Contact
Hey, y’all! Welcome back to episode 14 of the Southern Fried Ecommerce Podcast from EYStudios. This week in addition to our cohosts Jay Brimberry and Emily Faulkner, we are joined by Ivonna Gonzalez, Lead Digital Account Manager here at EYStudios. Ivonna was also the recent winner of the EYStudios Culture Award for embodying the culture of EYStudios with everything she does.
We started out this episode with an attempt at a cheer from Jay which was met with clear skepticism from Emily. We then discussed weekend plans which for Emily includes decorating sugar cookies with an abundance of icing and sprinkles and Ivonna will be visiting the Atlanta Botanical Gardens to see their Christmas light display. Jay will be down a child this weekend while his daughter visits grandparents and he’s looking forward to only having a 4-month old baby to keep track of. He offered pearls of parenting wisdom like “they just stare at you” and made us all realize how easy parenting truly is. Jay then jumped into asking Emily and Ivonna if they thought celebrating Festivus on the podcast is a good idea. Festivus is a fictitious December 23rd holiday from Seinfeld that is now celebrated in reality by fans of the show. The idea behind Festivus is airing grievances and Jay believes this is the perfect time to air grievances with each employee. Ivonna and Emily had concerns about that possibly not being the best of ideas.
With that, we moved onto the eCommerce news of the week beginning with “Expand Payment Options to Convert More” from Practical Ecommerce. This article discussed payment options including buy now, pay later, mobile payments, and cryptocurrency. Jay argues that if you get too many payment options going it may confuse less tech-savvy customers who won’t know what option to choose.
EMILY: I agree with you, I think having lots of them is really confusing. I like a lot of the options that they mentioned in [the article]. A lot of the websites I purchase from, I purchase a lot quicker if they have something like Venmo or Amazon or Apple Pay because it’s typically easier to go in, my information is already in there once I log in, and then I’m done, I’ve already purchased it. So for things like that I’ve enjoyed those additional ways to checkout but like you said I’ve been in checkouts where there are just layers and layers of different options and I just think ‘this is too much work’ and move on to something else. And I think there has to be a healthy balance and a nice design on how you want to showcase all of those options. Because sometimes they just let every logo under the sun sit there and you kind of have to visually sift through everything and it gets really complicated.
IVONNA: I somewhat disagree. I agree that there shouldn’t be every payment gateway under the sun as Emily said. You don’t need it a lot of times. I think the main thing to note here is that there are new technologies on the horizon and if we’ve learned anything about eCommerce it’s that if you do not move with the times or at least be aware of what’s happening, you could be left behind. So if we’re talking about crypto, right now it seems very sketchy, it seems very ‘I don’t know how this works’, but 5-10 years from now something might happen and now we’re all using crypto. So I don’t think it’s unsmart to at least have that on the radar. I think the main thing is to just to be intentional about what you’re putting on your site that includes the checkout. So you have to know your customers: Are they using Apple Pay? Are they using Amazon Pay? Then you need to leave those up there because if you don’t, like Emily said, you’re going to lose a customer.
Jay’s advice for cryptocurrency is to find out what he bought and then buy anything but that. He admits he doesn’t know much about cryptocurrency except that he’s lost money in it but he tells Ivonna “over my dead body” will we be using cryptocurrency exclusively in the next 10 years. He also points out that he doesn’t understand how the fluctuating tendency of cryptocurrency will be economically appropriate for eCommerce. For instance, if you bought something for $10, the company will receive $10 and the value of those dollars will remain relatively constant whereas if a customer pays 10 cryptocoins for a product the company may receive cryptocoins that drop in value quickly and are no longer worth the value of the product.
Ivonna pointed out that the US Mint is discontinuing the penny in 2023 so clearly there are changes happening in the way we’re using money. (Jay and Emily didn’t believe her so there are sources linked.) Jay acknowledged that things are changing and that EYStudios’ clients need to know what to do in the current climate. He asked Ivonna what she would tell a client that sells high-end equestrian clothing, saddles, and other horse equipment.
IVONNA: I would definitely recommend looking into the analytics and see what people are buying, what people are using, etc. Like the article said, mobile shopping is trending up consistently over the past few years. But if I were to say what do you absolutely need? I would say Amazon Pay, PayPal, and then whatever default payment method provider because you have to cover the standard people. People are not entirely unfamiliar with inputting their information and creating an account for your site so making sure that that stuff is still there is important. But if you wanted to do something like a digital wallet definitely Amazon Pay and Paypal. I think those are the most common ones right now so I would go with those if you’re going that route. Cryptocurrency? No. I don’t even think there’s integrations for that yet.
