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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.
Enjoy!
I've been thinking a lot about increasing conversions so far this year and asked myself: What's the biggest thing you can change in your store to get more sales?
I think the answer is more reviews.
Almost 95% of shoppers read online reviews before making a purchase, and displaying reviews can increase conversion rates by up to 270%.
If you have no reviews but a similar product on Amazon has 50, you'll know which site a customer is more comfortable in buying from.
And some negative reviews are not all bad. In fact, studies have shown that having some less positive feedback is a good thing - it makes your brand real. As the final line in Some Like it Hot goes, "Nobody's perfect". Responding to negative feedback is a great way to show how good your customer support is.
The plugins in this list send automatic reminders to buyers to leave a review and follow up if one isn't provided.
See our top WooCommerce Reviews Plugins
You're probably familiar with Unsplash, the popular site for quality free photography. We included in our top 10 list of free stock photo and video sites.
They've launched an interesting concept; Unsplash for Brands. Companies such as Google and Timberland are adding high quality, branded photos to Unsplash (and paying for it) - and the result is that thousands of blogs and social media campaigns end up using these images as part of their own content.
What a straight-forward approach to get your products shared around the web.
See Unsplash for Brands to read the full post
In case you missed it over the holiday season, 24 ways made a return with twenty-four articles in December covering web design, usability, accessibility, and animation.
There are some great posts from some of the biggest names in the industry such as Eric Meyer and Andy Clarke. I enjoyed Laura Kalbag's post in particular on why people should go back to creating personal websites instead of publishing on big tech platforms.
See all 24 articles
This is a great post from Jilt on trends to look out for in the year ahead. If you're not using their cart recovery plugin by the way, it's well worth taking a look.
Some key ones I thought were interesting is the focus on sustainability, using micro-influencers to spread the word about your products, and the huge growth of eCommerce outside of North America.
Check out the post on Jilt
I enjoyed this Reddit thread from a user who analyzed the top 100 stores on Shopify. 50% of them are in the fashion niche which was a bit surprising to me.
Also, the best selling item was over $50 on more than half of the stores. Branding up and niching down is a good takeaway from the post.
See the full article on Reddit
Latest Shoptimizer updates
If you've been using our Shoptimizer WooCommerce theme, we pushed a couple of nice updates this week in version 1.9.8.
I started on the typography presets section, so you'll be able to quickly change the look and feel of the entire store with one click. The first preset is a web font version which makes Shoptimizer look super clean without needing the additional load of Google fonts.
Other features include support for Rath Math breadcrumbs, a more stylish customizer panel, and larger tappable nav icons on mobile to make them easier to select.
See everything on Shoptimizer'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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