E-commerce Industry News Recap - Week of March 27th, 2023
Paul Drecksler
15,000+ E-commerce Professionals Read My Weekly Newsletter - Shopifreaks.com is the Internet's highest rated weekly roundup of the top e-commerce news stories that impact your business.
This is a summary recap of the?114th Edition?of the?Shopifreaks E-commerce Newsletter?- brought to you by?Paul Drecksler?&?BigCommerce. Check out the full addition for links and sources.
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STAT OF THE WEEK: The percentage of online BNPL transactions involving groceries grew 40% during the first two months of 2023. – According to Adobe Analytics
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Pinterest is bringing more to the e-commerce table with the integration of shopping capabilities into its Shuffles collage-making app -- identical to those found on regular pins.?Shuffles launched to the public last November, allowing users to create aesthetic collages set to music, which they could share on TikTok or with friends on the app. Pinterest is also exploring a new takeover feature for advertisers called “Pinterest Premiere Spotlight” that prominently showcases a brand on search.?
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YouTube revealed that more than 100,000 channels on its platform are linked to external e-commerce stores. Like Pinterest, YouTube has been making bold moves into e-commerce this past year including integrating with Shopify in July 2022, expanding its access to social shopping tools in Oct 2022, and releasing new features for Shorts including affiliate marketing and the ability to tag and purchase items in Nov 2022.
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It's no secret that big tech has been / is guilty of utilizing dark patterns to get what they want out of you. 亚马逊 had to make it easier for Prime members to cancel their subscriptions last July, following complaints from consumer groups about the numerous hurdles it took to cancel the service. Epic Games was fined $520M in December in part for using dark patterns to coerce players into making unwanted in-game purchases. Block recently came under heat for making it difficult to opt-out of marketing e-mails from brands you've never shopped with before by employing dark pattern designs to bury the opt-out link. There's even a dark pattern named after Mark Zuckerberg called “Zuckering” which fools users into thinking that they need to share certain private information, even if it is not necessary to use the service.
Digital Information World put together a guide showcasing the 12 different types of dark patterns which include 1) Trick Questions, 2) Sneak Into Basket, 3) Roach Motel, 4) Privacy Zucking, 5) Price Comparison Prevention, 6) Misdirection, 7) Hidden Costs, 8) Bait & Switch, 9) Confirmshaming, 10) Disguised Ads, 11) Forced Continuity, and 12) Friend Spam.?
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DoorDash added three new partners including LUSH Cosmetics, Victoria’s Secret & Co. , and Party City (which still exists). They also improved their search and discovery to make it easier to search within a retail store, released the ability to schedule ahead to more consumers, made substituting out-of-stock items easier with a built-in messaging automation, and enabled cash on delivery for restuarants using their white-label delivery solution.?
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The e-commerce acceleration platform MikMak released their “2023 Grocery eCommerce Benchmarks and Insights Report” which took a look at the top-performing grocery retailers. They found that:
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Instagram began testing ads in search results, which will show up in the feed that people can scroll when they tap into a post from search results. The company says that the change is just a test for now, but that it plans on launching the new placement globally in the coming months.?They are also rolling out a new ad type called “Reminder Ads” which send push notifications to remind you of an upcoming event or important date — if, and only if, you opt in to receive them. For example, an ad for a season premiere of a show may include a “Remind Me” button that the user can click to receive a notification reminder one day before it airs, 15 minutes before it airs, and at the start time.?
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Short seller Hindenburg Research alleged that Block, under the leadership of Jack Dorsey , widely overstated its genuine user counts and understated its customer acquisition cost, and that its “Wild West” approach to compliance made it easy for bad actors to mass-create accounts for identity fraud and other scams. Hindenburg said in its report that former Block employees estimated that 40% to 75% of accounts they reviewed were fake, involved in fraud, or were multiple accounts tied to a single person. In response to the news, Block's share price dropped over 15% to $60.18 on Friday, but has since rebounded around 4% at the time of writing this newsletter. Block responded to the news by vowing to fight back, saying it would explore legal action against the short seller for its “factually inaccurate and misleading report” that was “designed to deceive and confuse investors”.
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沃尔玛 laid off hundreds of workers at e-commerce facilities in Pedricktown NJ, Fort Worth TX, Chino CA, Davenport FL, and Bethlehem PA. Walmart did not comment on whether it is downsizing its fulfillment center capacity because it plans to fulfill more orders from stores or because it anticipates fewer online orders from customers.
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Packsize unveiled a new machine designed to build on-demand, perfect-sized boxes exclusively for Walmart to help ship faster, produce less waste, and create a better unboxing experience for customers. The Ultra5 can produce up to 600 boxes/hour, negates the need for filler like plastic air pillows, and allows retailers to fit up to 33% more boxes in freight and delivery carriers.
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亚马逊 shot down a petition signed by 30,000 workers begging CEO Andy Jassy to cancel his return-to-office plan. In the petition, Amazon workers argued that they are more productive and enjoy a better work-life balance in a remote work environment.
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Adobe introduced a new cloud service called Adobe Product Analytics that helps companies find opportunities to improve their applications and websites. At the annual Adobe Summit conference, the company also debuted several other new offerings including a suite of generative AI models called Firefly which enables customers to generate images and stylized fonts based on text prompts.
