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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.
There's a significant difference between small-scale direct to consumer websites and large eCommerce behemoths.
During Baymard's testing, they found that 62% of users at some point engaged with nonproduct and nonorder-related content; for example, content found on pages titled “About Us”, “Our Story”, “Our Process”, and so on.
So providing pages dedicated to both “telling the brand’s story” and “showcasing the unique product qualities” helps users and, for some, is a critical consideration in their decision whether or not to purchase from a particular site.
This excellent post highlights some terrific examples of what works well. Your About Us page shouldn't be an afterthought; it's a crucial page if you're running a smaller eCommerce store.
Read about Five Effective Ways to Tell Your ‘Brand’ and ‘Product’ Stories
On July 1, 2021, new EU tax regulations will come into play when the European Union (EU) Value-Added Tax (VAT) eCommerce package takes effect.
EU merchants crossing a new EU-wide threshold of €10,000 will need to register in all EU countries where they make taxable business-to-consumer sales.
But, they can choose to do so via the newly-created One Stop Shop (OSS) system in their own country.
This allows eCommerce merchants to file a single VAT return for the whole of the EU and make just one tax payment distributed across countries where they make sales.
Read more about the new EU tax regulations
This is a very interesting conversation with Melanie Phung about running a small web agency.
She shares how she manages her boutique SEO agency, getting clients setup to have better performing websites in SERPs, formulating objectives and tactics to grow leads and conversion, mastering a referral system that works, and things to look out for when redesigning a website.
It includes a discussion on building a website from a technical standpoint to be more SEO friendly, as well as things to look out for when redesigning a site.
The topics are covered in an fascinating 40 minute conversation, or you could read the transcript directly below.
Learn about building SEO focused websites
I enjoyed this video from Jamie Marsland, a UK-based plugin and courses developer who founded Pootlepress.
In it, he attempts to recreate the homepage of John Lewis, a popular UK eCommerce store using only the native Gutenberg block editor.
It certainly shows that Gutenberg has progressed a great deal but there are key components still missing, particularly responsive controls as well as padding and margin selectors for elements.
If you've been curious about the block editor, this is worth a watch.
Watch how the block editor can be used to recreate the John Lewis website
I keep an eye out for any nice new fonts in the Google fonts library and I spotted a one called Lexend, which is focused on readability.
It comes in 8 different weights, from ultra-thin to ultra-bold so it covers a wide variety of potential use cases.
Initially they were designed with dyslexia and struggling readers in mind, but Bonnie Shaver-Troup, creator of the Lexend project, soon found out that these fonts are also great for everyone else.
You can read more about Lexend on the dedicated website.
Check out Lexend on Google Fonts
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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