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- 🛍 DTC Daily - Friday, Feb 17
🛍 DTC Daily - Friday, Feb 17
Today's DTC news, tips, & tools you need to know
🗑 1 - Report: Etsy is rife with counterfeit goods
📰 TL;DR - A report from Citron Research accuses Etsy of “knowingly or, at the very least, negligently" permitting the sale of counterfeit goods. They even go so far as to say Etsy has encouraged this by allowing prominent product placement. They even found a seller allegedly selling counterfeit goods who'd achieved "star seller" status. As a result, Etsy stock has tumbled.
💡 Insight - Etsy's rules specifically prohibit "unauthorised or counterfeit goods" but a quick search shows that doesn't seem to be the case. Search for "Disney" or "Chanel," for example, and you'll see products that are either using protected IP or that are just plain knockoffs. There are Etsy sellers whose entire business is based around what they might call "fan" merch, but that a Disney lawyer might have a problem with. Point is, if Etsy suffers financially from this report, you can bet they're going to crack down.
🌳 2 - Tatcha launches a very relaxing virtual store, or so I hear
📰 TL;DR - Japanese skincare brand Tatcha has launched a virtual store experience called The Hinoki Forest, meant to replicate relaxing forest bathing traditions. It coincides with an IRL event with the same theme at The Grove in LA, launching today. They join several other brands that are creating not just stores, but experiences, both online and in a physical format.
💡 Insight - I'm very into the novelty of virtual store experiences, as well as turning pop-ups into Instagram influencer-ready spectacles. Unfortunately, Tatcha hasn't bothered to make the virtual experience easy to find (it wasn't on their home page) and I could not get it to load properly. Cool idea, but a reminder that even cool ideas need proper execution.
🧐 3 - How your search bar is failing you
📰 TL;DR - A survey found that 69% of customers go straight to an e-commerce store's search bar, but a whopping 80% leave when the results don't meet their expectations. That's huge. Further, the researchers tried some searches themselves and found that 81% of e-commerce stores displayed irrelevant search results.
💡 Insight - When's the last time you thought about your store's search bar? Well, this is some pretty compelling evidence that you need to be thinking about it more. Most e-commerce platforms come with a basic, pre-built search bar but there are definitely apps you can add on to improve its functionality. And looking at those numbers it seems like a worthwhile investment.
🥘 4 - What the deinfluencing trend means for you
📰 TL;DR - The "deinfluencing" trend has been floating around these last few weeks, but what does that actually mean for e-commerce businesses? This piece points out that deinfluencing doesn't mean the end of influencer marketing, but a change to what is working right now. Influencers still want to sell, but it's more of a "buy this, not that" scenario.
💡 Insight - It's no surprise that deinfluencing has caught in at a time when people are pinching pennies and cutting back on luxury spending. The opportunity here is to work with influencers that will recommend your product as affordable (or at least worth the money) and, most of all, effective. Aim for practicality over aspiration if you want to hop on this trend.
🎶 5 - Make those meta descriptions sing
📰 TL;DR - Now for something practical: meta descriptions. This guide walks you through tools that will help you create and optimize your meta descriptions, which appear in search results. That includes keyword research and even fun tools like heatmaps.
💡 Insight - Similar to your search bar, we're getting back to website fundamentals here. Meta descriptions might be something you wrote ages ago but never revisited. But they're one of the many things you should always be optimizing. Set some time aside and see if your meta descriptions need a spruce.
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