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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.
A new generation of eCommerce stores has learned from the DTC startups that came before them and want to do things differently. They’re digitally native but they’re also self-funded, focused on growing sustainably, and becoming profitable.
For instance, when Casper went public in 2020, its financial documents revealed that it was losing $157 on every mattress it sold, thanks to the steep cost of social media advertising, which was their main approach to acquiring customers.
In the long run, experts believe bootstrapping and retail partnerships may lead to higher quality products and more enduring businesses.
This excellent article is worth reading for any entrepreneur in the eCommerce space in 2023.
See What the Next Generation of Startups Look Like
WooCommerce has been slowly making progress on "block-ifying" core templates.
But this has been fraught with issues, particularly regarding compatibility with third-party plugins and the benefits of blocks don't appear to outweigh the costs.
This post on WP Tavern looks at the performance impact of checkout blocks and it's not a pretty sight.
The payload is 2MB greater than the shortcode version, and the number of requests doubled.
Until these crucial issues are resolved store owners should stick with the traditional shortcode method of displaying these templates.
Learn about WooCommerce Checkout Blocks Performance
Google has officially confirmed that Optimize will be sunsetted as of Sep 30, 2023.
Optimize was an excellent and inexpensive tool that was deceptively powerful in the right hands. Its capabilities and low cost helped reduce barriers to start experimentation and personalization practices.
This may be the last time we see an A/B testing tool from Google since Optimize was their 3rd attempt in the space.
Learn about Google Optimize Shutting Down
Elementor and Elementor Pro 3.11 include a number of performance related updates which are worth being aware of.
They've worked on improving the performance of background images by enabling the user to choose the image size, per device.
Until now the user couldn’t choose different image sizes for background images per device, and by default Elementor used the full size.
This should help performance somewhat on pages which use background images. But if possible it's even better to avoid them entirely and stick with regular images as these can be lazy loaded.
Read about the Elementor 3.11 Update
MingCute is a set of simple and exquisite open-source icon library. Whether you're a designer or a developer, it's perfect for use in web and mobile.
It is is available under the Apache-2.0 License and can be used in both personal and commercial projects.
Check out the MingCute Icon Library
Coming soon to Shoptimizer
Finally this week, we posted a short thread on Twitter (follow us if you don't already!) covering 3 new features coming soon to Shoptimizer.
- Quantity selection in the sidebar cart
- Two-color product swatches
- Ability to change the size guide icon
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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