In this week's podcast, we talked to Matthew Holman from Qpilot about how to run a successful Subscription scheme.

What is an eCommerce subscription

Subscriptions are a part of eCommerce, which is experiencing strong growth. A four or five-fold increase is expected over the next few years.

There are two main types of eCommerce subscription

• Membership subscription, i.e. giving discounts and deals, e.g. Amazon Prime
• Automatic repeat purchases of physical goods, e.g. monthly subscription box

Many subscription services have been launched recently, and some commentators have suggested that subscription fatigue is setting in. However, if you can get it right, a subscription service will generate recurring revenue and help form a close relationship with your customers.

What kinds of products do subscriptions work best for?

Subscriptions are typically used for consumables, i.e. things which are used regularly e.g.

• Fresh food
• Food supplements
• Dog food
• Health and beauty products

These items are things which are used on a daily or regular basis and the customer is shopping for frequently. Getting products on a subscription saves the customer time.

Steps to launch a subscription business

Step 1. Understand your customer

To launch a successful subscription business, you need to understand your consumer and consider whether there are products they are currently getting elsewhere.

• Think about how you can add value to the consumer. Are there certain products which customers buy regularly?
• Are there products that would complement your current range that could be sold on a subscription basis? For example, could you start a pet food subscription offer if you sell pet accessories?
• Why should the consumer buy from you?

Step 2. Iron out your offer

Details to consider are:

• What frequencies will you offer? E.g. Weekly, monthly, quarterly
• Selection options. Is it a fixed offer, or can the customer selection options

Step 2. Choose a platform

You will need a platform to run your subscription service. There are 30+ apps on Shopify (of which Qpilot is one option). Compare the app's functionality against your proposed subscription offering and choose the one that bests fits your requirements.

How to promote a subscription service

Your offer should have a dedicated page on your site highlighting the features and benefits of your subscription scheme. Include:

• Subscription contents, i.e. what you get
• Subscription benefits. Why this helps the customer and the value it provides
• Highlight benefits such as environmental impact
• Subscription conditions. How will payment be taken, and how can the subscription be cancelled

To promote your subscription scheme, start by promoting the scheme to customers who are already frequently buying from your site.

Qpilot recommends giving a discount of no more than 10%. Pricing too low will leave less room for discounting in future. For example, You might want to run a sales event over a holiday weekend to drive additional sales

Improving performance

Understand your customers

Subscriptions can be very profitable as customers buy for several months before cancelling. Ask customers why they sign up and leave the programme to improve performance. By understanding why people leave, you can change your programme to improve performance.

Reducing churn

There are two types of churn

• Passive churn. Customers forget to update their payment details so the subscription expires
• Active churn. Customers elect to leave the programme

To reduce churn, ask customers why they leave the programme. For example, they m

Today I Trevor from Vendlab.com with Dan Marsland from leading payment provider Payoneer.We discussed:What does Payoneer do?How does Payoneer help Amazon sellers?How to choose a payment providerHow Brexit has affected CBTWhat international opportunities do you see your clients using?What is the future for online payments?What has inspired you recently?Need help with your eCommerce business? Vendlab specialises in helping online retailers grow their businesses through online marketplaces and international sales.

The How to Grow your eCommerce Business is sponsored by the eCommerce Growth Agency Vendlab.com.

Ayat Shukairy is a conversion rate optimisation expert and the founder of Invesp.com. In this podcast, we discuss the process for increasing website conversion rates and the things that every website owner should do today to turn more browsers into buyers.

In this episode of the eCommerce Odyssey Podcast, Trevor talks to Issac Kuhlman from Real Coaching (https://goteamreal.com/). Real coaching is a programme that helps Amazon FBA businesses launch and scale their businesses. Issac is free from the BS which surrounds many coaches and has lots of thoughtful advice for new businesses.We discuss:The Real coaching programmeHis experiences of Amazon before launching RealWhat makes his coaching programme specialIs it becoming more difficult to sell on Amazon?The most important skills required when building an Amazon FBA businessWhite label or own label?Where he thinks Amazon is heading as a platformWhat has inspired him recentlyIssac was talking to Trevor Ginn from vendlab.com, an eCommerce agency specialising in online marketplaces and e-commerce sales platforms.

Using Email and SMS to drive repeat customers with Jason K. Williamson of e2agency

Jason K Williamson is a specialist in combining SMS and Email marketing to turbo charge your repeat purchase rate. In the week's podcast, Trevor picks his brains on how to get the most out of your retention marketing campaigns.

What are the best strategies in 2022 for getting customers to return to your Shopify storefront?

There are three different prime methods for driving customers back to your customers

• Retargeting on media buying. You should be following your customers at all times
• Email marketing. This is great as emails are easy to collect as people are used to giving their email out to receive offers and updates. Email marketing can be run at a large scale at a low cost
• SMS Marketing. This is the most potent way to retarget customers. Customers are already on their mobile and so can purchase in only a few clicks

SMS is for everyone

SMS marketing at scale used to be only available at the enterprise level. Now there are great apps on Shopify that can be used to collect and send SMS campaigns for a low cost.

For Shopify users, a checkout option enables customers to subscribe to SMS messages. SMS marketing is super powerful as 98% of SMS' are read in the first 4 hours.

Best SMS use cases

SMS’ can be collected via Shopify and then used to contact customers (with their consent!). ROI on SMS is much as 10x higher than email. Jason recommends the following use cases:

• Abandoned cart. Sending SMS' to customers reminding them to complete their purchase. This is the most successful automation with the highest ROI
• Sending campaigns to your audience. Sending a campaign like you would with email is even simpler with SMS as it only requires writing a short message. No need to worry about creative, subject lines or deliverability.

Using the Trojan Horse technique to grow your SMS list

Growing your list as fast as possible is the best way to start seeing a good return on investment. Jason recommends using email offers to build your SMS list. Jason calls this the Trojan horse method. The process is as follows:

1. Ask the customer to subscribe to an email newsletter for an offer
2. Offer them the to upgrade to a better offer if they subscribe to an SMS offer

This enables the customer to feel they are in control as they are upgrading, not signing up for the first time. Using a juicy offer will maximise the uptake.

The pitfalls of SMS marketing

SMS is a dangerous marketing channel. The fines can be huge if you send emails to customers who have not given consent.

To avoid this, make your messaging super clear.

How to ensure that SMS does not cannibalise email traffic?

SMS has the highest open rate and conversion rate. Because of this, if you have a customer's email and SMS, send them an SMS first for the best results. A phone number is a personal thing which is challenging to get, so treat these customers like VIPs. To avoid cannibalisation, send different messages, even if the offers are identical.

What is the best platform for running campaigns?

Use specialist software for each marketing channel. Jason recommends using Postscript for running SMS campaigns, Optimonk for pop-ups, Klaviyo for email.

Jason talked to Trevor Ginn from vendlab.com, an eCommerce agency specialising in online marketplaces and e-commerce sales platforms.

In this episode Trevor interviews Rosie Bailey from Nibble - a negotiation chatbot which makes haggling on your website fun! Questions we asked Rosie include:Can you tell me what Nibble is all about?Is this just a gimmick or the future of ecommerce?What results are you seeing for customers?What features are you planning in the future?Will you be integrating this with other chat systems like WhatsAppWhat has inspired you recently?Rosie was talking to Trevor Ginn from vendlab.com, an eCommerce agency specialising in online marketplaces and e-commerce sales platforms.

In this edition of the eCommerce Odyssey Podcast, Trevor talks to Will Haire from BellaVix about how to build your Amazon sales by dominating your category. 

We talk about:

• Using off-Amazon advertising to drive traffic to Amazon listings
• Amazon DSP
• Amazon marketing strategies

Grow your sales by word-of-mouth marketing with Raul Galera from Referral Candy

In this week’s podcast, Trevor talks to Raul Galera about how to set up a successful online referral scheme.

What is an eCommerce referral scheme?

If your service is good, word-of-mouth marketing will already be happening for your store. A referral scheme encourages this behaviour by incentivising your customer to sell your brand to their friends. An existing customer will click on a link, send a referral code to their friends, and receive something, e.g. discount on a future purchase, a gift or a payment.

How do eCommerce referral schemes work?

Raul recommends the following steps to launch a successful referral scheme:

1. Invite past customers
2. Create automation to invite customers automatically after purchase. This could be a popup or an email
3. Make your programme public. Advertise it on your site by displaying it prominently and creating a sign-up form

What is the difference between affiliate marketing and referral marketing?

There are two main difference between affiliate and referral marketing

• Relationships. In an affiliate programme, publishers will have a large audience to which they promote affiliates. This is a one-to-many relationship where the publisher does not know the person to which they are promoting. Referrals happen with a close circle, e.g. friends and family. Being more personal, these recommendations have a lot more power.
• Rewards. Affiliate programmes typically give most of the reward to the referral. The buyer may not get a discount. Referral programmes typically give a similar reward to both parties.

What makes a good referral scheme?

The best referral schemes reward both the referrer and the new customers. This incentivises the referrer to work hard on your behalf and the new customer to buy.

What kind of verticals does referral marketing work best for?

Referral schemes work well across many verticals but work especially well for direct-to-consumer brands as they are trying to build a community. Also, products which have a sharable component, e.g. fashion, technology.

How to run a referral scheme?

The steps to run a referral scheme are:

1. Platform. You will need a platform to track referral sales, e.g. Referral Candy
2. Design referral structure. Look at customer behaviour and think about what will incentivise them.
3. Promotion plan. Think about how you are going to promote your plan. Just telling people once is not enough. You need to be reminding your customers regularly.
4. Build a community around your customer base. In the long run, this will be hugely beneficial to your brand.

