In case you missed it in the flurry of new acronyms over the past few years, FOMO stands for “fear of missing out.” While this term is often used in reference to seeing what others are doing on social media, ecommerce retailers can also use FOMO to sell products. Let’s talk about a few ways you can generate FOMO in your eCommerce business to boost conversions.

In eCommerce, FOMO is induced via the scarcity principle. This economic principle refers to a low supply and high demand. We assume that if a product is scarce, it must also be valuable and desirable. When a customer sees that a product they are looking at is running low or only has a certain number remaining, it encourages them to make the purchase. To demonstrate scarcity, add an inventory number on your product page that displays when a certain threshold is reached. For example, when there are 20 items left it stock, it would show a message that says “Hurry! Only 20 left!” and automatically adjust with each purchase. To do this

Magento News

Magento has implemented a new system on the Magento U portal. This update has several new features including a better UI and course bookmarking. Magento U is still located in the same place under the My Account page.

The 2017 Magento Holiday Commerce Outlook Guide is here, featuring data from Magento BI, tips for customer engagement, optimization ideas, and more.

MagentoLive 2018 will be held October 9-10 in Barcelona, Spain.

Google News

Google Analytic is introducing a new feature over the next few weeks that allows a user to type in a question and get an answer. For example, you will be able to ask, “what percentage of sessions were from mobile devices in July?” and Analytics will display the answer.

SearchEngineLand wrote a good roundup of all of the major changes to PPC so far this year. It covers machine learning, conversion tracking, attribution, ads, shopping, and more.

Google has started to roll out a “Chat” feature within Google My Business. This means a customer

There is a little-known distinction when discussing eCommerce conversion rates and abandonment: the difference between cart abandonment and checkout abandonment. Cart abandonment is when a shopper puts items in their cart, then leaves the site. Checkout abandonment is when a customer has already started the checkout process, but leaves the site before completing it. The difference is subtle but important, especially when thinking about why abandonment happens and how to stop it. You can recover a percentage of sales in the double digits if you can get these customers to return to your store. Let’s look at why shoppers abandon carts and checkouts and what can be done to bring them back.

Cart Abandonment

Prevention
According to SaleCycle, the cart abandonment rate for the first quarter of 2017 is 75.6%. One of the reasons why shoppers abandon their cart is a bad user experience. This could include pages that take too long to load, poorly designed navigation, lack of mobile responsiveness,

We take a look at basic search engine optimization (SEO) practices every new eCommerce retailer should know about.

If you’re in the midst of building a new eCommerce business, search engine optimization may be the furthest thing from your mind. As understandable as that is, search is a major contributor of traffic to eCommerce stores. If your store isn’t search-engine friendly, you’ll miss out on a lot of potential sales.

Search engine optimization is a complex practice, especially where eCommerce is concerned, but once you have the basics in place, it’s largely a matter of refinement and ensuring you continue to follow best practices.

Let’s have a look at the bare minimum of work you should do to set your site up for the SERPS. I’m going to assume you’ve already chosen an SEO-friendly eCommerce platform like Magento and performance-optimized hosting capable of offering the low-latency shopping experience modern eCommerce customers demand.

Keyword Research

Keywords and key phrases give

This is a multi-part series of blogs detailing our own Sandee Hart's experiences marketing her work as a writer. Part 2 takes a look at defining & building your brand, while Part 3 explores defining your target audience as an author or brand.

Books, Branding, & Building

I took a break from ParadoxLabs for a few months because I recently published a book with one of my oldest and dearest friends, Bill Bowers. Our book “Nighthawk: A Young Airman’s Tour at Clark Air Base” is the result of two years of following a mutual dream. The writing was hard, but what we have found that the marketing is even harder. To my surprise, I found that it was a good thing my real job was marketing and public relations for eCommerce.

