RECENT NEWS, RESOURCES & STUDIES, May 2019
Welcome to my latest summary of recent news, resources & studies including search, analytics, content marketing, social media & ecommerce! This covers articles I came across from May 3 to May 30, although some may be older than that.
I am out of town June 10-16, so I cannot predict when the next edition will come out, but I will do my best to make it before the June trip. I’ve recently narrowed my reading list so that I can get through it more quickly and post these more often. If you have any suggestions or comments, please let me know!
TOP NEWS & ARTICLES
If you had your entire promoted listing budget eaten up by clicks on an item with “shoe” in the searchable keywords, contact Etsy to make sure you will be refunded.
Etsy was accidentally suspending some shops for not using Etsy Payments, but they are in ineligible countries. Some but not all drop ship or use fulfillment in countries with Etsy Payments, but that doesn’t appear to explain all the errors.
Mailchimp launches a new marketing platform that integrates multiple marketing needs, not just emails. Pricing will stay the same for existing customers for the time being.
On the same topic, here is a study of various email services, and their different deliver-ability rates.
Etsy is being sued after a child dies, strangled by an amber necklace bought on Etsy. [video & article] This is getting a fair amount of media attention. Not covered in many stories is the fact that the daycare employees didn’t call 911 at first, and the day home had more infants that day than they were licensed for.
Better media attention: disappointed in the long delay for the introduction of the Harriet Tubman $20 bill in the US, an Etsy seller designed a stamp buyers can use to cover up Jackson’s face with Tubman’s. “Harriet Tubman” is a trending search on Etsy frequently since these articles, so this media coverage is really bringing traffic to the site.
Amazon is now using packing machines in a few of its warehouses that replace 12 workers each. They have other warehouse automation, too, & just started work on their hub at the Cincinnati airport. If you need any more evidence that diversification is the key to successful businesses, remember that they make the biggest chunk of their profit on their cloud services.
ETSY NEWS
This year, Etsy’s Maker Cities program (US only) has joined up with Mastercard for their grants. Applications are due July 3, and there is a webinar on June 3 with more info and instructions. [links in article]
They’s also extended their Design Awards submission deadline to June 4. Check out their FAQ if you have any questions.
Etsy released a summer update to their spring/summer trends guide, with some useful search data. Clothing shoppers are interested in vintage styles, “with Etsy searches for “70s” and “90s” up 26% and 7% year over year.” I summarized the earlier report here.
In case you missed it, Etsy released their first quarter financial report for 2019, & I summarized it in the Etsy forum.
In related news, Etsy ranks 3rd in USA Today's list of the top 20 fastest growing retailers in the world, even ahead of Amazon.
Some businesses are competing based on delivery speed, but Etsy is able to do well with much slower shipping. (That’s a nice feature in an article they didn’t write; not all good promotion is paid.)
I can’t remember if I posted this interview with Etsy chief financial officer Rachel Glaser before, so here it is again. [audio file/podcast and short text excerpt. Please note I have contacted Etsy about the photos & search comment, but they have not yet replied, other than with the usual links to Etsy’s search guide.]
Short piece on Etsy’s approach to diversity. Spoiler alert - they like it, and the article links to other materials demonstrating why this is the best approach for businesses.
SEO: GOOGLE & OTHER SEARCH ENGINES
If you want to get your website or blog material ranking faster, Moz has some tips for you. Note that the first part in particular contains advanced-level technical tips, but most of the rest is easier to grasp for non-techies. It’s worth a skim!
But don’t break Wikipedia rules to get your images on top - North Face got caught doing that, & had to apologize. But “[f]rom Leo Burnett Tailor Made's original statement, it seems the agency was anticipating such a reaction to the North Face effort all along. In stunts like these, the ensuing controversy and attention around it can be part of the overall campaign goal and strategy.”
Once your website starts getting Google traffic, it is not unusual for growth to start to slow or even stop completely, but there are things you can do to avoid that.
Despite many people insisting that longer blog posts are necessary for good Google ranking, there is no ideal length for a blog post.
Here’s a good list of free SEO tools; note that some are paid tools that have a limited free version.
Links on other high-quality websites still matter to Google. (Most of us won’t be able to do the link-building that this test did, but the test demonstrates how much the links are worth. So if you aren’t ranking, realize that other people linking to your page is probably a big factor.) Some of your pages might fit perfectly on a resource page/site, if they answer a question or uniquely fill a need. You can find link opportunities on Twitter through following certain hashtags and engaging with the users.
Google search results now include podcasts. “This feature doesn’t only search for the title or meta data of the podcasts but also can search for the audio – as Google transcribes them — directly within the podcast show itself.”
As of July 1, Google will use the mobile version of all new websites for their index, so make sure that you have a good mobile set up on any new websites (or old ones, for that matter, since most web traffic is mobile these days).
