customer loyalty and thinking of ways to expand your product line.   While Amazon bought Whole Foods and disrupted an entire industry, Walmart purchased Bonobos on the same day last week.   Bonobos is like J Crew, except men’s only I think, and also primarily sold online.   This gives us a clue as to the priorities of these two companies. I think Walmart’s purchase of Bonobos makes zero sense. It’s a high end brand. Walmart serves the low end. I get it that Walmart wants to go high end to take Amazon’s customers. But this won’t work. Clothing companies are getting killed by fast fashion right now. Gap, J Crew, all of them are having issues. So Walmart buys a brand that alienates their customers? It’s dumb.   Instead of Walmart investing in their third party marketplace to make it as good as Amazon’s they spend their money on a brand that might not be around in a few years. Their eye is off the ball and they don’t see where the future is headed.   I know sellers who sell on Walmart, and the volumes are lower than they are on eBay. It’s a nothing. Moral of the story? List your products on Walmart if you can but ignore it for now. They’re not interested in you. Amazon will continue to dominate for no

ER 005: Amazon keyword indexing update, phrase based index, Shopify update, Facebook video ads top of funnel Podcast Maniac Review: http://podcastmaniac.com/money-career-podcast-reviews-news/podcast-review-ecommerce-roundup/ Show Notes This is The Ecommerce Roundup, Podcast 5, the week of June 15, 2017, I’m your host Bryan, and here’s the roundup for this week – It’s been a bit of a quiet week in terms of ecommerce news and developments. Of course up first is Amazon. As a side note, I know that I’m always talking about Amazon on this podcast. It’s supposed to be a podcast about ecommerce in general, but Amazon is probably taking up about 80% of the time on this podcast, if not more. I was thinking about how unbalanced I’ve been right before pressing record and it bothered me. But the truth is that Amazon basically is ecommerce right now, no matter how scary that sounds. If you sell a normal product online then Amazon is probably going to be your biggest sales channel. It’ll likely even be the source for more than 50% of your sales. Amazon has I think close to a 50% market share of all online sales right now and it’s only going to increase because they are executing like crazy on new initiatives all the time. I’ve been hearing from people who are savvy internet marketers. They understand FB ads, Google ads, funnels, SEO, and yet Amazon is still the top sales channel and spending time doing activities to increase Amazon sales is the most effective use of their time. Right now, Amazon is the 80/20 of ecommerce and that’s reality. Alright, Amazon worshiping. Here’s what’s happening. There’s still major uncertainty in Amazon ranking back end keywords. I spoke about this in my last podcast and now here’s the update on that. It seems this uncertainty will remain in flux for the time being. Right now there are thoughts. 250 – 500 characters total between subject matter and search terms keywords rank. That seller labs article I spoke about in last podcast? It’s now outdated. You want to input search terms in phrase order, in the first field in the backend. Phrase order means the exact order how people search for it. If you sell an iPhone case, you input iPhone case and not case iPhone. Title and bullet points are consistently indexing. Description in enhanced brand content or otherwise is not consistently indexing. Amazon is moving away from single word indexing and moving towards phrase based indexing. Meaning if you sell an iPhone case you used to rank for iPhone and case independently as stand alone keywords. Now you might not. This change is going to hurt long tail indexing and rank. Think about all the combinations of words that are relevant to your product that combine to form long tail keywords. Now that rank has to do with order of keywords you will no longer perform as well with these types of combinations. It’s clear Amazon wants a more targeted search experience for the customer. What to do? Keep testing your keyword indexing to try and keep up with the changes. Or, just maintain a great listing, and wait for the chips to fall as things are going to continue to change and realize that Amazon just wants what’s best for their customers. So keep the customer in mind when making your listing and you’ll probably be ok. Shopify update! Shopify updated their software. And this disconnected apps! Make sure your apps are properly connected. Without any warning or notification, I saw mailchimp disconnected from Shopify to my horror. Make sure your apps are working properly. Shopify’s update is relatively minor I think. The interface is nicer and cleaner. It’s nice to see them working on it. Discounts is better. Shopify is making the platform better, which is overall great news. I want to talk about building audiences and getting traffic to your shopify store, but Im afraid it’ll take too much time so I’ll keep this high level right now. I’m seeing lots of success right now with people running FB ad campaigns using a video and optimizing with video views. Then they pixel people who watch the video. Then retarget that audience with the next step in the customer journey. The next step for you might be an email opt-in via a giveaway. Or maybe it’s a direct purchase. Keep in mind that you must have a great video or this won’t work so well! A great video is one that educates, entertains, or both! Wall Street Segment – Amazon is huge. It’s market cap is bigger than the GDP of Washington DC. Considering Washington DC’s economy runs largely on taxpayers, maybe that’s not such an interesting statistic. Anyway, let’s talk about the economy and how it’s changing. In 2017, 300 retailers filed for bankruptcy. Projected 8,640 stores will close in America by end of 2017. This beats the old record of store closures by more than 20%. The bottom line is that there’s a huge transformation happening in the economy right now. The internet has been around for decades, so why are things accelerating right now? That’s a l

