ER 005: Amazon keyword indexing update, phrase based index, Shopify update, Facebook video ads top of funnel
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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 It’s now outdated.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 long discussion open for debate, but it’s happening. The trend towards ecommerce is accelerating. People like convenience and businesses like saving money when they don’t have to spend on retail operations.
What’s this mean for you ecommerce seller? It means get better at selling online.
Also, Amazon launched Discounted Prime. They are moving in on low income customers, which was traditionally Walmart territory. There are 43 million US customers who are eligible for this program. Amazon already owns upper income customers (82% households making 112k+ are prime members). Amazon wants to dominate all of retail. This is tough for Walmart. It’s going to be hard for Walmart to battle against this.
Score another point for Amazon.
Last, I want to give a shout out to The Podcast Maniac for reviewing this podcast. The review wasn’t entirely positive, but that’s a good thing, because now I know what I need to work on! So thank you for that review! The link is in the show notes. Check out the Podcast Maniac to see other podcast reviews!
That’s it for today. Thanks for listing. Please hit subscribe now so you can be notified of new podcasts coming. What did you think about this podcast? Email us at info@azmarketers.com and tell us. And if you need any help with your Ecommerce business, we’re at azmarketers.com.
Until next time, keep selling and keep growing.