Top Ecommerce Resources for October

Personally, this past month has been one of major change at our agency. We've been tackling some really large projects and getting into the weeds with new tactics for solving our clients’ unique problems. We've also been fighting the usual growing pains of any agency around people and process. This month's collection of resources reflects both sides — what we do and how we feel. These articles and apps not only share some helpful tactics that can be introduced to your clients, but also some thought provoking questions worth asking yourself.

Personally, this past month has been one of major change at our agency. We've been tackling some really large projects and getting into the weeds with new tactics for solving our clients’ unique problems. We've also been fighting the usual growing pains of any agency around people and process.

This month's collection of resources reflects both sides — what we do and how we feel. These articles and apps not only share some helpful tactics that can be introduced to your clients, but also some thought provoking questions worth asking yourself.

Ecommerce Articles

7 Shortcuts for Building an Ecommerce Startup to $1M in 12 Months

Justin Winter, founder of Diamond Candles, has written a nice little handbook on rapidly growing an ecommerce business. Some of his advice sits right among common best practices such as "find a mentor" and "build a profitable customer acquisition and sales funnel." However, he gets into some less-than-common thinking such as "not being an expert in the product you sell" and "only marketing through a single channel." Given that he was able to build a $12M run rate in 18 months for Diamond Candles, his advice is worth some consideration.

Why I Ruined My Inbox Abandoning $89,000 of Products Across 100 Stores

Matt Quinn, co-founder of Sauce, wrote a fantastic piece analyzing the email marketing practices of 100 top retailers. Conducting his own research and documenting it well, he takes us through his journey of joining 100 different newsletters from 100 retailers where he abandoned a shopping cart. The observations and recommendations on email marketing practices are well worth considering both internally and for your clients.

5 Little-Known Ways to Use Rich Snippets for Ecommerce Websites

Structured data is playing more and more of a key role in how search engines analyze and index websites, especially within the ecommerce space. Vitaly Gonkov of Mageworx, shares five less-than-common strategies that ecommerce websites can use to better position their products and content for increased ranking.

 Why Talented Creatives Are Leaving Your Shitty Agency

There comes a time, often late at night in a dark studio, where we're facing hardships as designers and developers wondering what the heck we're doing with our careers. Warning: this article is not meant to make you feel any better. It does, however, ask some hard questions worth considering around how you treat your staff, manage your clients, and structure your agency. It might not be cheery, but it's worth a read.

Ecommerce Apps

Google Query Explorer

We continue finding ourselves getting pulled into some deep data analysis for our ecommerce clients. Whether it's creating a 301 Redirection Management Strategy or helping our clients build a better understanding of their customers, we continue returning to the depths of Google Analytics. For those on the nerdier side, such as myself, check out the Query Explorer tool provided by the Google Analytics developers. It syncs up to a Google Analytics profile and lets you 'deep mine' the data for specific metrics and dimensions using various filters and segments to sort through the data. It's become a vital tool for us when we need to calculate specific metrics for our clients.

Help Scout

A huge aspect of creating a great ecommerce experience for customers comes from the post-purchase support that's provided. Things don't always go right. How your clients communicate, handle returns, and update their own customers is critical to building long-term recurring business. Help Scout is a support management tool that plugs right into Shopify and helps manage the various streams of support/communication in one central customer profile. A great way for ecommerce companies to stay on top of their customer support game!

What ecommerce resources did you find useful this month? Tell us in the comments below!