Big changes are happening now to listings. Are your backend search term keywords now limited to 250 characters? You need to test and check for yourself. There are conflicting reports out there and this is important because backend search terms help you rank organically AND help you advertise more effectively. Learn how to test your backend search terms to see if Amazon is indexing them for your products here Show Notes This is the Ecommerce Roundup, it’s June 12th, 2017 and this is not a Roundup podcast, this is just a quick brief on a situation related to backend keywords, I’m your host Bryan, and let’s get into it. Okay, so last week I was talking about your listing, and what to do about it and how Amazon is always making changes and it’s so difficult to keep up-to-date with what’s happening. But I actually solve problems with listings that I manage and that I see related to backend keywords, and so I just wanted to correct the record and correct what I said, and I think that it this worth paying attention to now because it looks like big changes are actually on the horizon. So what’s happened is that it seems like Amazon has changed the maximum number of characters that it will index in a product details page backend to 250 characters. This means those backend search terms, those keywords that you input into the backend of your listings within Seller Central so that you appear on organic search, and also it helps you run ads as well too, because when you have keywords in your backend, those are indicating to Amazon that that’s what your product is, and it helps you with relevancy related to Amazon ads which is a big factor actually in performing well with Amazon ads. Anyway, so here we go. So there was an article on Seller Labs’ blog that I’m going to link to in the show notes that talks about this that I want you to go check out and read, because it’s going to be helpful for you to figure out how to test your listings if you don’t know how. So what I’m seeing, I’m finding through my testing about the first 250 characters of my backend search term keywords are indexing and actually it’s a little bit more than 250, I’m seeing about 260, 265, and then after that I’m not seeing any indexing. This article from seller Labs’ blog says that the indexing placement order doesn’t matter, it can be random meaning that where your keywords are, say you put in 2,000 keywords for your backend search terms, any random 250 characters of those could be indexing. I don’t see that, what I’m seeing is that the first 250 characters are indexing from my five fields of backend keywords, and I just want to mention that my results could be different than yours, it’s really important that you just check your listing and investigate it. That’s why you go and check out this article to learn how to test your backend keywords to see if they are indexing in search. So later in the article though it does say that the first 250 characters are indexed, and that would imply that order does matter, so this article is contradicting itself, that’s fine. I mean you really just have to investigate on your own, your own listings and to see what’s working for you right now, because it really seems to be that there are different things going on right now and people are having different results which I’m going to get to really soon. Remember this is plus all five fields for your backend search term keywords. So what’s happening, what do we think is going on? It really seems to be the case that Amazon wants to get rid of irrelevant keywords being indexed for products; they want their search function to be better. They want people to be able to find products that fit exactly what they’re looking for in a more efficient manner, so they are getting rid of all these potential keywords that you could be using. So here are three things that I read from the article that are interesting. Number one, keywords are going to be normalized which means that all upper and lower case keywords and singular and plural forms of the same keyword should not be added. If you just add the word – I don’t know apple, then apples will also be indexed as well too, you don’t need to put apples if you have apple in there too. You don’t need to add keywords that already appear in the title description and subject keywords. One point about this which is interesting is that they seem to deliberately leave out bullet points, which to me is interesting, and also Amazon’s system ignores any keywords beyond 250 characters for every category. So this seems to be applying across the board for everyone. So the question now is what are you going to do? First of all I’ve said this now I think three times, like check out the link; you’ve got to figure out how to test your listings if you don’t know how. So test your listings to see if you are indexing for certain keywords. Now if you look at the comments on the blog post, it’s clear that for some sellers, more than 250 characters of their k

ER 004: More than 50% internet buyers start on Amazon, Outside traffic to AMS landing page, influencer marketing for reviews, Amazon New York Seller Summit Boost with FBA, Amazon Sponsored Products Webinar Influencer Marketing Links: https://musefind.com/ https://instabrand.com/ http://thecirqle.com/ https://hyprbrands.com/ https://pro.iconosquare.com/features/influencer Amazon Seller Summit in NYC, Boost with FBA on June 28 Amazon Sponsored Products Webinar on June 14 Shopify Spinner App: https://apps.shopify.com/spin-a-sale Show Notes This is the Ecommerce Roundup Podcast for it’s the week of June 5th 2017, I am your host Bryan coming at you from New York, so you might hear some honking in the background, sorry about that, and here is the roundup for this week. All right so I saw a survey from a firm called BloomReach, and they surveyed about 2,000 people, and one thing that was very interesting about the survey is that they came to find that over 50% of online shoppers start their search on Amazon. That is starting their search which is really amazing that Amazon now is the default search for shopping, the majority of people will start their search, that’s an amazing thing to think about. So people are transitioning from Google as the source for information to Amazon for specifically ecommerce. And I saw a different a study or a different survey that said Google was number two when it comes to online shoppers starting their search, and it described Google with about 25% of respondents. EBay was third with 5% and Wal-Mart was fourth with 3%, and the rest are insignificant, Jet I think are like 1%. It also came back to say that fewer shoppers are looking at a retailer’s website. This is bad news for Wal-Mart and Target and Google and pretty much everybody except for Amazon, but one thing that’s interesting is that since Google was number two with about 25%, PLA ads might become more important. Those are the Google shopping ads you see when you search for something on Google and you see images of products, and Google is going to have to innovate there in order to stay competitive for ecommerce, so it’s going to be really interesting to see what Google will do for this. I’ve also seen that Google Express is coming out with new ways for retailers to sell on Google Express, so that’s really cool that Google will innovate when it comes to ecommerce and provide a platform so people can sell their products through Google. So it’s probably not such a big problem for Facebook and Google as they will innovate, add products to catch up because Facebook and Google are dependent on advertising. They know that since Amazon is the biggest when it comes to ecommerce, they’re going to want a piece of that pie; they are going to keep innovating. So what does this all mean? It means that the 80/20 here for what you should be working on is Amazon, if more than half of online shoppers start their search on Amazon, if you’re only on Amazon, you’re doing pretty good, and second to that are Google ads. You should look at Google shopping ads and you should look at other advertising methods on Google as well too. 25% of shoppers is still a pretty good number, so between more than 50% and 25% of people, you are at close to 75 to 80% of online shoppers starting their search who don’t even know anything about you, and you’ve pretty much got your base is covered. From there you got your own website and building your email list which is critical just so you can communicate with your customers and have a little bit more control over selling online. Listing on eBay is really easy, if you sell on Amazon, you use a product like JoeLister or something else, you can use ShipStation to fulfill and you should be on eBay because it’s pretty much like a set and forget thing, and also Wal-Mart as well too, you can apply to be on the Wal-Mart marketplace. I know that they’re opening it up for more sellers, but eBay, Wal-Mart and everything else really won’t give you much of a bank for your buck, so it’s not something to focus on. Next let’s talk about keywords ranking on Amazon. There’s still a ton of uncertainty when it comes to keywords that are ranking on Amazon, they are always changing their algorithm. I’m hearing more and more uncertainty about what’s currently ranking, what’s happening, whether it’s in your description or your bullet points or your backend keywords, some things are ranking, some things are not. I think it’s really difficult to stay totally on top of all this unless you’re constantly testing things, which is really tedious and hard. I think for most people that these fears of being de-indexed by Amazon are largely over blown, and the reason is because Amazon is constantly tweaking and changing and trying to improve their algorithm, so how could we possibly try and keep up and know what’s happening? You’re going to drive yourself crazy, always shifting things in your backend, and changing your listing and that’s just tough. I

ER 003: Seller survey findings, product research, product reviews, new Amazon Early Reviewer Program, shopping malls are closing down What do you think about this episode? Let us know here – http://www.azmarketers.com/contact/   The post ER 003: Seller survey findings, product research, product reviews, new Amazon Early Reviewer Program, shopping malls are closing down appeared first on AZ Marketers.