1. Five ways to get storefront traffic. Detail pages, sponsored brand ads, posts, live, and off-amazon traffic. Storefronts are great because it's an opportunity to provide a richer experience for customers, and competitors are nowhere to be seen. You can warm up prospects before they hit your detail page to buy. [Post].
2. Big VAT changes coming on July 1st. Alex at SimplyVAT gave me the full rundown here. [Podcast]. Note: your EU margins could get slammed if you're not thinking about pricing.
3. Pre Prime Day advertising/conversion impact. It's well-known that during the weeks leading up to key shopping events throughout the year you can experience negative results with your ads. There will be a fair chunk of window shopping happening as customers think about what they will buy on Prime Day (21st & 22nd June).
4. A10 algorithm (formerly A9). This is the thing that determines where your product ranks for particular search terms. Key changes: profitability isn't that important, seller authority and tenure counts for more, organic sales matter more than paid, offsite traffic and sales matter. As always, relevance (keywords), reviews, sales history and conversions rates remain a top priority. A great summary from Mike Black here.
5. Create different strategies for Amazon and your website. No shit. I've discussed this before, Francois Jaffres and Lisa Pierce. But Justin explains it pretty well to with this nice example from SmartSweets It's also an excellent guide on creating strong packaging. [Post].
6. iOS15 got me sweating. In short, you won't be able to see accurate open rate data anymore. We get 25-28% open rates on this Wednesday email. When that number drops below 20% occasionally, I review it to understand why. That's useful information because I want to continue offering value to you as an audience, in the hope that one day you may want something from me ($$$$$$$). Same for you as brands, understand what content is getting engagement encourages you to create more of it and have a better relationship with your prospects. I just finished a podcast with Juliana Jackson that tackles how you should react to this change will be out in a week! [Subscribe].
7. Frustration-free packaging push. I like FFP. Why more brands don't just do this is beyond me. It's ballache getting scissors out, particularly for my lazy ass who occasionally cuts food with scissors, so I've gotta clean them. Don't make it harder work. Remove this pain point for customers. Amazon will reward you for it as well. [Post]. I asked, "How to get SIOC certified" [answer].
8. 10 million reviews reviewed a month on Amazon. [Article]. In April Facebook removed 16,000 groups related to facilitating fake reviews. This battle is ongoing and I do feel for small brands that don't break the rules. All you can do is pray that Amazon continues to fix it whilst you continuously work on building honest rich reviews from your customers. Data does also suggest that newer reviews have a higher weighting, so encouraging that steady flow is key.
9. Consumer goods prices up 5% YoY. Home Furniture trumped it at 8.5% as did Pet Supplies at 7.5%. Certainly worth considering if you are evaluating your prices on an annual basis, perhaps time to bump it up a little? [Post]. Would allow you to be a bit more aggressive with your ads, as you can afford to pay more, but in the same token conversions are likely to go down. So it's a fine balance.
10. Sponsored brand videos on detail pages. We've been waiting to see where these will appear and now we know [post]. We've seen tremendous success with video ads in SERP so are excited to see how videos on competitor listings play out. Naio explains 3 types of competitors to think of in this clip. [Clip].

Thanks,

George