December News Roundup: Cyber Monday Stats, Google Enhanced Analytics and More – eCommerceFuel

Andrew Youderian • December 12, 2014

What’s new in the eCommerce world? We’re glad you asked. Andrew Youderian and Drew Sanocki are back with another look at the latest eCommerce news from the past couple of months including this year’s Cyber Monday stats, Capital One’s acquisition of AmeriCommerce and the Alibaba holiday that is blowing eCommerce sales out of the water.

Cyber Monday is the New Black Friday

Different sources reported varying numbers for Cyber Monday’s performance this year, but one thing all the media outlets could agree on was that sales were up. In fact, sales were reportedly up between 8.5% to 16% over last year, an encouraging lift any way you slice it. We polled members in our private forum and 70% happily reported that this trend affected them too.

This year, the use of mobile devices came into play with holiday shoppers scooping up cyber sales from their phone. Mobile represented 29% of overall traffic and 9% of sales according to The Washington Post. Tablet users, which our co-host Drew Sanocki used from his in-law’s house, also increased and accounted for 12.5% of traffic and 12.9% of sales.

Mobile represented 29% of overall traffic and 9% of sales according to The Washington Post.

Capital One Acquires AmeriCommerce

AmeriCommerce is known for its scrappy, tech fun culture so it will be interesting to see how the landscape may change – or stay the same – now that they’ve been purchased by a big corporation. AmeriCommerce broke the news on their site and seem genuinely excited about the what’s in their future. “We believe this is a win-win-win situation where all of us — AmeriCommerce, Capital One and our customers – succeed!” Best of luck to all those at AmeriCommerce and to the business owners using the platform.

Google Enhanced Analytics Officially Released (Bye, Bye Beta)

While it’s been in beta for a while, Google finally “officially” released their new analytics package dubbed Enhanced eCommerce Analytics. One of the many data-driven features that stand out is funnel optimization. Gone are the manually built funnels of yesteryear that could be problematic and require troubleshooting. Instead, these pre-built funnels make it easier to see where your customers are dropping out of the checkout cycle so you can test accordingly.

User segmentation is also being made easier to allow for retargeting campaigns that sync by customer intent. For example, you can stop wasting money retargeting less valuable customers that browsed for a minute and abandoned the site. Instead, now you can identify and retarget only valuable customers that started the checkout process but disappeared – a much better investment.

You can also track product impressions and get a conversion rate per product. This will let store owners look at product performance individually to better understand why something is performing well or why it’s tanking.

You can see who the most valuable visitors are so you can better spend your retargeting dollars.

Shopify and PrestaShop are Google’s release partners for this rollout. If you’re on those platforms, these analytics should work seamlessly with Universal analytics, but it unfortunately doesn’t work with Legacy.

Happy Singles Day

Most of us know that November 11th (11/11) is Veterans Day here in the U.S. But it’s also a global eCommerce holiday/phenomenon called “Singles Day”. Created by Alibaba in 2009, this is a day where folks that are single – think of it as the Anti-Valentine’s Day or the Bridget Jones’ Diary Day – are encouraged to purchase gifts for themselves.

Alibaba is pretty brilliant, since it’s now the biggest shopping day across the globe. This past “Singles Day” hit the $9 billion mark for sales, the biggest recorded retail day ever — larger than sales on Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined. The next time you’re thinking about shopping for your sweetheart, just stop and buy something for yourself. And blame Alibaba if he or she finds out.

Mobile-Friendly SERPs

You might see the word “mobile-friendly” listed next to search results next time you search from your smartphone. What began as a little mobile icon has morphed in Google clearly highlighting sites that are mobile-optimized. Google appears to be testing this as it’s not always visible, but it’d be surprising if it wasn’t rolled out permanently at some point.

Popular Forum Discussions

Each month we highlight a few popular and/or interesting discussion that took place in the eCommerceFuel Forum, our private community for experienced store owners and eCommerce professionals. This month’s picks are below:

Is It Worth Being in the INC 500 / IRC 500?

Being named on one of these lists can be a great status boost for your business, but it could also raise a red flag for competitors to keep an eye on your niche. Forum members were on both sides of this issue – those that had been on the list and those that opted out. You’ll be surprised at some of the answers.

Read / Join This Forum Discussion (Member sign-in required. Learn how to apply here.)

Would You Dock This Employees Pay?

An employee of one of our forum members used up more than her allocated vacation & sick time and didn’t go to her boss proactively to talk about it. As a leader in your business, how do you walk the line of being a fair boss without being too lenient? Forum members were split on what to do.

If you’re looking for good ways to start this conversation with employees early, Drew recommends “The Game of Work”. For more insight into the matter, hop into the forum to weigh in.

Read / Join This Forum Discussion (Member sign-in required. Learn how to apply here.)

Health Insurance for Business Owners in the U.S.

Get ready to cringe, non-US readers. We had a huge discussion about the state of health insurance in the United States. Most merchants buy policies on their own and many are having to spend between $600 – $1,000 a month for a catastrophic policy with high deductibles and big headaches. This created quite a stir in the forum. Luckily for us, many members weighed in with potential options and alternatives to help ease the pain.

Read / Join This Forum Discussion (Member sign-in required. Learn how to apply here.)

Have a Story That Deserves Mentioning?

If you have any ideas for topics you’d like Andrew or Drew to cover in our next edition, send them a tweet at @youderian or @drewsanocki. You can also contact us here.

This post was excerpted from our December News Roundup podcast. Listen to the podcast episode here.

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Post by Andrew Youderian

Andrew is the founder of eCommerceFuel and has been building eCommerce businesses ever since gleefully leaving the corporate world in 2008.  Join him and 1,000+ vetted 7- and 8-figure store owners inside the eCommerceFuel Community.