How to measure success?

Referral Candy uses a metric (referral rate) which is the ratio of referral order to the total number of sales.

A good referral scheme should generate at least 2% of a company's revenue, with some companies generating 10% or even 33%.

In this week's eCommerce Odyssey Podcast I talked to Kiril Kirilov cofounder of rush.app about how they improve delivery communication on Shopify. Rush is an app that is deeply integrated with over 400 couriers with the aim of closing the loop between ordering and delivery. Not only do they help improve customer service, but they also enable merchants to use communications to drive customers back to a store and repeat purchases.

Kiril had the following advice for optimising shipping comms on Shopify

Communication with customers as often as possible

By sending out updates at every stage of the delivery process has major benefits for retailers.

• Increase customer satisfaction by keeping them in the loop
• Cut down on customer service queries

Use updates to drive repeat custom

Every time you send out a delivery update to a customer, the customer is encouraged to come back to the site where they can be upsold.

Wow consumers with great service

Get the basics right to impress with your delivery

• Shipping speed. Deliver items before people start to wonder where they are
• Be in stock. Ensure you have stock available for quick delivery

Kiril talked to Trevor Ginn from vendlab.com, an eCommerce agency specialising in online marketplaces and e-commerce sales platforms.

In this episode, we’re joined by William Gasner, co-founder of Stack Influence (https://stackinfluence.com/) a platform that helps eCommerce brands drive product awareness through micro-influencer marketing at scale. Stack Influence connects brands with thousands of everyday influencers to generate authentic content, boost social proof, and increase sales.

Topics we discussed:

• What does Stack Influence do?
• Where did you get the idea from?
• What is a micro influencer. Is everyone a micro influencer these days?
• What is the relative effectiveness of micro vs macro influencers?
• What are the costs? How cost-effective is it?
• How do you track results?
• What social media platforms do you work with? Which one works best
• How does the process work?
• Does this work with marketplaces or just websites?
• What kind of products does your platform work for?
• What is the future of influencer marketing?
• What has inspired you recently?

How to Grow Your eCommerce Business is product by VendLab (https://www.vendlab.com) an Amazon growth agency.

Paul Rafelson Law from Rafelson Law is a specialist in eCommerce Law. In this interview, he gives his opinion on:

• Amazon suspensions
• Intellectual property disputes
• Product Compliance
• Ecommerce M&A

Paul also runs a non-profit called the Online Sellers Guild which supports small businesses in their detailing with the tech giants.

In this week's podcast, Trevor talked to Kelsey Johnson from the email marketing aWeber about how to use email to generate sales for your eCommerce business. 

Email is still important!

Email is used more than any other communication platform and is still widely used, even among Millenials and Gen Zs. Most people will look at their email daily, so it is a very personal and effective way to reach customers. Unlike other platforms such as social, it is used for work, private message and promotional messages.

Benefits of email marketing

Email marketing works across almost all businesses and has the following benefits:

• Drives repeat business. Emails enable merchants to stay in touch with customers and encourage future sales.
• Nurture future customers. Customers may sign up for an email marketing list as they are interested in making a future purchase
• Ownership. Unlike marketplaces and social media channels, you have complete ownership of your email list
• Cheap! Email marketing is very cost-effective.

Opt-in is crucial

From both a compliance perspective and to ensure good performance, it is essential to get customers to opt to receive emails from your business. 

Steps to run an email marketing campaign

Kelsey recommends the following steps to run an email marketing campaign:

• Choose a tool. You will need a tool to run your email marketing campaigns that supports list management, sign up forms and automations. Very nice to have are split testing and good reporting.
• Migrate your existing list. Ensure that any email your port over are recent to prevent ending up in the spam box.
• Integrate with your eCommerce platform. Systems such as Shopify will integrate with most email markets tools enabling customers to be added to lists automatically.
• Add a sign-up form to your site. Pop-up forms with a discount are one of the most effective ways to build you list AND incentivise sales
• Create automations. Automations are email flows which automatically send emails to customers to keep them in the loop. Automations could recommend new products or invite them to follow you on social media (see below).
• To be most effective, tailor the email to the recipient. Most email marketing tools will enable the email to be personalised, for example, with the recipient's name and product recommendations based on their purchase history.

Tips for building a list

The bigger your list, the greater your opportunity to make sales. It is never too early to start list building. Strategies for building a list include:

• Pop up form on your site
• Tick box at checkout
• Make listing building part of your social strategy. Link to your email sign-up form from your social profiles and offer an incentive to sign up

Recommendated Automations

When customers are added to a mailing list, they can be automatically sent a series of emails called an automation. These need only be set up once and can generate a steady stream of sales over time.  Successful automations include

• Welcome series. E.g. send a different popular product every day for 5 days
• Weekly product. Send out a product of the week to each customer
• Win back. After a customer has not purchased for a while, send through an enticing offer to win them back
• Abandoned cart emails. Send out emails to customers who have started the checkout process to remind them to complete the purchase. Abandoned checkout emails are among the most successful email automations.

Creating successful broadcast emails

If you have specific offers, or useful announcements, these can be broadcast to your

In this episode of eCommerce Odyssey we talk to Valentin Radu from Omniconvert. Omniconvert is a growth enabler for serious eCommerce companies looking to become customer-centric. Omniconvert has helps global eCommerce companies become customer-centric through advanced segmentation algorithms, AB testing, web personalisation, and customer research.We talked about:Tell us about OmniconvertHow are smart companies managing their website CRO?How do you see websites evolving over the next few years?Will services like Shopify mean all websites are the same?What is your favourite eCommerce growth tactic post iOS 15?How should companies best use zero and first-party data to grow?What are your tips for increasing customer lifetime value?What is customer value optimisation in Ecommerce?Do you think that CRO will merge with CVO?What has inspired you recently?Valentin was talking to Trevor Ginn from vendlab.com, an eCommerce agency specialising in online marketplaces and e-commerce sales platforms.

Our latest podcast interview is with the wonderful Chloe Thomas from eCommerce MasterPlan. Chloe runs a successful eCommerce Podcast as well as being a writer of several books and a speaker.We talked about:Tell us about what you do?How did you get started?How do you describe yourself – a writer, podcaster, eCommerce nerd?You work with a number of channels e.g. podcast, books etc. Which gets the best engagement?Which do you enjoy most?How long do you think it requires to get traction with a podcast/training business?What has inspired you recently?If you have time, I recommend checking out the eCommerce MasterPlan podcast and her other podcast Keep OptimisingChloe was talking to Trevor Ginn from vendlab.com, an eCommerce agency specialising in online marketplaces and e-commerce sales platforms.

In the latest podcast, Trevor talks to Dimitri Nikolakakis about how eCommerce companies can use NFTs to drive sales. We discuss:

• What are NFTs
• Are NFTs a fad?
• How can eCommerce businesses use NFTs
• Why would an eCommerce business want to do this?
• Can you give an example of successful NFT use
• What technology is needed to use NFTs for ecommerce businesses

Robb Green is an entrepreneur with many strings to his bow. Not only has he successfully launched 17 brands on Amazon, but he is also a successful podcaster (https://therobbgreenshow.com/).

Robb has lots of great advice on launching and running a successful business. Here are some of the things we talk about:

• Robb's business journey.
• How he launched his first brand
• What he looks for in a brand
• His main channels?
• The role does data plays in marketing.
• How he manages his business?
• How he has maintained profitability through increased competition and reduced demand post covid
• What inspired him to set up a Podcast.
• His three best bits of 3 advice for entrepreneurs?
• What has inspired him recently

In this episode of How to Grow Your eCommerce Business, we explore how this often-overlooked strategy can transform your online business. In this podcast, we’ll uncover actionable insights and proven tactics to help you build deeper customer connections, drive repeat sales, and maximize your ROI through the power of email.

The episode is sponsored by the multi-channel eCommerce Agency VendLab (www.vendlab.com)

Topics we cover:

Why is email marketing still important in the age of social

media

• Email is still hugely popular
• Encourage returning customers
• High ROI

Types of email

• Transactional
• Flows
• Email campaigns

Best way to send emails

• Shopify - cheap
• Mailchimp etc - more expensive

Collecting emails

• GDPR considerations
• Pop-ups
• Incentives to sign up
• Checkout sign-up
• SMS - better conversion rates

Maximising deliverability

• Double opt-in
• Email authentication
• Keep your list up to date

Best practice for writing emails

Keep it short

Use a single link multiple times

Send frequently

Include clear calls to action

What you should do today if you don't do anything else:

• Start collecting emails
• Abandoned cart emails
• Winback flow

As an Amazon seller, getting your seller account suspended can be a terrifying experience. The process is opaque, unaccountable and it is not possible to talk to anyone. In my opinion, it is a manifestation of Amazon’s unaccountable monopoly at its very worst.In the episode, we look at the cause for Amazon account suspensions, how to avoid them and how to deal with them if they arise.Ecommerce odyssey is presented by Trevor Ginn from vendlab.com, an eCommerce agency specialising in online marketplaces and e-commerce sales platforms.

Shaun Brandt from oddit.co is an expert in website conversion. Trevor talked to him about how to boost the conversion rate by removing barriers to the online purchasing experience

Problem with Shopify templates

As themes are easy to install on Shopify, there is a tendency to think that the themes are optimised for conversion. Many themes are aesthetically pleasing at the expense of the user experience.

