June eCommerce news roundup

June, the month of day-long heat waves, windy BBQs, muddy festivals and the following not-to-be-missed eCommerce news.

Ad Valorem Expandly partnership

This month, the team at Expandly excitedly welcomed Ad Valorem to our eCommerce accountancy partnership program. The award-winning, Xero-loving and client pleasing eCommerce consultancy is now offering its clients the full benefits of Expandly’s Xero integration. Read all about itt here.

The Prime of life

Amazon Prime day has been announced and is set to be the best one yet. Taking place on 15 and 16 July, snippets revealed so far include:

– More than one million deals globally;

– Celeb product exclusives from popular actors, musicians and artists;

– The biggest deals being found via Alexa-enabled devices; and

– A Prime Day concert, featuring Taylor Swift, to top it all off.

Enjoy!

Fast shipping for the win

Fast shipping has become so important for online retail success, that eBay is now only displaying the most cost-effective shipping services for a delivery speed – hiding other higher priced options.

Find out how fast shipping can improve your eCommerce conversion rates.

In other eBay news:

– All listings will now be mobile-friendly by default;

– International sales tax will be automatically collected by eBay for some States, beginning 1st July; and

– New item specifics in Home & Garden categories will be required from 30 July.

Someone’s been busy.

Fee updates

As always, this month has seen some fee update – luckily, for the better:

– eBay UK’s final value fee and fee cap has been reduced for Home, Furniture & DIY and Jewellery & Watches.

– Amazon UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain Watches referral fee has changed from a flat 15% to 15% on the price up €250/£225 and 5% above.

– Amazon UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain Jewellery referral fee has changed from a flat 25%/20% to 20% on the price up €250/£225 and 5% above.

Cha-ching.

Getting the picture

Etsy sellers will be pleased this month, with the release of a new feature that lets you link photos to each of your listing variations – showing them off in all their glory.

Shopify Plus plus

An all-new Shopify Plus has been announced – making eCommerce even easier for large, complex merchants. New top-end features include:

– A centralised view;

– Shopify Flow at organisational level; and

– Easy new store setup.

Coming to a screen near you, later this year. In the meantime, find out everything you need to know about Shopify Plus vs. Shopify here.

Money, money, money

eBay has partnered with a Santander FinTech app to offer SME eBay merchants access to finance in a matter of minutes. It is hoped that this new venture will help online businesses expand quicker and manage cash flow better.

Shopify Unite 2019

Shopify Unit kicked off on June 19th, with some exciting news for eCommerce sellers. Five big announcements stole this year’s show, including:

– A new online store designer;

– Product video and 3D model support;

– New custom storefront tools;

– 11 additional language support; and

– The Shopify Fulfillment Network.

Find out all the juicy details here.

Award season

The Northern eCommerce Awards will return this autumn, celebrating the best businesses in the e-retail industry. Taking place on 23 October 2019, entry into the 24 categories is open now and closes this Friday. Good luck!

Best pals

PrestaShop and PayPal have launched the PrestaShop Checkout – a payment platform allowing merchants to easily manage multiple payment methods directly with PrestaShop. The platform also offers advanced features including security, litigation management and reimbursement.

And, that’s not all PayPal’s been up to this month. They’ve also been busy:

– Releasing the PayPal Commerce Platform – allowing you to customise the payment experience with one easy integration; and

– Announcing the UK business debit card – giving business customers worldwide access to their PayPal funds.

Big updates

BigCommerce is releasing its biggest update for WordPress – allowing merchants to “serve multiple regional versions of their product catalogue from a single WordPress site”. Additional feature announcements included B2B specific site tools and custom content-first product pages. Find out more here.

Who wants to be a millionaire?

More eBay millionaires were created in the past year than in the previous decade! That was the announcement at this year’s eBay Business Awards launch, and it’s what’s driving many multi-channel sellers to include eBay in their sales channel portfolio. Around 1,300 new eBay businesses are trading more than a million-pound turnover – increasing the number of eBay millionaires created in the past ten years to more than 8,500.

Find out how to link your eBay account with Amazon.

Clicks and mortar

Enterprise Nation and Amazon have co-created a new program helping small businesses grow online and in-store. Working with more than 100 small online retailers, the Clicks and Mortar year-long program will offer training, help and the use of ten pop-up shops in cities across the UK. The first round of pop-ups will include TORRO Cases, Swifty Scooters and Altr for Men. Good luck everyone!

Daddy or chips?

Father’s across the land were celebrated this month and online retailers were joining in on the celebrations. New research predicted that total Father’s Day celebration spend would top £834m – with 60% of consumers shopping online. If you’re not yet targeting this year’s ‘retail moments’, start now.

In other news,

Amazon launched Counter – a network of staffed pickup points in the US, Shopify suffered an outage, Xero partnered with Stripe, Shopify Ping was talking to Apple Business Chat, Parcelforce Worldwide launched a new tariff code lookup tool, Amazon expanded its fleet, and we were talking about international eCommerce taxes, the importance of SKUs and when to hire an eCommerce accountant or bookkeeper.

Here’s to a jolly July!