EMILY: I would also consider Apple Pay. I think PayPal is actually diminishing a lot, I’ve heard a lot of merchants are thinking of getting rid of that and maybe replacing it with something else. And maybe it’s a generational thing but I think people are kind of phasing out of PayPal and moving toward other avenues like Venmo or things like that.
IVONNA: I think what also plays a part in this is that people are more aware of security levels. In this day and age especially with the pandemic and a lot of data breaches and all. People are becoming more aware of which payment gateways are secure which definitely factors in.
Jay points out that he feels that the older generation may have a more difficult time coming to trust these digital wallets and so he agrees that it is important to have standard options available. He then asked what Emily and Ivonna thought of the article’s buy now pay later discussion and if they use any of those services. Neither of them did but they recommended that eCommerce sites should be offering this option if they have larger, pricier products that would make sense to pay for over time.
We then moved into the next article, “‘Consumers crave experiences’: How AR has evolved beyond mere try-on” from Retail Dive. This article discussed the increasing popularity of augmented reality on eCommerce sites to increase consumer engagement. Jay asked if either Ivonna or Emily have used AR for purchasing anything.
IVONNA: I have. I had to purchase furniture and Amazon has the AR view in your room. And it’s not just Amazon there’s a few other places that do this as well but I absolutely love that feature. I’m a visual person so if I can see exactly where it’s going to fit in the space before I even buy it, I’m like ‘yes!’ Everything has to look perfect, I am that person. So definitely good for furniture. That’s really the only experience I’ve had but I’m excited about AR just based on that one experience. So I can definitely see that engagement rate of 50% mentioned in the article because it’s just cool.
EMILY: I am aware of the furniture AR but I’ve actually used it for makeup. I can’t remember what brand it was but it was different colored lipsticks. And I thought ‘oh this is like the Snapchat thing where you can try on different makeup looks’ and I was like ‘why not? I have a few minutes’. I had a great time and it was super fun. Funnily enough, I didn’t actually convert but I think that kind of goes into what my theory is. I think the conversion is based on the fact that if you’re using [AR] you’re very likely already interested in making that conversion. Whereas I was using it to see how the AR worked. My goal wasn’t to see if the makeup looked good on me, it’s just how it works in general.
Jay agrees that unless you’re already interested in the product you’re probably not going to spend the time to engage with something that is exclusively AR. Emily also pointed out that just because there is a high conversion rate on augmented reality doesn’t mean that there’s no value in good video content, good imagery, and a good social media presence. “You don’t have to create the next Pokemon Go to be successful,” she said. AR currently is applicable to very specific verticals but Emily suspects that it will grow in the future just like cryptocurrency.
The last article we discussed during this week’s episode is from DigitalCommerce360, “DC360 lowers projected 2021 online holiday sales growth to 10.5%.” This article discusses that the five-day stretch between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday did not reach projected figures leading to the company tempering its overall forecast for the holiday season. Experts in the article cite earlier shopping this year as the source for the drop in sales during the typical shopping weekend. Emily agrees that she did a lot of her shopping earlier in the shopping season this year but did do a little shopping on Cyber Monday. Ivonna also feels as though she contributed to these lower numbers with the majority of her shopping being done earlier this year. She also mentioned that she did more shopping in brick and mortar stores this year due to supply chain issues causing delivery delays.
Jay also did more of his shopping in person this year and will be taking his daughter shopping in-person to help pick out one of his wife’s gifts. He thinks that there is still something magical about shopping in person at Christmas, especially with a kid. He has fond memories of going with his step-dad to buy presents for his mom and it was a bonding night for them. Emily agrees and also has fond memories of shopping in-person with her family while trying to hide their carts from each other to keep their gifts a secret. Ivonna’s family was more hardcore spending every weekend Christmas shopping with all of her family at all of the stores. As much as we love eCommerce here at EYStudios, Jay does think brick and mortar stores have the advantage in the memories and holiday spirit category. Perhaps, augmented reality advances will change that. He closes out the podcast by hoping that we as humans can hold onto some of the older ways of doing things that brought families together.
We hope you liked this episode of the Southern Fried eCommerce podcast, make sure you subscribe to get a glimpse into eCommerce news every week served Southern Fried style.