Choosing a Shopify template

Using a template which advertises itself as having a high conversion rate is an excellent place to start when choosing a template.

Whilst themes do go through a vetting programme to be accepted in the Shopify store, this does not include usability testing other than passing some basic tests.

Speeding up your site

Site speed is a vital factor in conversion rate. Factors which slow the site down include:

• Images which are not web optimised
• Unused JavaScript from uninstalled apps.
• Front-end apps, e.g. reviews, sliders etc

Benchmarking site performance

Your conversion rate will depend on your traffic source and add strategy. For example, if you get your traffic mainly from SEO or social or paid search, you will have very different conversion rates

The best way to benchmark your site's performance is to stop looking at the site yourself and do some user testing. Set users tasks on the site, e.g. add a product to basket and look at where they are struggling. If you have a limited budget, there is no need to get people from your target audience, just people with no site experience.

Solving usability issues

Shaun recommends the following process for solving issues with the site

• Perform usability testing
• Make a prioritised list of issues with the site as identified in your testing
• Use A/B testing to try out different versions of the target page(s) and identify solutions

Make change incrementally and do not make too many changes simultaneously (the fewer, the better). If you make too many changes at once, you will not know what caused any changes.

Low hanging useability fruit

· Site speed. There are a lot of simple things which can be done to improve speed quickly, e.g. optimising images

· Copywriting. Create clear copy. Cut the fluff! Tell the user what you make, not the problem you solve

· Calls to action. Make these clear and descriptive

· Don't overwhelm the user. Don't give them too many options.

In this week's eCommerce Odyssey Podcast, Trevor talks to Lauren Schwartz for The loft 325 about how to create compelling organic and paid content on TikTok.

What is Tiktok

Tiktok is an engagement platform where people go to be entertained. Posts consist of short videos (mostly less than 15 seconds) on any topic, which are consumed at a fast rate.

Engaging with videos

When strolling through a TikTok feed, users can click on a video to interact with it. You can like videos and also view the user's profile to see their other posts. On the post can be a link to their website.

Organic and paid content

Like other social media channels, TikTok has the option to post organic (unpaid) and paid content (ads). Ads appear in the feed and link to the advertiser's content using calls to action such as 'Shop Now' or 'Learn More'.

Organic Tiktok

When creating organic TikTok content, look at what is trending on the TikTok app. These can be trending:

• Sounds
• Topics
• Hashtags

Think about how you can integrate these trends with your posts, e.g. by adding the latest hashtags to your description (e.g. #tiktokmademebuyit). Look at how people are people are talking about products and how they are talking to consumers.

By utilising the latest trends, you will begin to understand what people want to see from your content. If you are successful, your content will appear more on the 'For you' page.

Success on organic TikTok is measured by engagement. These include:

• Likes
• Impressions
• Comments

Both organic content and ads should have a hook, i.e. something interesting to get people to stop and watch the content for more than 3 seconds. Text on the screen makes people stop and read.

Creating Ads on content

When creating ads, create content around the trends. Paid content on TikTok should look exactly like organic posts (look 'native'). Look at the styling of other successful posts and emulate this in your content. High production value ads are not necessary as they will not look organic.

2 or 3% is a good click-through rate for an ad. $30 is a good CPA. Ads are usually charged on a CPC basis.

In this episode of the How to Grow Your eCommerce Business podcast, Trevor talks to Sena Wheeler from Sena Sea (https://www.senasea.com/) about how she built a successful business selling wild Alaskan fish. Here is what we talked about:

• How did you start your business?
• How do you deliver your fish?
• How do you differentiate your business?
• Do you also sell Wholesale?
• How do you promote your business? What channels do you use?
• Do you get a lot of repeat business?
• I hear you do a lot of your sales through email
• What are your plans for the future

How to grow your eCommerce business is produced by Vendlab (www.vendlab.com) a direct to consumer eCommerce Agency.

In this week's podcast, Trevor talks to Reinis Krumins from email marketing Agency agencyjr.com about how to kick it out of the park with email sales this Q4.

4 Phase Q4 Email plan

Reinis recommends a four-phrase approach to email this Q4

1. Re-engaging the email list.
2. Warming up the email list.
3. Early sign up and commitment phase
4. Black Friday!

Re-engaging the email list

In any email list, there will be inactive users who have not interacted with an email recently. Send these customers text-based, personalised emails to get these users to re-engage with your business.

This email should be a 'personal' email from the founder or give some helpful information about a product.

Warming up the email list

There are two parts to this

• Relationship warm-up
• Technical warm-up

The relationship email focuses on building the brand in the customer's emails. For example, it could be about charitable work the brand is doing. Alternatively, use value-based emails which highlight products in a non-sales way, e.g. top 3 tips on using product XX

The second side of the warm-up is the technical warm-up which ensures deliverability. Add a custom sending domain (if you have not already done so) to your email software. I.e. emails will come from XXX.com, not from the email software's domain. Email from shared domains can have delivery issues as some senders will be spamming people. By using your own domain, you avoid this issue.

Early sign-up and commitment phase

To build your list, create a special page on your site so that customers can sign up to get early access to offers. Send this to your email list. To build this list, you use paid advertising and retargeting

These users get first access to Black Friday deals.

Black Friday

From 19-20th Nov, customers who signed up for early access get emailed. From 20-21st Nov, send 2 emails every day. It is essential to be aggressive around Black Friday as customers are getting lots of emails. If you send only a few emails, your messages will not be seen.

In this video Trevor Talks to Maximilian Rast from Klar about how to measure performance across your eCommerce business. Businesses sell through many channels and drive traffic across numerous different advertising platforms and campaigns. By combining this data, you can get a more accurate picture of performance, enabling better decision-making. Klar is a system which centralises all your data in one place - check it out at www.getklar.com.

Ciara Stockeland is a profit strategist and self-styled 'Inventory Genius'. She helps business owners who sell physical inventory to create more profit and keep more cash.

Ciara makes lots of sense! We discuss:

• Her business story
• Why does she focus on inventory?
• When talking to a business, what are the first thing she looks at
• Common solutions she gives her clients.
• Attributes of successful businesses       
• What are the top things that inventory businesses should do today?
• What inspired her recently?

Check out her website for more details: https://www.ciarastockeland.com/

In this podcast episode, Trevor talks to Katrina McKinnon from Copysmiths about the importance of quality content for generating natural search traffic.

Is content still important?

Creating great content is still vitally important for merchants as the most successful eCommerce stores get 60% of the traffic from organic searches. It is essential not to put your eggs in one basket by depending too much on organic or paid traffic.

How to create great content

Copywriters research keywords using tools like Hrefs. They then construct posts which include these keywords and publish them on a blog.

The recommended length is 1400 words, broken up with other types of content such as images, quotes, tables etc. Breaking up slabs of text increases dwell rate and reduces bounce rate.

Always write content which is focused on readers and not search engines. Google will track which post are getting read and give these higher search positions.

What are the best kinds of content to publish

Successful types of content include:

• Listicles. E.g. Top 10 lists.
• 101 ways to XYZ. Great for inspiring customers
• Answer to questions

Google likes posts that answer the questions asked in the article title. It also likes multimedia.

How often to publish?

Once a week is the minimum frequency of publishing for which you should aim. Google says in its website guide that sites should write 'well and often'.

How to create content in-house or find a writer?

Options include:

• In-house writer. Difficult to maintain creativity. They tend to burn out
• Agencies. Have quality processes in place and are good for companies looking to scale.
• AI. AI content creation has its place tends to sound like robots

How to get content read? What are the best places to post content?

Organic social does not generate much traffic anymore. Some companies will have separate organic and paid social accounts as organic traffic may be reduced if paid social is also used on the account.

How to measure success?

A successful article will show up for 200 keywords, an unsuccessful article 20 keywords and a really successful article, 2000 keywords

How long does it all take?

Stores with about 1m+ visitors a year should see content ranking in 2 weeks. Brand new stores will take several months.

Katarina talked to Trevor Ginn from vendlab.com, an eCommerce agency specialising in online marketplaces and e-commerce sales platforms.

Get our eCommerce book:  https://vendlab.com/buy-our-how-to-grow-your-ecommerce-business-book/

In this week's podcast, Trevor talk to Matt Putra from Eightx about how to manage cashflows for eCommerce business. Questions we discuss:

· What is cash flow?

· What problems can people have?

· How to avoid problems these problems

· Tips for optimising cashflow

· How can eCommerce businesses get funds to grow?

· 2023 is going to be a shitshow – what advice do you have for businesses?

· What do you do when you are not thinking about cash flow?

How to Grow Your eCommerce Business is sponsored by the multi-channel eCommerce Business Vendlab (⁠⁠www.vendlab.com⁠⁠). Contact us if you want to discuss growing your eCommerce business.

In this episode, we explore the different Amazon fulfilment methods—FBA, FBM, and SFP—and how they can help boost your sales. We’ll explore the advantages of each approach, from Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) to managing your own shipments (FBM) and discuss which option will be right for your business.