These are the basics I use when discussing marketing campaigns with clients. I applied these tried and true steps to create what I thought would be the most amazing marketing campaign to ever hit the ground running:

• Distinguish our work in the marketplace
• Determine our target

Magento News

Magento Live UK is wrapping up, and there were several big announcements made. Most notably, there will be some name changes coming soon. Magento Enterprise will be known as Magento Commerce and Magento Community will be known as Magento Open Source. They have also announced that Magento will be working with Google on progressive web apps. Despite speculation that more information about Magento 1 ongoing support would be discussed at MLUK, there hasn’t been any news on the subject. Stay tuned for more info in the next week or so.

Google News

Ads
Google has joined the Coalition for Better Ads and will be supporting their Better Ads Standards. The standards and best practices will help merchants create ads that are not annoying, that work well on mobile, and that deliver a better customer experience. They have also debuted an Ad Experience Report to help retailers see how these standards apply to their site.

Business
Google My Business now offers Posts for local business listings.

It’s that time again – the second biggest shopping holiday of the year! From pre-K to higher education, over 70 million students and more than 3.5 million teachers will be going back to school (BTS). That’s roughly 23% of the US population! There are so many kinds of BTS products: office and organizational supplies, clothes, tech, personal care products, cleaning products, furniture and home décor, food items, and more. Even if you don’t sell these traditional BTS items, you can still capitalize on the theme and increased number of shoppers.

2016 Stats
- On average, back-to-school shoppers spent $673.57
- Only half of families from kindergarten through college had finished shopping by early August
- Nearly 25% of K-12 families hadn’t even started their BTS shopping yet
- 46% planned to shop online in 2016, up 30% from 2015
- Over half of shoppers planned to use click and collect
- The majority planned to start shopping 3-4 weeks before school starts
- 84% of parents reported that they

Over the last few years, Millennials and Generation Z have been the focus of marketers and digital providers. However, older generations provide a major opportunity that many have ignored. Americans over the age of 50 spend more than $3.2 trillion dollars every year and account for half of all consumer spending. This group also spends an average of 2.5-4 hours shopping online every week. To cut to the chase, if your online business is not making a deliberate effort to reach senior shoppers, you’re probably making a big mistake.

Pew Research Center recently released their latest report on technology adoption among seniors (in this report, senior means 65+). Here are some of the key findings:

• Individuals over the age of 65 make up 15% of the current population
• 42% have smartphones
• 67% use the internet
• Of those who are online, 75% use the internet daily
• 50% have the internet at home
• Those who are 80+ are half as likely to use or have the internet, and 4x less likely to have a smartphone
• Seniors

Magento News

Magento Announces Ongoing Support for M1
There are not many details yet, but it looks like Magento 1 will still be supported after November 2018. We will bring you more info on this as it becomes available. See the original post here.

Gartner Magic Quadrant Names Magento a Leader
In an analysis of 21 digital commerce platforms and vendors, Gartner has included Magento Commerce among its grouping of Leaders. The ranking is based on a company’s completeness of vision and ability to execute. Citing Magento’s flexibility, cost-effectiveness, speed, and architecture, Gartner has recognized Magento’s position as an industry leader dedicated to serving eCommerce companies of all sizes.

Magento and Indaba Creating Industry Guidebook
Early this month, CloudCommerce announced that its subsidiary, Indaba Group, would be partnering with Magento and Retail Dive to create a guidebook for eCommerce merchants about industry best practices. Featuring the Vice President of Strategy for Magento,

As the number of eCommerce stores continues to grow, customers have an ever-increasing number of places to shop and products to buy. Standing apart from the crowd and delivering a great shopping experience online is a challenge that every merchant in any industry faces. Customers want products that are tailored to their needs, tastes, and budget, and they don’t want to spend time looking for them. Nearly 80% of consumers say they want and expect personalized shopping experiences. In fact, more than half of millennials expect a brand to remember their birthday.

Fortunately, both versions 1 and 2 of Magento Enterprise Edition come with out-of-the-box features that make personalization easy. One of the most powerful of these Enterprise Edition-exclusive features is customer segmentation. Using these advanced segmentation tools, retailers can identify their most valuable customers, group customers using a wide range of variables, and deliver customized shopping and marketing elements.

Segment