July – the month of American independence, British Summer (or not as the case may be), David Hasselhoff’s birthday and the following not-to-be-missed eCommerce news:

Now You See Me – Now You Don’t

Last month Etsy announced that it was testing the inclusion of postage on its search page prices. Fast forward one month (or three days) and that experiment was well and truly concluded with a ‘maybe not’.

Esty have now ended the experiment, with all users back to seeing separate costs for both the item and the shipping, saying that:

“Our top priority continues to be getting you more sales”.

School’s Out For Summer

Last month saw the beginning of the school holidays, which of course means Back to School mayhem. Deloitte’s 2017 Back to School survey provided some interesting statistics including the following:

– B2S is the second biggest shopping season (no prizes for guessing the first!);

– B2S accounts for 50% of annual school spend; and

– In-store B2S spend is twice that of online.

In other words, if you’re not riding the B2S bus you should seriously think about hopping on and taking advantage of the huge opportunity for eCommerce sellers.

That’s Not My Name

Eagle-eyed Shopify users might have noticed that from the end of July 2017 purchases no longer redirect customers to checkout.shopify.com.

Instead, purchases now take place on your own domain, meaning that the whole shopping journey, from “Hey there” to “It’s been great, we must do this again sometime”, will stay on your website – increasing customer confidence and reinforcing your brand.

Good News or Bad News First

One day you’re the richest man in the world and then the next morning you’re announcing 77% plunge in profits.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos woke up on Thursday morning worth a cool $90.6 billion, overtaking Bill Gates as the world’s richest person, all in anticipation of Amazon’s Q2 earnings report being released later that day.

The good news: Net sales increased 25% to $38 billion

The not so good news: Amazon’s profits for the quarter plunged 77% from the previous year’s, owing to heavy investments over the quarter (that aren’t looking to slow).

Following that sandwich, Bezos is now the world’s third richest person – not too shabby.

Here’s to an equally exciting August!

About Expandly

Expandly is multichannel management software that is all about saving you time and effort.

From the moment you login in the morning to the moment you ship your orders, Expandly aims to reduce your workload. It is simple, easy to use and focussed on helping small eCommerce businesses go from home-office or unit to warehouse and beyond.

Find out more about Expandly Multichannel Management software