In this episode, we discuss:

FBM

• When should you use FBM? (Large catalogue, fragile, heavy, can’t ship to Amazon)
• How is the shipping set?
• What timescale do you need to deliver in?
• Can FBM be used for international shipping

SFP

• When should you use SFP
• Advantages of SFP. (Only need one warehouse)
• What metrics do you need to comply with. (Delivery time)
• Can SFP be used for international shipping

FBA

• When should you use FBA
• How does FBA influence who gets the buy box?
• What are the pros and cons of FBA
• How do you get inventory to Amazon
• How do you prepare inventory
• How do you get inventory back
• What does shipping cost?
• How much are storage fees?
• Can FBA be used for international shipping
• What is Pan-EU FBA

Other programs

• Are there other programs
• Big and heavy
• Small and light
• International programs
• Remote fulfilment by FBA
• Allow Amazon to buy stock

In a follow-up to our previous podcast on how to set up referral programmes, Trevor talked to Jay Gibb from CloudSponge about how to improve the performance of referral programmes.

What is an eCommerce referral scheme?

If your service is good, word-of-mouth marketing will already be happening for your store. A referral scheme encourages this behaviour by incentivising your customer to sell your brand to their friends. An existing customer will click on a link, send a referral code to their friends, and receive something, e.g. discount on a future purchase, a gift or a payment.

What are the reasons why referral schemes perform badly

Referral programmes fail to take off for a number of reasons.

Not publicising the programme enough.

If you do not tell your customers about your referral programme, they won't sign up! Common mistakes include:

• Requiring a login to participate
• Hiding deep in your menu structure
• Not including it in receipts and invoices
• Not including info in footer and header

Not using double-sided rewards

Whilst some people want to get a reward for making a referral, others value being the hero that sent an offer to their friends. Doubled-sided referral programmes cater for both customer types.

Making people type in email addresses

If you make users type in email addresses, they will get bored quickly. Users only have so much patience to enter a comma-separated list of emails, especially on a mobile device.

Using a solution like Jay's company Cloudsponge, customers can import contacts directly from their email solution, e.g. Gmail. They can sign in directly to their email account and easily add multiple contacts. Cloudsponge has found by using this solution, referral schemes can double or triple referrals.

This episode of the How to Grow your eCommerce Business Podcast covers strategies, insights, and success stories to help you scale your eCommerce business globally.

This episode is sponsored by the multi-channel eCommerce consultancy VendLab (www.vendlab.com)

Topics covered:

Advantages of international trade

Grow sales by up to 50%

-         Reach new audience

-         Grow sales

-         Less price competitive

Disadvantages

-         Customer service issues

-         Shipping times

-         Currency conversion

-         Compliance

-         VAT registrations

-         Duty

-         Fragile items

Types of international trade

-         Simple

-         Advanced

Shipping options

-         Ship from domestic location

-         Local fulfilment

-         Special mention: FBA and Pan-EU FBA

What the major international sales channels

-         Amazon

-         eBay

-         Google Shopping

-         Local sites - Cdiscount, Bol.com

Google Shopping

-         Can do this all from the same Merchant centre/Google Ads

-         Multi-language feed

-         Localisation of website

-         Accept multiple currencies

Amazon

-         Works same in every country

-         Automatic translation

-         Combined EU and NA accounts

-         Remote FBA

-         Pan-EU FBA

Valon Xhafa from Behamics was an AI professional before it was all the rage! His company makes a range of tools which use AI to help sellers understand their performance and optimise eCommerce stores.

In this interview Trevor and Valon talk about the many ways which AI can be used to grow eCommerce sales including SEO, content creation, merchandising and conversion rate optimisation.

How to Grow to Your eCommerce Business is sponsored by VendLab, the multi-channel eCommerce experts.

In this episode of the How to Grow Your eCommerce Business Podcast, we explore opportunities on platforms like Walmart, Bol.com, and Allegro, sharing expert insights and strategies to scale your online business successfully.

This episode is sponsored by the multi-channel eCommerce consultancy VendLab ⁠(www.vendlab.com⁠)

Marketplaces we cover:

• Fruugo
• Walmart
• Cdiscount
• Allegro
• OnBuy
• Bol.com
• Tmall
• Lazada
• TradeMe
• Mirakl marketplaces
• Mercado Libre

The unboxing experience is a vital and often ignored part of the consumer experience.

In this episode of the How to Grow Your eCommerce Business Podcast, Trevor talks to Tyler DeLarm from UnDigital about optimising your unboxing to increase the return order rate.

How to Grow to Your eCommerce Business is sponsored by Vendlab, the multi-channel eCommerce experts.

In the latest eCommerce odyssey podcast, Trevor interviews Dean Niesten and Rik Koopman from Social Media agency Dr Traffic. Amongst other things they talked about:What does Dr Traffic do?What investment would you recommend in organic vs. Paid SocialWhat is the best measure of ROI in social?What ROI should merchants aim for?What are the channels you would recommend investing in?Where do you see Facebook/Instagram eCommerce solution going?What has inspired you recently?Dr Traffic was interviewed by Trevor Ginn from Vendlab.com, an e-commerce agency specialising in online marketplaces and international sales.

In our launch episode, We are delighted to interview Steve Folwell, the founder of e-commerce gardening Startup Muddy Trowel (www.muddytrowel.com).Muddy Trowel makes it easy to get beautiful, plants kids straight to your door. I talk to Steve about what he has learned so far and his plans for the future.In the podcast we cover:Muddy Trowel – what gave you the inspiration for it?What is the market landscape for these products?How does the supply chain work for your products?Your products are quite delicate – how do you deliver •What are the main channels you use to market your products?Do you sell through any third party platforms e.g. Amazon, eBay •How are you funding your business – what are your plans for growth?You’ve worked for big corporates and now you are an entrepreneur – which do you prefer?What has inspired you most recently?Steve was talking to Trevor Ginn from vendlab.com, an eCommerce agency specialising in online marketplaces and e-commerce sales platforms.

How to Grow Your eCommerce Business is sponsored by the multi-channel eCommerce agency Vendlab.com.

Are you fed up with the hassle of shipping your inventory in bulk from the Far East? Happily, there is an alternative to storing all the money in stock and waiting three months for it to arrive. Portless enables stock to be stored in China and shipped directly to consumers in five days or less!

Shipping costs are not much higher for small items than local fulfilment.

Sound too good to be true? Find out all about it in the episode.

Jon Warren is an eCommerce entrepreneur and Coach who specialises in high ticket dropshipping. Jon teaches dropshipping at Dropship Breakthru.

Dropshipping is an attractive business model as you do not have to pay any money upfront. Jon makes a good case for launching a dropshipping business, but I have had bad experiences with dropshipping for the reasons I outline below.

Jon’s take on dropshipping is that the only way to do it is to focus on high-ticket items. This gets round the problem of low margins, as a low margin on a high ticket item can be a high dollar amount. That said, you will still have all the other issues I outline below. Some of these will be multiplied, as accepting the return of a high ticket item can be difficult and costly.

What is Dropshipping Drop shipping where the seller accepts customer orders but does not keep goods sold in stock. Instead, they pass the order details to either the manufacturer, a wholesaler, or another retailer, which then ships the goods directly to the customer.

Dropshipping pros Dropshipping seems like a good idea, and many people promote it as a get-rich-quick scheme.

It has many advantages on the face of it

No upfront costs. You pay for products as you sell them No overheads. No need for a warehouse for pesky things like warehouses or staff Access to an extensive catalogue. You do not have to worry about sourcing products, just publish the drop shippers catalogue and you have a ready-made business No work! No need to worry about troublesome things like packing Dropshipping Cons There is no such thing as a free lunch. In my experience, dropshipping is more trouble than it is worth:

Competitive. Dropshipping products are available to a lot of sellers and so are competitive and low margin Limited control. As a dropshipper, you surrender control of the delivery process to your supplier. Poor consumer experience. In my experience, dropshipping is often a poor customer experience. Slow, difficult to arrange, bad communication. Long delivery times. If you are getting products delivered from overseas, delivery can take weeks. This is not a good customer experience Returns build-up. As the retailer, you will normally need to accept any returns yourself. These will quickly build up Dropshipping I have tried I’ve tried dropshipping in various ways, failing to take off.

Books In the UK, there is a huge book wholesaler called Gardeners books. They offer a straight-through processing service which we integrated with our eCommerce system. This meant that orders would automatically be fulfilled. We set this up and waited for sales to roll in. Bingo!

Unfortunately, this failed for several reasons:

It was hard to calculate the shipping cost of each book so hear to know what to charge Low sales. Amazon was always cheaper We wanted to implement a long tail strategy, i.e. list 500K books on eBay, but eBay would only let us list 25K at one time Furniture Furniture is a massive pain! It is heavy and prone to breaking, so perfect for dropshipping. However:

Dropshipped furniture is widely available, so very competitive Hard to get stock updates from suppliers, so I frequently had to let customers down Buy to order Stock is a pain, so I thought we would try buying stock to order. I found a supplier who could provide a stock update feed. I fed the stock levels into our system, thinking this would mean that we would never oversell and put the lead time to 3 days, thinking this would work if orders were delivered the next day. Brilliant?

In my experience, suppliers do not have good stock levels and frequently deliver late. Platforms such as Amazon performance standards and if your supplier cannot meet these, the whole system fails. For example, if the max order defect rate on Amazon is 1% and your supplier can only deliver right 98.5% of the time, this will cause problems for your account.

Ben McAdam is a founder of Profits Collective,  a Profit Coach and Virtual CEO. In this podcast, we talk about the five key metrics on which every eCommerce business should focus.

Revenue

Revenue is your income from sales. If you do not have revenue, you do not have a business! A healthy company should have a growing revenue.

Break up your revenue into categories or products to understand what drives it. You do not want to run out of the products which are vital revenue drivers

Margins

Margin is the difference between what the customer pays and the cost to the merchant. If you do not get the ratio between what an item costs and what you can sell it for right, you will not be profitable, no matter how high your revenue. You cannot outsell a margin problem.

