What's been happening in the ecommerce industry as we approach the middle of the year? Below, we take a look through the top five ecommerce news stories of the second quarter of 2022.
1. Google Introduces Retail Search For Ecommerce Sites
At the beginning of the quarter, Google Cloud released Retail Search, which will help online business owners replicate the capabilities of Google Search on their own sites. Using algorithms that consider intent and context keys, Retail Search is intended to make search more user-friendly on individual sites so that site visitors will be more inclined to convert. Retail Search joins Google Cloud’s growing suite of Product Discovery Solutions—tools intended to improve digital shopping experiences by increasing efficiency. (Read the full article on Search Engine Journal.)
2. New Study Shows Digital Pickup And Delivery Features No Longer Optional For US Merchants
PMNTS released the U.S. Edition of their Global Digital Shopping Playbook for 2022, which used responses from 3,100 businesses and 13,000+ customers to determine key trends in digital retail. Their key finding was that many consumers are looking for cross-channel shopping capabilities, blending the once fine line between “online” and “brick-and-mortar” shopping. In-store pickup of online orders is becoming more commonplace; best of all, 47% of customers who use in-store pickup end up buying more on their trip to the store. The report also delves into how physical stores are being used to enhance online shopping experiences. (Read the full article on PYMNTS.)
3. Postal Service rolls out e-commerce-focused shipping service
While USPS began slowing the delivery of some first-class parcels as of May 1 to offset costs, they also have plans to expand their USPS Connect program nationwide. A few days after the slowdown went into effect, they introduced USPS Connect eCommerce: a program aimed at making shipping easier and less costly for smaller ecommerce merchants. In its bid to pull businesses away from higher-cost solutions like FedEx and UPS, USPS is expanding its delivery networks via this service and partnering with marketplaces to offer lower pricing. (Read the full article on Modern Shipper.)
4. Amazon prepares for first pet-focused online sales bonanza
Tuesday, May 2 marked the launch of Amazon’s first-ever “Pet Day,” with special discounts and deals on pet-focused items across a broad range of categories. Aside from products, discounted rates extended to pet-themes movies on Amazon Prime, and those wishing to make donations to pet-centered charities could do so via AmazonSmile. In a possible experiment with new and creative offshoots of their immensely popular and profitable Prime Day (coming in July this year), Amazon could be making a move toward more category-specific sales “bonanzas”, which other online merchants can piggyback off of to boost their own sales of related products. (Read the full article on Chain Store Age.)
5. Yottaa Publishes 2022 eCommerce Site Speed Standard
Yottaa released their annual site speed standard report this spring, examining 16 billion page views across 250 retailers to measure performance across the ecommerce industry. The report upholds previous insights that faster loading sites lead to less bounce and more conversions, with new stats stating that reducing ecommerce site load times by just one second leads to a 5.9% increase in conversion. Readers of the report can get more granular insights regarding vertical- and platform-specific insights. (Read the whole article on Yottaa.)