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Hi there, hope you're having a great Friday!
This is Colm and Simon from CommerceGurus, with a handpicked weekly roundup of eCommerce articles.
We're really pleased to announce the release of our CommerceKit plugin. CommerceKit is a suite of eCommerce conversion tools and will form the basis of much of what we do going forward.
Our initial CommerceKit launch includes six eCommerce conversion features: Ajax search, countdown timers, order bumps, stock meters, waitlists, and wishlists.
We have loads of more ideas to enhance these further and introduce new features to the mix.
You can start using CommerceKit today by either buying our Shoptimizer WooCommerce theme, or if you're an existing customer, updating it. Our CommerceKit documentation goes through the settings in more detail also.
I've also written a blog post with more details about why we built CommerceKit, performance results in comparison to using separate plugins, and more information about each feature.
Read the Introducing CommerceKit Blog Post
This is an excellent free tool from ahrefs which allows you to:
- Monitor your SEO health - plus get automated emails when something is wrong
- Know your backlinks
- See the keywords that bring you traffic
If you can't justify spending on the main Ahrefs app every month, this is a great way to gain greater knowledge about how your site is performing and what needs to be improved.
Take a look at Ahrefs Webmaster Tools
I came across a really useful (free) tool this week called metatags.io.
With Meta Tags you can edit and experiment with your content, and then preview how your webpage will look on Google, Facebook and Twitter.
Meta tags are specific snippets of text and image content that provide a summary for a webpage. Often meta tag data shows up whenever someone shares a link to a page on your site on social media or in Slack.
In WordPress sites, the free Yoast and Rank Math SEO plugins provide in-built functionality to change this meta tag content.
Check out metatags.io
Which cart abandonment recovery tool to use is a popular question to ask in eCommerce circles. Each time, we always suggest using Jilt.
Jilt is made by the Skyverge team which were acquired this week by GoDaddy.
We've used it on our own CommerceGurus site for years and it's a top-notch piece of software which brings in far more revenue each month than it costs.
If you're not using it (or any cart abandonment tool) then you really should consider it. The 10-minute video in this post is an excellent explainer on setting it up.
See how Jilt works in 10 minutes
I'm trying to make more time to read these days. One book I bought recently, and really enjoyed, is called Conversational Design.
Written by Erika Hall, it focuses on language and the choice of words used when designing websites, apps, or any interface.
While everyone frets over design aesthetics, not as much attention is spent fine-tuning the language and copy used on websites.
This is a great read for designers, developers and store owners and is only $14 for the PDF version.
Check out Conversational Design
I came across a particularly nice variable font on Google Fonts this week called Literata.
Made by the Type Together studio, they're perhaps best known for a font called Adelle Sans and have worked with Apple and Google Books.
Literata is available in 16 different weights. I particularly like the chunky bold version, I reckon it would look very nice for headings and product titles.
Take a look at Literata
Latest Shoptimizer updates
The big Shoptimizer update concerns CommerceKit which I spoke about earlier in this newsletter.
But there are also some useful fixes and new features in the 2.2.5 update to Shoptimizer.
These include a new search icon 'toggle' option to display the search bar on mobile. Plus, some nice UX improvements to the form styles on the checkout page.
See everything on the theme's changelog page.
That's it for this edition. Simply reply to this email if you have any questions or suggestions, we read every message. Have a great week and best of luck with your projects!
Colm and Simon from CommerceGurus
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