Hello and welcome to March: In Review
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The days are getting longer, and the gloomy clouds of winter are beginning to fade. Spring is here at last, and (far more importantly) In Review is back and ready to satisfy your insatiable cravings for interesting retail content.
We’ve trawled through heaps of half-hearted infographics, piles of poorly-made blogs, and loads of light-on-content news articles to pull out 5 diamonds in the rough. As always, the focus remains on digital marketing, retail, ecommerce and wholesale.
1. Guide: A Marketer’s Guide to Understanding Ecommerce Shoppers in 2016
It’s been said a hundred times before: retail is an industry adapting at a breakneck speed.
Consumer habits are changing in line with widespread digital adoption, and as ecommerce continues to grow, it’s essential to know how to market your products in line with these evolving expectations.
This quick guide by John Rampton from Forbes covers everything from checkout habits to the developing relationship between ecommerce and brick-and-mortar. If you’re in Marketing or Sales for your retail business, this is a must-read !
2. Blog: eBay has a turnaround plan, but will it succeed?
In July last year, everyone was talking about eBay’s big split with Paypal .
Now that enough time has passed, it’s time to take a look at what direction the giant online-marketplace is heading.
Part of eBay’s post-Paypal revitalisation involved a “structured data initiative”, or in less-wordy terminology: a shake up of the categories, and improvements in user experience.
Since beginning this initiative, eBay has re-structured its listings but is seeing little-to-no progress in line with the growth in the rest of the sector. Should eBay be worried? What does the future hold for eBay retailers? Check out the article by The Street to find out more.
3. Study: Online sales grew by 12.3% in February
Important news for online retailers: February saw online sales grow by 12.3%.
Consistently falling prices have encouraged bumps in online spending, and whilst online retailers can be heartened by the significant improvement in online sales growth relative to last February, the figure is down on January 2016.
What does this mean for you? Which category saw the best and worst growth? What should you expect from March and April? Find out here.
We’d love to hear from you in the comments below: have your sales reflected the industry norms? Are you finding that you’re needing to cut prices to keep up sales?
4. Stats and Infographic: Generation Z – 10 Stats From SXSW You Need To Know
Love it or hate it, the labelling of generations has become an integral part of segmented marketing in recent years.
The so called “Generation Z” are defined as the emerging group of consumers, born 1995 onwards. They live and breath technology, and expect to be able to challenge and interact with it in ways older generations are typically less comfortable with.
Understandably this has far-reaching implications for retailers and marketers, who (being of a ‘different breed’) need to understand and learn from their younger audience more clearly in order to effectively sell to them.
In this article by Rachel Arthur, you’ll learn 10 key facts and stats about this emerging generation, as raised at this year’s SXSW festival. Take it on board, and let this insight guide your digital marketing.
5. Video: Shark Tank’s Spikeball discuss their multichannel retail strategy
One of the fastest-growing companies in the US, Spikeball have had wave after wave of success since winning the hit TV show ‘Shark Tank’.
The key to their success, they say, is using a system which give them “ the ability to scale and penetrate additional markets”, without being resource-heavy.
But that’s not all. In this video Spikeball reveal what multichannel strategies they have used to maintain their 3x year on year growth. Watch the full video below:
