Retail news roundup — 20 March 2018
Germany has been doing really well economically (their joblessness is hitting record low while everyone else in Europe is struggling). The economical ease seem to translate into online buying prowess too. Get everyone to sell in Germany!
Amazon
Trump really doesn’t like Jeff Bezos (who also owns Washington Post). After it was reported that Trump is “obsessed with Amazon”, Amazon shares took a nosedive.
On this side of the pond though Amazon is really, really pushing ahead: they just signed a distro deal with French retailer Casino Group — which means Monoprix products will be available from Prime Now in France. This is a pretty big deal, Casino is the first French retailer to have a partnership with Amazon.
eBay
If you are below standard seller on eBay, you will pay an additional 4% surcharge to them, as part of the company’s push to rid itself of terrible sellers.
They also added AI chatbots to their Purchase History Pages. Bow down to our machine overlords now.
The Cambridge Analytica scandal will deeply influence digital marketing in the future, as they are already putting in more safety controls as a reaction to the scandal. This will mean less access to customer data and worse targeted ads, which will mean less sales coming from social.
Opportunities
GDPR is arriving 25 May which means retailers will have way less access to customers’ spending habits. For clothing and cosmetics, email marketing can be responsible for about 10–30% of sales: with GDPR, they might not have access to purchase history and personal data — which means they will need to expand their sales horizons (ie sell on more marketplaces). Here is an interesting bit about how companies are trying to stay ahead of the curve and using kind of nefarious tactics to keep your data.
Google is testing zero result SERPs — which basically means that when you ask Google a question, they will literally only show you the answer, without any links pointing anywhere. They are now only testing with time zones, calculations, but it shows the power they could have in choosing which information people can find.
Athleisure is really big — JD Sports just bought Finish Line for $558M to expand to the US. Most clothing retail are in slump though — for example J Crewor Next. They should really just use CA!
The next big thing to look for is same day delivery, because God forbid you would need to wait a day for your new shoes.
Best practices
Here are two good guides for keyword research and for stealing competitor’s slogans/keywords. These could be helpful for title optimization.