With low margins, you will not have enough profit to grow the business or pay yourself. A sale price of  3 to 5 times your cost price is healthy. If your multiple is only two times the cost, business owners tend to burn out when your turnover hits six figures.

Marketing

Are you spending enough on marketing? If you spend to little, you will not sell enough, too much and you could have got a better return. Spending 5 to 15% of your revenue is a healthy amount.

Owner Pay

Owners should make sure they pay themselves so you can live. It is a balance as you do not want to starve the business of funds. You have to be able to pay yourself a market rate for the tasks you will want to delegate later. You will be stuck doing these tasks if your business cannot afford to pay the market rate. Making sure you can afford to pay someone else to do your job is a good indicator that your margins are OK.

Profit

Unless your business is profitable, you will not be able to do important things like pay down debt, pay yourself and attract investors.

Ben talked to Trevor Ginn from vendlab.com, an eCommerce agency specialising in online marketplaces and e-commerce sales platforms.

How to grow your eCommerce business is sponsored by multi-channel eCommerce experts at Vendlab. Please email us to talk about growing your eCommerce business.

Joshua George is the founder of ClickSlice and an expert on Shopify SEO. In this episode, we talk about the continuing importance of SEO as a sales driver for eCommerce stores and how Shopify store owners can get ahead. Topics include:

• How important is SEO these days?
• What is a healthy SEO/Paid search split
• What are the most important things a Shopify website owner should do to improve natural search performance?
• What are the biggest mistakes that Shopify owners make.
• How hard is it to outrank big retailers
• What is the relative importance of links or content?
• Popular misconceptions about SEO
• What should brand look out for when hiring an agency
• What is the most cost-effective SEO strategy
• What has inspired you recently?

Dr Travis Zigler is an optometrist (eye doctor) turned eCommerce entrepreneur. Previously, he owned two optometry practices, which he sold in 2017 to focus on eCommerce. He is the founder of Eye Love, a brand focusing on a condition known as dry eye. Travis uses the profits from Eye Love to fund free clinics in Jamaica and the US through their charity, the Eye Love Cares Foundation.Due to the success of Eye Love, Travis has founded an Amazon PPC agency called Profitable Pineapple (great name!). We talk about his entrepreneurial journey and how he uses his eCommerce success to give back to the community.Things we talked about:Tell me about your business – Eye Love.How did you get the idea?Tell us about your social mission.Where do you source your products?What channels do you sell through?You also run an agency, can you tell me about this?What services do you offer?What kind of businesses do you work for?What are your top Amazon PPC tips?Do you prefer eCommerce or being a doctor?What has inspired you recently?Travis talked to Trevor Ginn from vendlab.com, an eCommerce agency specialising in online marketplaces and e-commerce sales platforms.

Anita Mar is a trademark expert from Trademark Angel. In this episode we cover everything eCommerce businesses need to know about trademarks including:

• What are trademarks?
• What does a trademark allow you do to?
• What is the difference between trademarks, copyright and patents.
• what are the benefits of trademark registration?
• Can companies do it themselves of do they need you
• What kind of businesses do you work with
• Should I register my trademark name or logo?
• What is the process of registering a trademark – how long does it take?
• Are trademarks right for everyone – is there ever a time not to use it
• When can you use trademark symbols?
• How does the process of resisting a trademark work around the world
• How do trademarks work on Amazon
• And eBay
• What to do if someone infringes your trademark?
• What has inspired you recently?

To find out more about trademark angels, visit www.trademarkangel.com

Amazon warehouses frequently lose and damage stock. Will Cooper from Rev Up Technology estimates this can be as much as 3% of sales. Unfortunately, Amazon does not always reimburse merchants, which is a hidden cost of doing business.

Even if you know the reimbursement process, getting around to it is difficult, which is where companies like Rev Up come in. They take the whole process off your hands for a small commission.

In this episode, I talk to Will about why sellers who are making claims are leaving money on the table and what merchants should be doing to get their money back.

How to Grow Your eCommerce Business is sponsored by the multi-channel eCommerce Business Vendlab (⁠⁠⁠www.vendlab.com⁠⁠⁠). Contact us if you want to discuss growing your eCommerce business.

In this podcast, we discuss why we think that Shopify is the best eCommerce platform for most sellers.

This is because it offers an intuitive, user-friendly interface and powerful tools for inventory management, marketing, and customer engagement. Its scalability and extensive app ecosystem make it ideal for businesses of all sizes, from startups to global enterprises.

In this episode talk with Nobert Norbert Strappler from SyncSpider (www.syncspider.com). Syncspider connects eCommerce tools, for example, reducing stock on Amazon if you make a sale on eBay. Like Zapier, but eCommerce specific.Integration is a real problem in eCommerce, so it was fascinating to talk to Nobert and why he started Syncspider and what keeps him excited about eCommerce.Nobert was talking to Trevor Ginn from vendlab.com, an eCommerce agency specialising in online marketplaces and e-commerce sales platforms.

In this week's podcast, Trevor talks to John Horn from The Stub Group about how to Maximise your Google ads performance. Google has been increasing the automation of its ads programmes, recently introducing the highly automated Performance Max format.

What is Performance Max

Performance Max campaigns use machine learning to try and achieve a retailer's goals. They are highly automated and do not require the advertiser to specify any targets. To create a PM campaign, a retailer must specify

• Product feed
• Performance goals
• Audience signals
• Ad creative

Google takes this info and finds customers for your business within your target.

Benefits to retailers

PM campaign is a massive time saver; in John's experience, they outperform standard shopping campaigns.

In my experience (Trevor), whilst it is possible to beat automation in the short term, in the long term, performance is steadier.

Optimising Performance max

Optimise product feed

The data you submit to PM is your biggest lever when optimising performance. Areas to optimise:

• Images
• Title
• Attributes
• Video content

Assets

Creating attractive and relevant ad assets will help Google understand your products and promote them more effectively to potential customers.

Audience signals

With privacy becoming a more significant issue online, companies like Apple have stopped shaving customer data with advertisers. To help Google learn faster, submit audience data to Google, e.g. customer emails.

In my experience (Trevor), adding audience data makes a massive difference to performance.

Performance Targets

Carefully choose your performance target. The most aggressive a target, the harder Google will find it to find customers at that price.

Joihn talked to Trevor Ginn from vendlab.com, an eCommerce agency specialising in online marketplaces and e-commerce sales platforms.

In this week’s podcast, Trevor talked to Nahar Geva from Zik Analytics about how to Boost your eBay sales.

Zik Analytics is a platform which helps sellers to research successful products to sell on eBay and other online platforms.

Is eBay still worth selling on?

Yes! eBay is the number two online marketplace with 180 users worldwide.

Whilst eBay was originally a second-hand marketplace, most products are now sold at a fixed price.

Furthermore, selling multi-channel diversifies your business and reduces risk.

What can be sold on eBay?

Almost everything can be sold on eBay. Growth categories include:

• Jewellery
• Clothing (Under <$40)
• Electronics
• Outdoor sports

Unlike Amazon, it is easy to describe products on eBay individually. This means that products can be sold in a range of conditions. For this reason, many big retailers use eBay to sell their returns or end-of-line stock.

How to Boost your eBay sales

Titles

Write descriptive titles which contact long tail keywords. Use as many of the available 80 characters as possible.

Item specifics

These are super important as they enable users to filter for the product they want to buy. You will not be included in filtered searches if you do not include specifics.

Pricing!

eBay is a competitive marketplace, and so pricing is a critical factor. Monitor your pricing and ensure your offer is competitive.

Imagery

Use high-quality professional images which display the product effectively. The main image should be on a white background and take up the majority of the image.

Watch your metrics

eBay monitors metrics, and better-performing sellers will get higher-ranking search results.

Variations

Using variations combines multiple products into a single listing, improving listing performance and conversion rate.

Sell internationally

By making your listings available to international buyers through your own shipping or eBay’s Global Shipping programme, sellers can increase sales by at least 5-10%.

Share this:

Today I caught up with Jonnie Cartmill from Sendcloud, a shipping solution for eCommerce sellers. Sendcloud manages carrier integrations and allows you to access multiple carrier solutions from one interface, without doing your own integrations. Here are some of the things we talked about:What does send cloud do for sellers?What is the history of the company?Why should sellers use it instead of integrating directly with the couriers?What do you think is the best way to ship internationally?Do you work with other software providers e.g., Linnworks?How was Brexit for you!?What has inspired you recently?Jonnie was talking to Trevor Ginn from vendlab.com, an eCommerce agency specialising in online marketplaces and e-commerce sales platforms.

In this week's edition of the eCommerce Odyssey Podcast, Trevor talks to Kaitlyn Study of South Street and Co, a marketing agency based in Orlando, Florida, USA.South Street & Co. was established in 2015 and helps small business owners reach more customers through great digital marketing, design and automation.Kaitlyn Study original set her business up as a side hustle, and it quickly grew into a full-time business.We discussed:How Kaitlyn started South Street and coThe importance of local searchMarketing automationThe platforms they useThe importance of coachingKaitlyn's advice for starting your side hustle!What has inspired her recentlyKaitlyn talked to Trevor Ginn from www.vendlab.com, an eCommerce agency specialising in online marketplaces and e-commerce sales platforms.

In this episode of How to Grow Your eCommerce Business, Trevor sits down with John Gargiulo from Airpost (https://airpost.ai/) to explore how AI is helping eCommerce brands create high-converting ads with ease!

