Judging from the chatter on Amazon's discussion boards, Amazon really screwed up this morning.

We heard early this morning from our toy sellers that they had received notification from Amazon that they do not meet Amazon's Holiday Guidelines and thus would be shut out of the toys category for the holiday buying season.

This despite the sellers' not just meeting the guidelines but actually having stellar performance!

Even if you don't sell in this category, we're sure you can understand the alarm this would set off for affected sellers -- your revenue for toys depends almost entirely on holiday sales...and here's one of your best performing channels just evaporating.  

We realize it's Halloween, but do you really need to scare the you-know-what out of your toy sellers?

​We anticipate this to be corrected soon -- we'll keep you updated once we learn more.

UPDATE: As expected, Amazon recognized their mistake and retracted the erroneous notifications.  Reports from affected sellers show they are both relieved and in need of new shorts.  

We take pride in enabling sellers to meet marketplace best practices and guidelines that help drive their sales.  If you are new to us, please contact us to learn more or schedule a demo!

It's ecommerce's worst kept secret: despite mobile devices being the tool-of-choice for online shopping, that experience is restricted to just browsing.  The number of buyers actually using checkout on their mobile devices lags compared to those who checkout on their desktop.  

In fact, some studies show that mobile transactions' lag behind desktop is significant: desktop converts at almost 3x when compared to mobile.  

That's not just a problem, it's missed revenue -- you spent all that money getting buyers to your site, you know your buyers are browsing on their mobile device (and you have optimized your listings for the mobile experience)...why lose them when you are most likely to transact the sale?

So what can a merchant do?  One of our favorite industry intelligence firms, L2, has proffered up the following best practices and considerations to optimize your mobile checkout process and increase mobile transactions:

1. Use single-page checkout.  With the average checkout process being 3 pages long, a mobile user will abandon their cart rather than having to complete yet another page of checkout information!
2. Utilize auto-complete for relevant fields.  Even if you go to just one page checkout, there will be on average 12 fields to fill out -- a big deterrent for a mobile user.  Depending on the field type, the first few characters typed can expose auto-complete responses such as an address.
3. Use expedited checkout options in a non-intrusive way.  This means options like Apple Pay or Google Pay on your product detail page, or anchored to the footer of each page in the checkout process.

We take pride in enabling sellers to meet industry best practices and guidelines that help drive their sales.  If you are new to us, please contact us to learn more or schedule a demo!

It's that time of year again: the days are getting shorter, the colors are changing, the temperature is starting to drop.  It's fall and that means one thing to our merchants -- time to prep for holiday sales!

We've provided a quick checklist for you to consult as you prepare for the biggest selling days of the year:

1. No time like the present: start your preparations NOW.  As crazy as it sounds, holiday sales start their climb in September.   And most shoppers start their research in October.
2. Manage your calendar: keep in mind Black Friday and Cyber Monday are no longer the only days to monitor.  Cyber Monday has long-since expanded to include the preceding weekend and go well into the rest of the week.
3. Amass the deals: work with your suppliers to secure aggressive holiday specials that you can market for Black Friday or Cyber Week.  You will need something to stand out from the crowd!
4. Get your house in order: more shoppers researching means more potential buyers -- if they can find your product!  Make sure you have all the product identifiers (UPCs, Brand, Part Number) so they can be found by search engines.   Not sure how?  Follow our best practices!
5. Go mobile or go home:  no change here from any other day on the Internet: more buyers are searching for items on the phone, so make sure your listings are mobile optimized.  Check out our article on mobile optimization for more info!

We love to keep tabs on the trends of online selling and sharing these insights with our merchants to help them drive new sales.  Occasionally, we'll highlight a particular report from an authoritative source in the industry such as industry pundits, cart providers or marketplaces.  

This "Research Roundup" shares some fun observations from Shopify's recently released report "4 Massive Marketing Trends You Should Be Following in 2017"

A few key takeaways to consider:

What: Live video is now "a thing" 
Why You Should Care: most of our merchants are selling what they know -- meaning they have deep product expertise because they use the products themselves.  Live video is not only an easy and cheap way to market, it's effective because you are speaking from experience -- and that authenticity goes a long way with your customer base.  
What Can You Do About It: start small: use your phone for video and a few products you can easily talk about.  Most live videos are simple and have very little production effort -- give it a try!

 
What: channels such as Twitter and Snapchat continue to be effective marketing choices 
Why You Should Care: "persistent" marketing such as ads and blogs are still required, but "ephemeral" messaging platforms such as Twitter continue to gain steam with potential buyers.
What Can You Do About It: keep on tweeting, but don't forget Instagram stories!