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Did you see the TikTok video of the Amazon driver in Cary NC who delivered a package during a police standoff with an armed hostage-taker? He even took a picture of the package to confirm its delivery before heading back out on his route!
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Klarna announced its integration with #ChatGPT to roll out a personalized shopping experience that provides product recommendations when users ask for shopping advice, inspiration, and product links via their search and compare tool. Users can ask things like, “I have $150, which headphones can I afford?” and receive a selection of items relevant to that request.
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谷歌 suspended the 拼多多 app after malware was found in versions of the software which exploited a zero-day vulnerability in Android. E-commerce expert Liu Huafang posted on Weibo that Pinduoduo’s app was using security vulnerabilities to gain market share by stealing user data from its competitors.
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Employers in the EU will be to soon be legally obligated to publish the salary ranges of jobs in their listing descriptions as part of efforts to reduce the gender pay gap. Roderic O’Gorman, the Minister for Children and Equality, confirmed that he intends to implement the pay transparency rules within the EU’s three-year deadline.
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领英推荐
利维·斯特劳斯公司 announced a new partnership with Lalaland.ai to supplement human models later this year with AI-generated models. Lalaland utilizes AI to enable fashion brands to use realistic models of every body type, age, size, and skin tone to create a more “inclusive, personal, and sustainable shopping experience.”
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Automattic announced the discovery and patch of a critical vulnerability in the Woo Payments plugin that allows for a full-site takeover by unauthenticated attackers. The vulnerability was discovered on March 22, 2023 by a third party security researcher and affects more than 500k WordPress installs.
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Unzer , a Germany-based payment processor, launched a new BNPL product called upaylater, where it is integrating invoice and installment payment methods and direct debit into its product portfolio via a single interface. Meanwhile another Germany-based firm, Mondu , is opening an office in London after seeing growing demand from U.K. businesses for its B2B BNPL service.
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JFK8, the first Amazon warehouse to successfully vote to form a union last year, has yet to secure a contract or get Amazon to the bargaining table, blaming internal disagreements between union president Christian Smalls and some of the union's legacy organizers. Insiders accuse Smalls of failing to devote enough time to JFK8 efforts because he has been busy traveling to other Amazon warehouses, making public appearances at labor protests, and speaking at events.
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YouTube is shutting down its live social commerce app, Simsim, less than two years after acquiring the Indian startup for around $70M. A spokesperson said Thursday that the company will be “working with creators to introduce more monetization opportunities for creators through an affiliate program and more shopping features across long-form videos, Shorts and livestreams on YouTube in 2023.”
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In May, Amazon will launch test versions of their #Kuiper satellites to take on SpaceX 's Starlink. Amazon recently revealed that it had essentially bought all the spare rocket launch capacity in the world to rival SpaceX, and plans to launch a total of 3,236 satellites by 2029.
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Zumi, a B2B e-commerce startup, is shutting down and laid off its team of 150 people, after failing to raise the funding necessary to sustain its operations. The company was on a mission to revolutionize Africa's $36B apparel market, but will now have to bow out of the scene to competitors like MarketForce and Sabi.
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Australia Post is unveiling a changing room concept for customers to try on their online purchases before deciding to keep items or return them. The new concept will be installed at the Australia Post office in Orange, NSW in July, where the post office will also allocate space to local retailers to showcase their products.
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Rewind , a backup and recovery platform for Shopify , BigCommerce , and other e-commerce platforms, laid off about 27% of its staff, or around 37 employees, after seeing lower-than-anticipated growth. (Those Reddit ads not working as well as they had hoped? Mine neither.) The company announced a $19M CAD Series A round in January 2021, acquired BackHub a month later, and then had an $83M Series B round in September that same year, but now says that their growth has slowed inline with Shopify's slowed growth.
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Amazon is shutting down DPReview , a 25-year-old photography community website that it purchased in 2007. The website's millions of articles will not be kept by Amazon, but should be available on the Internet Archive. The site will be locked with no further updates after April 10th.
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Panera Bread is partnering with Amazon One to use its palm swipe technology for buying food and earning rewards for its loyalty program. The partnership will allow MyPanera members to leave their cash, cards, and mobile devices at home and simply swipe their palm to pay for their meals with saved payment info.
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Peloton Interactive owners in Australia who paid in installments with Affirm will get to keep their equipment but no longer have to pay after Affirm ceases operations in the country. Peloton was Affirm's only business partner in Australia, and a spokesperson said that forgiving the loans would have a nominal impact on the business.
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Meta announced a new WhatsApp desktop application for Windows that will enable end-to-end encrypted group video calls with up to 8 people and calls with up to 32 people. They also claim that the app offers faster device linking and better syncing across devices, as well as new features such as link previews and stickers.
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Plus 7 seed rounds, IPOs, and acquisitions of interest including Kream's $168M Series C
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I hope you find this news recap helpful.
Read the full edition w/ sources here: https://www.shopifreaks.com/block-vs-short-sellers-instagram-ads-dark-patterns/
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See you next week!
Editor of Shopifreaks E-Commerce Newsletter