Topics we cover:

• What is the process of creating a video using Airpost?
• What makes a good video?
• How does AI help?
• What are the best platforms to publish video ads?
• Who do video ads work best for?
• What are your video creation best practice tips?
• What kind of performance are you seeing from the videos?
• What is the future of video ads?
• What has inspired you recently?

How to Grow Your eCommerce Business is a podcast from the multi-channel eCommerce agency Vendlab (www.vendlab.com)

Dan LeBlanc is the founder of Daacity, a SaaS company which enables businesses to combine their data from different sales channel into a single, holistic view of performance. In this Episode, Trevor and Dan talk about the importance of accurate reporting in helping companies understand their business, customers and product performance.

Things we discussed:

• What is the problem that you fix?
• How did you get into doing this?
• What are the problems that you face in doing this?
• Does the data go both ways
• How do you deal with minor channels
• When should a business graduate from a spreadsheet to using a tool
• How do you deal with commission costs.
• What about cross channel conversions?
• What problems can you not fix yet??
• Are you using any AI technology yet.
• What has inspired you recently.

Vendlab.com is an eCommerce agency specialising in launching and growing multi-channel direct to consumer businesses.

How to Grow Your eCommerce Business is sponsored by the multi-channel eCommerce Business Vendlab (www.vendlab.com). Contact us if you want to talk about grow your eCommerce business.

In this episode, we discuss creating a winning pricing strategy across your eCommerce business. Questions we cover are:

- Why is pricing important

- Can small differences in pricing make big differences?

- Is pricing the only important thing?

- What are the differences between pricing as a retailer or a brand owner?

- How to price shipping.  What are the options?

- How do you manage pricing, manually or automatically?

- Amazon pricing - Google shopping pricing - eBay pricing

- International pricing

- Promotional pricing

- How to run pricing experiments

Shawn O'Neil from Speed Sense is an expert on website speed. In this podcast, we discuss how you know if you have a website speed issue and how to build an engaging website experience

Why is site speed important?

Website speed is important for three reasons:

1. Conversion rate. Faster sites give a better user experience leading to lower bounce rates and higher conversion rates
2. SEO. Site speed is a ranking factor for Google natural search and is measured by their core web vitals metrics
3. Return on ad spend. Sites which convert better will give a higher return on ad spend.

How do you know if you have a site speed problem?

You can identify if you have a site speed issue by scanning your site using the popular site speed using a tool such as Google page speed. This will give two categories of metrics

• Real user metrics (RUM). How users are experiencing your site
• Synthetic. An estimated speed metric

The metrics given on the Google page speed tool will give benchmark for the site speed. If the major pages on the site pass core web vitals then that is the minimum benchmark for judging your site speed is acceptable.

Another good measure is to compare your site to your competitors.

What are Core Web Vitals

Google has chosen the metrics in the core website vitals as they are a good proxy for user experience. They fall into three groups:

1. Is the page loading
2. Is the page responding quickly
3. Is the visual presentation stable

Whether you will pass core web vitals will depend on (amongst other things) our technology stack (e.g. Shopify, Magento) and the number of applications which are loaded with the page. A common problem is below the page functionality e.g. tracking is slowing down the site.

Choosing a fast theme

Though it is an imperfect measure, when you are choosing a new theme, test it using Google page speed. This is imperfect as the theme demo will not have any user metrics.

Top tips for building a fast engaging experience

• Priorities things that are the primary purpose of that page. For example, on a product page, this will be the product details. This data should load before services like reviews, social sharing etc.
• Preload your largest contentful paint (LCP) image.
• Third-party tags in tag manager should be loaded after the main page content.
• Image size. Compress your images properly. Max 300kb/image.

Buy my book, how to grow your eCommerce Business: https://vendlab.com/buy-our-how-to-grow-your-ecommerce-business-book/  

In this week's show, Trevor talks to Harry Drajpunch from Amware (https://www.amwarelogistics.com/) about all thing eCommerce fulfilment. Topics we discuss include:

• What is a fulfilment house or 3PL – what services do they offer?
• What mistakes do people make with fulfilment?
• What kind of merchants does fulfilment work best for?
• What delivery do customers expect?
• How to combine a fulfilment house with marketplace fulfilment?
• What are the advantages of using a 3PL
• What are the disadvantages of using a 3PL
• What are the cost differences between using a 3PL and your own warehouse?
• How to differentiate between 3PLs
• How do you recommend reducing fulfilment costs?
• What are the latest innovations in fulfilment?

How to Grow Your eCommerce Business is sponsored by the multi-channel eCommerce Business Vendlab (⁠www.vendlab.com⁠). Contact us if you want to talk about grow your eCommerce business. Shipping is often an afterthought but is vital to the growth and success of any eCommerce business. It serves as the final touchpoint between the seller and the customer and significantly impacts customer satisfaction and retention. Efficient and reliable shipping solutions can enhance the shopping experience, foster trust, and encourage repeat purchases. Competitive shipping options can help differentiate your business from competitors.

In this episode we discuss:

• How important is shipping?
• What shipping options to offer?
• Free shipping or not free shipping?
• Send tracked or untracked?
• Shipping thresholds
• International shipping options
• Returns – Free or not?
• Fulfilment houses – good idea?
• Channel based shipping

Cart abandonment is a big problem with up to 70% of carts abandoned before a sale is completed. With traffic becoming more expensive, this is a growing issue for retailers. In this podcast, we talk to Valon Xhafa from Behamics about the major causes of abandonment and how to fix them.

Common causes of cart abandonment

There are two main causes of abandonment

1. Technical. The website does not function properly, e.g. payment failure, images do not load. This accounts for 30-40% of abandonment

2. Behavioural. The useability of the site impeeds the purchasing process

For example, sites can cause users to make too many decisions and overwhelm the user.

Common misconceptions about cart abandonment

Users want to buy everything in their cart

Adding to a cart is not necessarily an indication that the shopper is looking to buy. Many sellers use it as a wish list.

Upselling is always good

Too much upselling can suffocate users, leading to higher rates of abandonment. The merchant needs to know when to upsell and when to close the user.

More options are not always better

Having too many options (e.g. payment, product options) forces users to make decisions, suffocating the user. Fewer options mean faster decisions and potentially higher conversion rates.

Fixing cart issues

Monitor your site for errors

Using a tool like Google Analytics, monitor the performance of your site and identify the points at which your site fails.

Make it simple, stupid!

Simplify the purchase process as much as possible. Valon's Behamicsolution provides a solution for predicting the options which will most appeal to each user

Focus on site speed

You only have a brief window to make an impression on your user. Benchmark and work to improve your site speed. For example, faster images are one of the biggest reasons why buyers leave a site without buying.

In this edition of the eCommerce Odyssey Podcast, we discuss dynamic price with Burc Tanir from Prisync. Prisync is a competitive price monitoring and repricing tool which enables customers to increase sales and profit by altering pricing in real-time based on market conditions.

Burc and Trevor discuss how to win more sales and increase margin by dynamically updating pricing.  It is not always a race to the bottom, Prisync finds that 60% of their pricing actions are upwards.

Burc talked to Trevor Ginn from vendlab.com, an eCommerce agency specialising in online marketplaces and e-commerce sales platforms.

Simon Severino is the CEO and founder of Strategy Sprints. Strategy Sprints helps companies scale quickly whilst freeing up the time of the company's exec team to focus on building their business.Simon was talking to Trevor Ginn from vendlab.com, an eCommerce agency specialising in online marketplaces and e-commerce sales platforms.

In this episode of the eCommerce Odyssey Podcast, we talk to Rael Cline from Nozzle.ai. Nozzle turns raw data into actionable insights that help you grow your business on Amazon.Amazon sellers have long been frustrated with the lack of customer data available to them. This data is essential for making informed business decisions but has been locked away by Amazon. Nozzle Analytics gives you back control of your sales and customer data. With this powerful tool, you can track your sales in real-time, as well as gain insights into your customers’ buying habits.We talked about:What Nozzle.ai doesWhere Rael got the idea fromHow the best Amazon sellers are using Nozzle to grow their businessHow Rael sees Amazon progressing over the next few yearsWhat has inspired him recentlyRael was talking to Trevor Ginn from vendlab.com, an eCommerce agency specialising in online marketplaces and e-commerce sales platforms.

In this week’s show, Trevor talks to Gen Furukawa from Prehook, an application for Shopify which allows merchants to run quizzes to learn more about their customers

What is a quiz

A Shopify quiz (as enabled by Prehook) asks customers questions and collects data about their preferences. It helps them find the product they want by recommending a product. Examples include (considering ):

• Asking the age of the child to recommend toys
• Asking the kind of products customers are looking for

After the quiz, a store can send a welcome flow personalised to the customer’s profile

Why use quizzes?

After iOS 14 brands no longer have the channels they had to run profitable ads. In the past DTC brands could create campaigns using platforms like Facebook, learn which customer segments performed best and optimise their campaigns. CPC and acquisition costs are increasing and it is more difficult for brands to understand who their customers are and how to target them

Quizzes are a mechanism to learn more about your customers and optimise your marketing efforts. Benefits include:

• Simplifying the buying process (and improving conversion rate)
• Create a personalised buying experience
• Accelerate list growth
• Capture verified zero party data (data which customers directly and willingly share with a brand)
• Send targeted messaging (e.g. email, SMS) based on the customer’s answers

How to create successful quizzes

A successful quiz should offer something of value to the customer for example:

• Personalised shopping advice e.g. recommend a product
• Personalised advice e.g. recommended articles

Quizzes can be used at multiple stages of the buying process for example:

• Top of funnel – in the top navigation e.g. shopping assistance
• Hook for a Landing page e.g. Drive traffic from email
• After a process – a post postage quiz can establish attribution
• Feedback on products

Measuring success

The success of a quiz is measured through increased revenue and list growth.

Who does well with quizzes?

Prehook has found that the following types of products do particularly well with quizzes:

• Skincare
• Fragrance
• Food and drink
• Apparel

Boopos is a financial company founded by Juan Ignacio García Braschi. They are focused on helping e-commerce companies fund acquisitions. They provide non-dilutive revenue-based financing to e-Commerce and Saas Businesses. Get mid to long term and multipurpose financing to buy a new business or grow your own.Juan was talking to Trevor Ginn from www. vendlab.com, an eCommerce agency specialising in online marketplaces and e-commerce sales platforms.

In this episode of How to Grow Your eCommerce Business, Trevor talks to Matt Harrison from Next Net Media about the ensuring importance of link building for SEO and how to create a successful link building campaign in 2024. Topics include:

• What is link building?
• Is link building still important?
• How should people prioritise link building when doing SEO?
• Are there different types of links?
• What kinds of links should you avoid?
• How do you determine what type of link building you need to do?
• How is AI going to affect link-building?
• What steps do you take to create a link-building campaign?
• What has inspired you recently?

Trevor talks to Anatoliy Labinskiy from The GSM Growth Agency about how to allocate ad spend to get the best performance across multiple ad platforms including Facebook, Google and TikTok. Things we discuss:

• What do we mean by ad spend?
• Which channels do you recommend to merchants in order of priority? Why?
• How do you measure performance? ROI?
• How would you allocate the budget based on performance?
• How would you know it is working?
• As a rule of thumb, what percentage of sale value do you need to spend on ads?
• How do you troubleshoot?
• How long does this all take?

Trevor Ginn runs www.vendlab.com, an ecommerce agency specialising in launching and growing D2C business.

In this episode of the eCommerce Odyssey Podcast, Trevor talks to Ben Leonard from Ecom Brokers (www.ecombrokers.co.uk).Ecom Brokers was founded by Ben Leonard and Allison Walker. Ben had recently gone through the sales of his eCommerce business and was not happy with the brokers he used for the sale. So, he partnered withed his financial adviser to create a new kind of brokerage focused on the growing eCommerce sector.We talked about:Tell me about your company.How did you get the idea for Ecom brokers?What kind of businesses do you sell?When is an idea time to sell?What kind of multiples should people expect?How should you prepare your company for sale?How does your process work?Top tip for realising the value in your company?What has inspired you recently?Ben was talking to Trevor Ginn from www.vendlab.com, an eCommerce agency specialising in online marketplaces and e-commerce sales platforms.

How to Grow your eCommerce Business is sponsored by the eCommerce Growth Agency www.Vendlab.com.

Even Haim is a 7 Figure eCommerce seller and the founder of reconvert.com,seven-figure eCommerce seller and the founder of ⁠reconvert.com,⁠ the top-selling the top selling Upselling app on the Shopify marketplace.

In this recording, Even shares his tips on how optimising your site for upselling can grow your sales by up to 10%.

In this episode of How to Grow Your eCommerce Business, we dive into the key strategies every seller needs to protect their account and navigate Amazon's complex policies. From proactive compliance tips to recovery steps after a suspension, we’re here to help you stay ahead of the curve and keep your business on track.

How to Grow Your eCommerce Business is sponsored by the D2C eCommerce agency VendLab (⁠⁠www.vendlab.com⁠⁠).

Topics we cover:

• Type of Amazon issues
• Buy box suspension
• Amazon Policy violations and suspensions
• How to avoid Amazon suspensions
• Deactivations

Fascinating chat on the eCommerce Odyssey Podcast with Nicholas Bailliache from eStreamly, a provider in the nascent space of Live stream shopping. Live streaming is HUGE in China (20% of online sales) and so undoubtedly it is going to be big in the west before long too. Nicholas has some great insights into how to make a success of live streaming events for your business.I was a sceptic but now I am a convert! I think that live streaming is an effective tool for connecting with audiences and making your business stand out. It also does not need to cost the earth - think of it more as a YouTube vlog.

In this episode we discuss how eBay helps businesses to grow and thrive in the global marketplace. From reaching millions of customers worldwide to leveraging powerful selling tools, we’ll explore how eBay can be a successful channel for our business.

How to Grow your eCommerce Busienss is sponsored by the D2C eCommerce agency VendLab: (⁠www.vendlab.com⁠).

Things we discuss:

• Is eBay still a good place to sell?
• What sells well on eBay
• What does it cost?
• How to optimise ebay listings:
• How to succeed on eBay
• What are the international opportunities on eBay ?
• What is the future for eBay?

In this episode of How to Grow Your eCommerce Business features Trevor interviews Rep Ai (www.hellorep.ai). The Rep AI chatbot guides and supports shoppers at the right moment—boosting sales, resolving inquiries, and delivering data-driven insights for an optimized shopping experience.

Use this exclusive code to get a 25% discount in addition to the 30-day free trial: HOWTOGROW25

Topics we cover: How did you get the idea for the Hello Rep? What kind of training does it require? How do you get the most out of the product? How do you have you avoided AI hallucinations? What kind of performance are you seeing? Are there any positive externalities e.g. support tickets, fewer returns? Does it pass the Turing test? Do you think that search and chat are combining? What is the future of eCommerce customer interface? Where can people find you online?

Neil Twa is the founder of Voltage Direct marketing, an Amazon growth consultancy. Voltage specialises in launching its own private label brands and coaching others to launch their own successful Amazon businesses. We discussed:How did you start VoltageWhat does your sixleaf software do?How do you identify good products to sell on Amazon?Tell me about your FBA investment business VoltageThere are a lot of businesses making acquisitions in the FBA space right now – is this a bubble that is going to burst?What are the most successful Amazon sellers doing right?What has inspired you recently?Neil was talking to Trevor Ginn from vendlab.com, an eCommerce agency specialising in online marketplaces and e-commerce sales platforms.

Fascinating interview on the Ecommerce Odyssey Podcast with Andrew Forman, the founder of Givz. Givz enables any Shopify merchant to set up their own Amazon Smile style charitable donation service. Instead of opting for a discount, customer can donate their discount to a charity of their choice. I was unconvinced to begin with but in the end, I was sold on the idea!Things we talked about:How did you get the idea for givz?What problem does Givz solve?Why is this better than discounts?What is your pricing model?Are consumers driven by factors other than price?How are brands embracing social responsibility?What success have you seen?What has inspired you recently?Andrew talked to Trevor Ginn from vendlab.com, an eCommerce agency specialising in online marketplaces and e-commerce sales platforms.

Today's interview is with Tomer from @SourcingMonster. Sourcing monster is a YouTube channel devoted to helping people succeed at developing private-label products and selling them on Amazon FBA. Tomer runs his own FBA business and is very generous with his advice. Setting up a private label business is not easy, but Tomer has inspired me to give it a try!https://www.sourcing-monster.com/https://www.youtube.com/c/sourcingmonsterTomer was talking to Trevor Ginn from vendlab.com, an eCommerce agency specialising in online marketplaces and e-commerce sales platforms.

Apteo is a platform which uses AI to automate and personalise marketing campaigns. We talked to Shanif Dhanani from Apteo to get their tips on how to increase your customer retention and how AI can help.

5 Top things which eCommerce stores should be doing to increase customer retention

1. Stay in touch with your customers. Your customer will be lost if you do not stay in touch via email and ads.

2. Personalise. 70-80% of customers only buy once. Reaching out to them with relevant offers will increase the conversion rate whilst irrelevant offers will be ignored.

3. Create a sense of urgency. If you are sending out constant offers, customers will just wait for the next offer to make a purchase. By sending a limited time offer to targeted customers you will encourage people to appreciate your brand to make repeat purchases. Free shipping works well with loyal customers.

4. Tell your story. To stand out, you should tell your story to give your brand personality.

5. Cross-sell. Use your data to create relevant offers cross channel.

Using AI to help with retention marketing

Running targeted marketing campaigns is time-consuming. AI tools such as Apteo can help segment your customer data, enabling you to save time and create more personalised campaigns. Apteo is a Shopify app and integrates directly with the major email tools.  Example uses of AI created custom segments include:

· Customised campaigns

· Customer emails

· Insert dynamic products into emails

Shanif talked to Trevor Ginn from vendlab.com, an eCommerce agency specialising in online marketplaces and e-commerce sales platforms.

In this episode, we’re unlocking the secrets of harnessing Google Shopping to boost your e-commerce growth. Whether you’re starting or looking to scale, Google Shopping offers incredible opportunities to reach potential customers. We’ll cover everything from setting up your campaigns to optimising your product listings for maximum visibility. Plus, we’ll share real-world examples, expert tips, and common pitfalls to avoid. So, if you’re ready to turn clicks into conversions, you’rein the right place! Let’s dive in and elevate your e-commerce business with the power of Google Shopping!

How to Grow your eCommerce Business is brought to you by VendLab (www.vendlab.com) the multi-channel eCommerce agency.

