Weekly News Roundup (November 20 – 27, 2017)
Here's your dose of weekly ecommerce news from EcomCrew for the week of November 20th to November 27th:
Thanksgiving and Black Friday sales hit record high
Had a crazy Thanksgiving weekend? Well, you're not the only one. The numbers are in and it looks like online sales hit $7.9 Billion for Thanksgiving and Black Friday. That's a 17.9% increase from last year according to Adobe, and as projected, mobile played a huge role in those revenues.
Mobile accounted for as much as 61% of traffic to retail sites on Black Fr iday. More and more people are using their smartphones to close deals,so if you want to stay ahead, you should make your site mobile-responsive, if you haven't already.
eBay rolls out its own version of the Buy Box
The eBay version of the Buy Box is finally here. Called Group Similar Listings, the feature groups all the listings for the same product under one single search result page, making browsing easier and more streamlined.
It also comes with eBay's very own version of the Buy Box, which they've called “Our Pick”. This feature chooses which seller is going to get the order.
The Buy Box has been one of the reasons why Amazon has grown exponentially in years and it looks like eBay is taking a page out of Amazon's book. Will they succeed? That's for us to find out in the next few months.
Paypal and Bigcommerce's expanded relationship allows merchants to apply for financing of up to $125,000
BigCommerce and Paypal's relationship is as strong as ever. Paypal has extended its partnership with the ecommerce platform, allowing BigCommerce merchants better access to Paypal services like Paypal Credit, Paypal Working Capital and even marketing apps and tools.
Paypal has been forging partnerships with banks, card networks and ecommerce platforms like BigCommerce to grow and scale. With BigCommerce's wide reach,the partnership will prove to be very beneficial to Paypal indeed.
Bitcoin climbs to almost $10,000 amid warnings of a bubble
Bitcoin is almost at the $10000 mark. The cryptocurrency that started the year at just $1000 has now reached its all time high of $9721. At this point, it now has a market cap higher than IBM or McDonalds, but a lot of analysts warn that cryptocurrency might just be one big bubble. That doesn't seem to deter bitcoin investors, though.
Stats from the latest Canton Fair
This year's Canton fair has seen a lot of action. There's been 3.36% increase in attendance. That's 213 countries from around the world,with over 190,000 participants.
Asian merchants made up 55% of the number, while the Americas clocked in at 14.51%. Export transactions also increased by 8.2%–that's $30.16 billion in transactions for this season. Majority of these transactions were for machinery and electrical products.
EcomCrew Updates
Logistics is a huge part of business. On the blog, Dave shares the ultimate guide on finding and choosing the perfect 3rd party logistics company for your business. It's even got a Free PDF of the best logistics companies out there, so read the blog post to find out more.
In last week's podcast, Gary Huang from 80/20 Sourcing shared insights on how to deal with factory shut downs in China.He also discussed supplier negotiations and was awesome enough to give listeners access to his Negotiations Pack. Go to ecomcrew.com/98 for all the good stuff.
In our 99th podcast, Kevin Stecko from 80sTees.com shares his 18-year ecommerce journey. It takes a lot to be in the game for almost 20 years,so listen in if you want to know some valuable tips from one of the “grandfathers of ecommerce”. Tune in at ecomcrew.com/99 to learn how he did it.
Well, that's a wrap guys. This has been your ecomcrew update and until the next episode, happy selling!