There was a possible Google search update around May 9, then May 22, and now maybe May 29th. Google updates its algorithm a lot, if you hadn’t already noticed. "To give you a sense of the scale of the changes that Google considers, in 2010 we conducted 13,311 precision evaluations to see whether proposed algorithm changes improved the quality of its search results, 8,157 side-by-side experiments where it presented two sets of search results to a panel of human testers and had the evaluators rank which set of results was better, and 2,800 click evaluations to see how a small sample of real-life Google users responded to the change.” (and some people think Etsy tests a lot LOL)
CONTENT MARKETING & SOCIAL MEDIA (includes blogging & emails)
Have popular content on one platform/site? You can repurpose it to use elsewhere, for maximum reach. It’s less work than coming up with brand new ideas all of the time!
Micro-influencers may work best for most businesses, because they can speak directly to your target market.
There are proven ways to get more social media followers; it’s not just luck.
Up-to-date infographic on the ideal sizes for social media images, by platform.
Facebook announced several upcoming plans at their annual developer conference, including a desktop redesign. Facebook has also changed the video algorithm to favour posts that people watch for longer, and to disfavour posts that are just repurposing old video.
Tweetdeck is rolling out more updates, including emojis and the ability to set up polls within the app. I use it, & I like it - I wish they had a phone app!
If you are using LinkedIn, you may be missing some great tricks to get more attention.
ONLINE ADVERTISING (SEARCH ENGINES, SOCIAL MEDIA, & OTHERS)
Here’s how you can get better results out of Microsoft ads (formerly Bing ads)
There was a bug in Google ads stats for April 30 & May 1st; they are working on fixing it.
Google advertising can be very confusing, so here as some tips on mistakes you should avoid. [video with transcript] They also recently announced some upcoming changes.
Etsy shops can only buy their own Google Shopping ads through Etsy’s program, or you can let Etsy buy them for your shop, but if you want to advertise your website, here is a great starter guide.
Chrome is giving you more control over cookies so that you can avoid more targeted ads. Some point out this is not necessarily as user-friendly as it sounds - it means Google can stop other companies from tracking their ad performance while Google has all those records through Chrome & other tools.
Facebook is also giving users more control over tracking for ads, & advertisers are not happy.
STATS, DATA, OTHER TRACKING
You are going to be surprised that Russian search engine Yandex has a really good Webmaster tools package.
ECOMMERCE NEWS, IDEAS, TRENDS
Some people are comparing Walmart’s new online wedding shop to Etsy, "with tons of personalized wedding gifts to buy on a budget.”
The coverage of Amazon’s big announcement about one-day shipping with Prime (in the US) mostly missed the fact that Amazon can already deliver to 72% of the US population in one day.
Amazon employees told some third-party sellers that religious items were banned from the site - but it wasn’t true.
Big Commerce now has a plug-in for Wordpress blogs.
As promised, Zibbet has added Etsy to its integrations, which allows you to list on Zibbet and it will automatically be added to Etsy as well. This is only going to be useful once they add other platforms (since Zibbet has no traffic), so shop around if you are interested in this sort of tool, as other companies are doing the same things. Indiemade websites completely integrate with Etsy, for example, and they have more website tools.
BUSINESS & CONSUMER STUDIES, STATS & REPORTS; SOCIOLOGY & PSYCHOLOGY, CUSTOMER SERVICE
With increased discussion of free shipping on Etsy recently, this is a good time to review some of the more recent studies & surveys on the topic. One US report from January shows that buyer expectations in this area continue to increase. Shipping cost is a big factor in purchase decisions, & shipping costs are a common reason for cart abandonment. There are a variety of ways to calculate how to offer free shipping without losing money. (Thank you to Rebecca for the last link!)
If you want more shares on social media, this study on the top 5 reasons people share things online will be useful. But Americans are now more engaged by mobile games than social media, which has implications for app development and advertising.
Googly eyes make people donate more.
Smaller online businesses tend to make very specific types of customer service mistakes that harm your ability to compete. Although there isn’t always much you can do about the fact that “37% of customers expect a response within an hour“.
Can everyone read and understand your web page? Easy-to-understand English is an important aspect of accessibility.
Help Scout produces some fabulous material on customer service; here is a great article on value propositions, with examples, and another on how to collect customer feedback, including analyzing your stats package to see where customers are having trouble with your site.
MISCELLANEOUS (including humour)
Trend alert: more professional women switching purses for backpacks.
You can now control how long Google retains data on you.
You can also join the class action against major US telecom companies that sold your location data.
Another example of a company getting people to post photos so it can develop facial recognition technology.
Some businesses are offering products & services based on your DNA & other biological markers.
Most people worldwide over the age of 15 have a cell phone, although not all are regular users.
If you are concerned about internet privacy, & hate tracking, the browser Brave may be worth a look. (I haven’t tried it yet, but it comes well-recommended from various tech people I respect.)
Burger King has trolled McDonald's in ads & social media posts for years, & it can be pretty funny. “When McDonald’s abruptly and surprisingly lost its trademark on “Big Mac” in the EU earlier this year, Burger King couldn’t help but rub some salt in the wound. BK’s Swedish operations decided to celebrate for a day by offering a menu of “Not Big Macs” such as “The Like a Big Mac, But Actually Big” and “The Big Mac-ish But Flame-Grilled of Course.”
