Hey y’all, welcome back to Episode 27 of Southern Fried eCommerce from EYStudios! We start out today’s discussion with co-host Jay Brimberry’s declaration that this was an exhausting week. He says that podcast recordings on Friday are everything that keeps him going and co-host Emily Faulkner agrees. She says she looks forward to recording these with him on Fridays. Jay then mentions that Friday is also the day for Social Hour at EYStudios (where the company virtually hangs out for an hour and does not discuss work) and asks if Emily participates. She says she doesn’t because she doesn’t want to seem like a leadership mole. But then she leaks Jess Richmond’s role as a mole. To which Jay responds that actually, Jess is his mole on Emily. Regardless, Jess is a mole and is no longer safe. 

Jay then goes on to say that typically Supro Paul would be his inside man but he’s mad at him for getting him into Elden Ring. He says he hates it, it’s frustrating, it’s maddening, and he has rage quit multiple times. However, his true beef with Supro lies in the fact that he did not answer a phone call from Jay about the game. Emily then points out that this phone call was at 10 p.m. on a Friday night. 

JAY: If your boss calls you at 10 p.m. on a Friday…

EMILY: I will assume he’s dead because he knows not to call me then. 

Discussion then turns to video games as it so often does here at EYStudios. Jay asks for Emily’s advice on getting his wife into video games. When asked to describe his wife he says that “she’s wonderful, gracious, her beauty can’t be unmatched,” to which Emily replies, “she’s standing right there isn’t she?” She was. Emily recommends some cozy games akin to Animal Crossing where there’s not much tension or shooting just simple villagers and maybe a garden to maintain. This leads to Jay’s brilliant decision to buy his wife a Nintendo Switch for their 10-year anniversary. Join us in a few weeks to see how that goes over with his wife. With that, we jump into the eCommerce news of the week. 

New From EYStudios

First, we dive into some of the recent blogs from EYStudios: 

• To Segment or Not To Segment? Tips On Email Marketing Strategy
• People Over Data: Why Data Matters But People Matter More
• Solving the World’s Problems Through Better Merchandising
• Intro to Google Analytics: How To Read The Basic Data
• How To Convert More Visitors Into Customers

Don’t forget that April is SEO Month at EYStudios and we’re celebrating by offering free SEO audits to eCommerce businesses. Reach out to learn more about getting your own site audit done!

In addition, join us for our Make It Make Sense SEO webinar on April 27, 2022, at 1 p.m.

Next month is Omnichannel Month at EYStudios so check back for more Omnichannel blogs, podcasts, videos, and more.

Gen Z’s Feelings On The MetaVerse

This article, What Gen Z Wants to See from Brands as Metaverse Attachments Grow from RetailDive discusses Gen Z’s opinions on the Metaverse and the data associated with it. Some of the stand-out statistics include: 

• Gen Z consumers spend twice as much time socially interacting in the metaverse than they do in real life
• 20% of Gen Zers plan to direct their “fun” budgets allocated for entertainment and leisure to in-game purchases over the next five years, representing an average annual spend of about $50. 
• 30% of Gen Zers were receptive to brands selling skins and apparel to outfit digital avatars.

Jay’s immediate reaction is that he’s going to have to tell his three-year-old daughter that she needs to live in the real world, stat. Emily says that she read somewhere that when children are polled now about what career aspirations they have, over 50% of them say something along the lines of I want to be a streamer or a Youtuber. 

Jay does mention, however, that the more he looks into Fortnight the more he understands the appeal of skins and apparel. For instance, he really would like to play as a little Moonknight character. Emily agrees but says she doesn’t want to pay for it. She mentions it’s probably because she’s a millennial and not Gen Z that she’s very hesitant toward microtransactions. She does say that she doesn’t hate branded content as a whole though, she just doesn’t want to pay for it. 

For instance, she recently played Far Cry 6’s Stranger Things special mission and it got it reinvigorated about the Stranger Things series, it was a fun mission and she thought it was a great tie-in — it was free though. 

Jay asks if she would be more open to microtransactions in free-to-play games. Emily says yes she probably would be but that most of her experience has been in paid games which is probably why it has left such a sour taste in her mouth. She says, “I’m not paying $70 for a game and then more money just to wear a cute skirt in it.”

The conversation then turns to what the metaverse could become in general. Jay suggests a virtual main street where you can walk into different stores and try on items, check out items with perfect virtual accuracy, and then make a purchase to be picked up online or in-store. Currently, there is quite a monetary barrier to the metaverse and virtual shopping as a whole but Emily says “let the big guys spend their money” to figure out all the hiccups that can occur. And Jay advises even if you can’t afford to participate in the metaverse, you still need to be paying attention to it. 

Companies Lag Behind In eCommerce Supply Chain Tools

Next, we discuss an article from Digital Commerce 360, Many Organizations Lag Investing in Better Digital Supply Chain and eCommerce Tools. The crux of this article is about the lasting effects of the pandemic on businesses and how a lot of them have yet to truly adapt to the transition of digital-first commerce. According to the article, since the pandemic began 70% of businesses have experienced material handling and supply chain disruptions and 60% were (or still are) unable to have ongoing engagement with customers and suppliers.

JAY: B2B businesses, you are going to be left behind if you turn your back on future-proofing your operations! And there are still so many B2B operations out there that just they don’t get it. They don’t get it, Emily. They’ve always done it this way and it’s worked in the past. But it is going to catch up to you B2B businesses. If you’re not willing to make the necessary investments in it, you are going down. It might be a slow road down but someone is going to take you down and I don’t care how big you are. In the future, being nimble, being efficient, and simplifying operations (not just for your internal team but also for your customers) — that is going to win the day. And there are more than enough tools out there to help you enable that.