Get a copy of our book: https://bit.ly/eCommerce-Growth-Book

In this week’s episode of the Ecommerce Odyssey Podcast, I interview Steve Jones from Veeqo (www.veeqo.com).Veeqo is a leading e-commerce platform helping multi-channel e-commerce businesses to manage their sales.Questions covered include:Can you give me a brief background on VeeqoWhat kind of merchants can you really help?Do you consider yourself to be an all-in-one system?How do you balance the requirements of customers for different features?What is your pricing model?How do you think you fit into the market for eCommerce platforms? Why would someone choose you?What do you see successful merchants doing to grow?What are your predictions for eCommerce over the next 2 years?What has inspired you recently?Steve was talking to Trevor Ginn from vendlab.com, an eCommerce agency specialising in online marketplaces and e-commerce sales platforms.

This episode is sponsored by Fabrikatör (www.fabrikator.io/), the #1 Inventory Management Software For Shopify.

Fabrikatör helps direct-to-consumer ecommerce businesses make wise and confident supply decisions. It also has excellent features for boosting revenue, such as allowing customers to buy products they love when they are out of stock.

In this episode, we talk about best practices for DTC brands and how Fabrikatör helps companies to optimise their inventory management.

Listener can get a 14-day free trial of Fabrikatör plus a 20% discount on their first year for all plans. Just use the code "GrowPodcast2024" before subscribing. 

Trevor interviews Lesley Hensell from Riverbend consulting (https://riverbendconsulting.com/).Riverbend specialises in the nitty-gritty of Amazon, helping sellers fix issues with their accounts and listings. They also help their clients scale their Amazon businesses.Lesley has many useful insights and tips to share if you are interested in Amazon. We talk about how to deal with account suspensions and avoid issues in the first place. Lesley also shares her views on the future of Amazon and eCommerce in general.Lesley talked to Trevor Ginn from vendlab.com, an eCommerce agency specialising in online marketplaces and e-commerce sales platforms.

In this week's episode of the eCommerce Odyssey Podcast, Trevor talked to Andy Hooper from Global eCommerce Experts about all things Cross Border Trade.

The Cross border Opportunity is as big as ever

Brexit and the general economic condition have made international trade more difficult. However, merchants should not give up on international sales! The opportunity is still massive.

· 500 million consumers in the EU

· Many retailers have pulled out of the EU

· EU and UK regulations are still very similar

Basic steps to selling internationally

Recommended steps for starting your international sales:

1. Research your market. Research if your product can be sold from a compliance point of view and if there is likely to be any demand

2. Compliance. Make sure your business and product are compliant with local rules and make any necessary changes.

3. Marketplace strategy. Choose the right route to market for your products

Logistics

The logistics solution you use is determined by the size of your business. Bear the following in mind:

· Shipping pallet into Amazon EU FBA is time-consuming

· Sending items into a 3PL in the EU and then sending parcels into FBA s quicker and enables orders to be fulfilled directly

Best channels for expanding internationally

When expanding internationally, first look at where you are already successfully selling. If you are on Amazon already expanding into their international sites is a great place to start. That said, Amazon is not the biggest platform in many countries. For example:

· Bol.com is the biggest marketplace in the Netherlands

· Cdiscount is a big player in France

· Allegro is the biggest online retailer in Poland

Start with what you know and then look for other opportunities.

Top ten tips for selling internationally

1. Understand your market and country. Good tools include Jungle Scout and Helium 10.

2. Make sure your product is compliant with the country you are selling into

3. Make sure your business is compliant with the country you are selling into

4. Identify the right marketplace to sell-through

5. Find a local fulfilment partner (3PL) for delivering stock to Amazon (and other platforms) and dealing with returns

6. Have a solid shipping and customs process

7. Customer service. Ensure you can cope with customer service in local languages

8. Think about how you will scale your sales and build a multi-channel approach

Andy talked to Trevor Ginn from vendlab.com, an eCommerce agency specialising in online marketplaces and e-commerce sales platforms.

In this week's podcast, Trevor talked to Kaus from Mason, a Shopify app for automating eCommerce storefronts. We talked about the benefits of automating storefronts and

Benefits of automating a Shopify store?

Competition is fierce and it is hard to stand out and grow online. By automating processes on your online store, you can save time and stand out from the crowd. Areas for automation include

• Email marketing/CRM
• Customer loyalty
• Shipping and fulfilment
• Customer experience
• Customer support
• Order tracking
• Merchandising

Avoiding the day-to-day processes necessary to run your site allows you to spend more time growing your business.

Automating your Shopify storefront

Whilst automation in email marketing and fulfilment are widely available, few retailers use automation to keep their storefront fresh. Areas which can be automated include:

• Creating collections, e.g. best sellers, new products
• Inventory updates
• Sales and promotions
• Product bundles, e.g. Creating high converting products into bundles.

Using a solution such as Mason, these processes can be automated, saving time and improving performance.

Example success automations

The Mason team have an off the shelf menu of successful automation which can be quickly implemented. Successful automations include:

• Creating bespoke collections based on customer behaviour
• Badges advertising sales and discounts
• Running promotions and sales

Kaus talked to Trevor Ginn from vendlab.com, an eCommerce agency specialising in online marketplaces and e-commerce sales platforms.

Magenitity (www.magentity.com) is a leading Magento specialist Agency. I caught up with the founder Jason Russell to talk about eCommerce and tackle one of the trickiest questions in eCommerce - Magento or Shopify?Tell me about MagentityMagento or Shopify?How is website speed best measured?Now that websites are becoming more templated, how do eCommerce companies differentiate themselves?What are the most successful eCommerce companies doing?What has inspired you recentlyHost: Trevor Ginn- www.vendlab.comGuest: Jason Russell, Founder Magentity

Jamie Riddell has been at the forefront of Search Engine Optimisation for over 20 years and his latest venture is Escaping Gravity, a Global SEO agency for Challenger brands.SEO was one of the first things which got me excited about eCommerce, so it was great to discuss the latest developments with Jamie.Amongst other things, we chatted about:Over the last few years, paid search results are taking up more space on the SERPs. Does that mean that natural search is less important for retailers?I notice that Amazon seems to appear prominently in the SERPs for product-related searches. Is it becoming more difficult for ‘challenger brands’ to make an impact? Is it a case of the Matthew effect (‘For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away.’)Should SEO have a higher ROI than other (paid) forms of online promotion?How important is getting excellent quality links vs creating great content?Google is implementing core web metrics soon, how much effect do you think this will have on retailers, many of which have slow sitesWhat has inspired you recently?Jamie was interviewed by Trevor Ginn from Vendlab.com. Vendlab are an e-commerce agency specialising in online marketplaces and international trade.

Matt Orlic is a successful Entrepreneur and sports enthusiast.  He has launched 26 companies is 10 verticals.  

In this interview, Matt discusses with Trevor his formula for success!

In this episode of the How to Grow your eCommerce Business Podcast, we explore the art and science of turning website visitors into loyal customers. From actionable strategies to expert insights, we’re here to help you optimize your digital presence and boost your bottom line.

How to Grow your eCommerce Busienss is sponsored by the D2C eCommerce agency VendLab: (www.vendlab.com).

Topics we discuss:

• What is conversion rate, and why is it important
• Benchmarks

• Measuring conversion rate
• User experience
• Quality product info
• Payment options
• Shipping options
• Improving conversion rate

Alex Back is a serial eCommerce entrepreneur. His latest venture, Couch.com is an online platform for matching customers with their perfect couches.

In this podcast, Trevor from Vendlab talks to Alex about how he has been using AI to launch his new venture. He shares tips for how other entrepreneurs can leverage AI to save time and grow sales.

Here are some of the things we talked about:

• What is AI?
• What is the difference between AI and machine learning?
• What AI help with in the eCommerce space?
• Can you give me some examples of AI helping retailers?
• How have you used AI to help build your business?
• Is AI going to put lots of people out of jobs?
• Is AI going to benefit smaller or larger retailers more?
• If AI is turning content into a commodity, how can retailers differentiate themselves?
•  How is it best to combine human and AI capabilities?
• What are the limits to AI – what is it not good at? 
• What has inspired you recently?

Vendlab is an ecommerce agency specialising in launching multi-channel direct-to-consumer businesses.

In this episode, we'll explore the intricacies of U.S. sales tax with Jared Smithson from RJM Tax Exemption. We'll cover everything from the basics of what it is and how it works to the specific challenges businesses face in staying compliant across different states. We’ll also explore how exemptions work, the importance of proper documentation, and the steps you can take to avoid costly penalties.

Whether you're a business owner, accountant, or just someone who wants to understand sales tax better, this conversation with Jared is packed with valuable insights that you won't want to miss.

Topics we cover:

- What is US sales tax?

- What are the US tax rules for overseas ecommerce sellers?

- How do rules differ by state?

- How do you pay taxes, and how do the rules differ by platform?

- How do you minimise your tax burden?

- What issues do sellers get into? Have you got any horror stories?

In this episode of the eCommerce Odyssey podcast, Trevor talks to Ryan Flannagan of Nuanced Media about the status of the Amazon Marketplace in 2022. They discuss:

• Growing in a maturing market
• How brand keep a competitive edge on Amazon
• Importance of reviews
• Grow strategies for advertising on Amazon
• Getting product retail ready
• Measuring performance ACoS or TACoS?

Nuanced Media has written a 2022 Amazon strategy guide which is available from their website – well worth a read!

Shopify is the leading eCommerce platform for any size of store. It is easy to set up a store, but how do you get the best performance? Adam Pearce works for the leading Shopify usability agency Blend Commerce. In this week's eCommerce odyssey Podcast, Trevor took the opportunity to pick Adam's brains on maximising the conversion rate of Shopify storefronts.