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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.
Baymard’s latest research shows that buying a gift on many eCommerce sites is way harder than it needs to be.
Shoppers often can’t find gifting options, don’t understand what “gift mode” actually does, or get confused at checkout when the recipient’s details don’t fit the usual form.
All of this creates friction at the exact moment people are ready to buy. Baymard’s takeaway is simple: make gifting options clear early on, explain what’s included, and adjust the checkout flow when an order is marked as a gift.
Small improvements here can make gift-buying feel smoother, reduce abandoned carts, and create a much better experience for both the buyer and the recipient.
Discover Four Ways to Provide a Superior Gifting UI
(Note: this article is available to read with a free Baymard account)
🎉 New Shopify App: Shoppable Video!
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WooCommerce has announced that Stripe’s new Agentic Commerce Suite will include support for WooCommerce stores from day one, making Woo merchants some of the first to benefit when the platform rolls out in the coming months.
This suite, launched by Stripe, is designed to let businesses sell through multiple AI shopping agents using a single integration with Stripe, eliminating the need to build separate custom integrations for each new AI platform.
By connecting a store’s product catalog once, merchants can reach customers through whichever AI agents they prefer, while Stripe handles product discovery, checkout, payments, and fraud protection.
Learn About Stripe's Agentic Commerce Suite
SaySpot Shutting Down
We wanted to share a quick update about one of our smaller projects, the SaySpot reviews platform.
After a lot of thought, we've decided to wind it down to hyper focus on projects and initiatives that matter most to you - conversion optimization and performance.
SaySpot has stopped accepting new signups, and the service will be permanently shut down on March 31, 2026.
If you’re currently using SaySpot, you’ll just need to export your reviews before that date.
You can do this anytime from your dashboard under Settings → Import/Export by clicking “Export all Reviews.”
There are also some excellent alternative review platforms available for WooCommerce to switch to.
In addition to an ambitious roadmap for Shoptimizer, you can also expect lots of new goodies to enhance your WooCommerce and Shopify stores.
The frantic pace of change in eCommerce is relentless - but you can count on us to be here as always to help support and grow your eCommerce businesses.
Pietro Saccomani breaks down BFCM (Black Friday/Cyber Monday) 2025 using data from several major sources and shows how different the story looks depending on who’s reporting it.
Shopify reported a 27% year-over-year increase in sales across the BFCM period, while broader industry data from Adobe and Salesforce pointed to a much smaller 7% growth in total online spend.
Data from independent-brand sources like KnoCommerce suggested stronger growth for smaller merchants, with sales up around 20%+ over the extended BFCM window.
Despite higher top-line revenue, the article stresses that profitability was under pressure.
Customer acquisition costs increased, conversion rates softened, and while email and SMS clicks rose sharply, attributed revenue from those channels declined year over year.
Mobile continued to dominate traffic and revenue, and many brands spread discounts earlier into November, effectively turning BFCM into a longer promotional season.
See the True Story of Black Friday 2025
The excellent video explains that SEO is shifting away from traditional backlink building toward brand mentions and overall brand authority, especially as AI-driven search results become more common.
Studies referenced show that brand mentions now have a much stronger impact than backlinks in AI Overviews, making online reputation and trust key factors for visibility in modern search.
To build this authority, the video emphasizes digital PR and content-led strategies, such as creating newsworthy, data-driven content that earns mentions from journalists and publications.
It also highlights the need to track brand mentions, reclaim links, and encourage branded searches through advertising.
In a zero-click, AI-influenced search landscape, being recognized as a trusted brand matters more than simply accumulating links.
Discover what Google is Counting Instead of Backlinks
Oxbow UI is a free open-source library of production-ready UI components and layout blocks built with Tailwind CSS and Alpine JS, distributed under the MIT license.
It offers hundreds of predesign-crafted sections - such as hero banners, pricing pages, feature displays, forms, buttons, and more -that developers can copy and paste directly into projects to speed up building modern, responsive websites without starting from scratch.
Take a Look at Oxbow UI
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Have a great week and best of luck with your projects!
Simon and Colm from CommerceGurus
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