I still talk to B2B businesses that are using .csv files to organize their products or using archaic ERP systems. It’s not just about having an ERP system, it’s about having an ERP system that is investing in growth. Stop using archaic ERP systems! …And I get it;  it’s hard to do. It’s tough to make technology stack changes. It’s very expensive, this is not an inexpensive proposition. But 3 years from now, 5 years from now, you are going to be sorry that you hadn’t taken the time now to improve your organization. And it’s going to be too late then.

Emily agrees wholeheartedly and says she really doesn’t have much to add after that wonderful speech by Jay. She does say though that the reason we’re so passionate about this topic and keep bringing it up is that it is that important. 

Jay then says that some of the blame does lie with eCommerce agencies and the like when we’re trying to explain this technology. It doesn’t need to be rocket science, he says, we need to work on humanizing this technology and making it easily accessible for business owners. He continues by saying that he’d much rather teach a person to fish than constantly fish for them. Which, he admits, may not be the most lucrative way to operate an agency but he feels it’s the right thing to do. Emily agrees and says she hates tech speak and jargon just for the sake of confusing others. 

EMILY: Maybe this is my post-pandemic brain talking but I just want us to talk and get our work done and log off and just be human beings. Why do we have to make other people afraid so we can make money and live our lives? That’s so silly to me. 

Lower Funnel Ad Formats Dominate Latin American Marketing

The next article we discussed is Performance-Driven Ad Formats Dominate Latin American Retail Media Markets from eMarketer’s Insider Intelligence. Recently, studies of Latin American marketing have found a larger percentage of spending on sponsored ads in comparison to other ad formats more popular in other parts of the world like Europe and the U.S. This was especially true in Mexico, where more than 80% of Amazon ad spend in the country was toward sponsored ads.

Jay’s main point that he wants people to take away from this is: if you’re not investing in the Latin American market, you’re missing out. This is valuable information to take into the world when starting to venture into that market but he highly recommends doing so sooner rather than later. In addition, he says that eCommerce is meant to break down barriers so make sure you have everything in place to take your products international including currency converters, international shipping options, language translators, etc. 

Emily agrees that she has been trying to become more well versed in other international markets specifically Latin America and is interested to see if this trend continues there. Jay says he’s also interested in looking more deeply into Mercado Libre and hopes to dive further into that with Omnichannel Month coming up at EYStudios.

Has Google Search Gotten Worse?

The last article we discussed in this episode relates back to SEO Month here at EYStudios with Is Google Search Worse? Many Seem to Agree from Search Engine Journal. The article dives into whether or not Google Search has become worse and if so, is the algorithm to blame or poor content? While the majority of this article’s research was social media user-based, we still felt that the question at its core was a good one. 

Some points referenced in the article that some of the Redditors made were: 

• “What’s the point of having a shopping tab if everything is shopping?”
• “Most results are just road maps to point you towards buying something rather than giving you info.”
• “The worst is when I’m looking for a release date, for example, and it’s a 5 paragraph article:
  You want to know the date? We’ll tell you the release date.
  Just keep scrolling past these ads to find out the release date.
  …irrelevant backstory
  The release date is coming soon.
  Everyone is excited for the release date.
  More ads.
  Now a lot of people wonder what the release date is.
  Currently we do not have a release date.”

Emily exclaims at that last point, “YES! YES! And it drives me crazy!”
(It drives us all crazy and at EYStudios we promise NEVER to give you content like that.)

Beyond users, it seems SEO professionals also agree that Google is no longer showing people what they’re looking for. One SEO professional showed an example of the search results for “How to Make Homemade Eye Wash” including a featured snippet that showcased a recipe with glue and glitter included in the “eye wash.”

The article attempts to find a cause for this problem with many theories coming out including: 

• AI content has caused search results to become poorer.
• Google has attempted to weed through AI content and it has poorly affected SERPs.
• Clickbait and big brands dominate the “vital” spots where key information should be.

Emily’s theory is a little bit deeper than that. 

EMILY: I think a lot of it is how we’ve set up society. I think a large reason why a lot of these articles aren’t fruitful or they’re considered irrelevant is that a lot of them come from news sites. And because news has been set up as this 24-hour information cycle, whether or not there’s any relevant information isn’t important, it’s only important that content has been distributed.

This is why those release date articles drive me up the wall. I mean they’re just being told to write about it even though nothing exists and nothing has happened. And as much as that drives me crazy as a human being I think what businesses need to understand is that you need relevant content.

Like all of these people can’t find what they’re looking for because they’re being inundated with just — pardon my french — with some crap. It’s just not good stuff. You have to know what people are looking for and try and help them answer those questions. Because if you’re the business or company that answers that question with actual information, you’re going to be the one that they want to go to. Because you’re the only one that’s actually putting in the effort!

She goes on to say that she thinks that Google is attempting to move toward improving the customer experience because they have to have the data showing that current clickbait, AI-generated content is only producing high bounce rates. Jay agrees and says that clearly, Google needs to do a better job of catching this type of content and reorganizing how they’re weeding out scam sites and the like. Emily also says we shouldn’t dismiss the information from this article simply because it’s social media crowdsourced. She says that she thinks this is very valuable information about consumers and their habits that businesses and Google alike should be paying attention to. Her plan? Install a mole at Google to figure out how they plan to address this problem. 

If you’re interested in the position of EYStudios Mole please reach out! If not, please like and subscribe to this podcast and share it with your friends. We hope to see you back here next time! Bye, now y’all!