Thursday, July 13

#1 - 🤖 Shopify is launching an AI assistant

📰 TL;DR - Shopify is launching an AI assistant named Sidekick to help you get stuff done faster. Looking at the preview CEO Tobi Lutke shared on Twitter, it looks like a chatbot-style app nestled right into your dashboard, except it can access all of your shop’s info. For example, it can set up a sale, or help you pick a new theme, or suggest rewrites for various parts of your store. It can also pull up your store’s analytics. It’s apparently in beta right now so it’s unclear when it will fully roll out.

Here’s the preview from Lutke on Twitter:

💡 Insight - First, I guess I’m a little disappointed that this isn’t a little green shopping bag named Shoppy that pops up to help out. In all seriousness, it seemed like a matter of time before Shopify put something like this out. When Shopify had its last round of layoffs, it mentioned wanting to focus on AI. Also, the Shopify backend can be overwhelming for new users and I’m sure they were looking for a solution that offered help before someone resorts to contacting customer service. I wouldn’t be surprised if other e-commerce platforms come out with their own versions soon enough.

➡️ You can read the article here...

#2 - 🔥 E-commerce event for marketers, creators, and founders

Announcing OWN IT, the must-attend e-commerce event of the summer for marketers, creators, and founders at companies of all sizes — brought to you by Klaviyo.

The 3-day speaker lineup includes:

• Ty Haney, founder of Outdoor Voices tells her story about ownership and how to create super fans.

• Kim Kreuzberger, CEO of Cravings by Chrissy Teigen reveals how to keep customers coming back

• Cody Plofker, CMO of Jones Road Beauty teaches how to figure out the right acquisition channels for your brand.

• Nik Sharma + Moiz Ali of the Limited Supply podcast sit down with Kyle Cooke, founder of Loverboy to hear how he’s built a beloved alcohol brand in a notoriously traditional industry

Taking place August 15 - 17!

Don’t miss out. Register today!

📣 If you want to reach our audience of 10,000+ DTC store owners, tap here 

#3 - 📈 3 SEO steps to boost organic traffic

📰 TL;DR - Here’s a great Twitter thread for SEO e-commerce expert Keval Shah about some SEO tweaks he made for a client that grew organic traffic by 8,000 visitors in 30 days. The client had already made some headway with SEO, but Shah describes how he did a technical SEO audit, addressed a ton of low-value pages, did some keyword research, and improved on-page SEO. Tons of great tips in here you can execute yourself.

💡 Insight - Bless this guy for sharing this information for free. Yes, it’s a simple overview of what he does, but it is literally the insights people pay him for. It also demonstrates the value of outside help. If you run an e-commerce store, you’re expected to become an instant expert in a million things — sometimes it’s worth getting an actual expert. Lucky for you, you can use this thread to try some stuff out first.

➡️ You can read the tweets here...

#4 - 🛠️ Things worth checking out

🐋 DATA - Learn why I always recommend Triple Whale, the best DTC Data Platform, to my e-commerce clients here.

🙈 AWKWARD - An e-comm CEO is getting absolutely roasted after replacing support staff with AI. Read more here.

💰 PRIME - An interesting trend for this Prime Day is that the use of BNPL is up 20%. Read more here.

😈 TEMU - Temu has its own answer to Prime Day with deep discounts. Read more here.

🚌 BACK TO SCHOOL - It’s almost back to school time, which means shopping! But people are expected to spend less this year. Read about it here.

#5 - 👙 The bets Andie Swim is taking for growth

📰 TL;DR - Here’s an insightful piece on what swimwear brand Andie Swim is doing to grow. First, swimwear is a very competitive place right now — AdAge had an article about it recently. To combat that, Andie Swim is looking to retail, all with a fresh round of funding. They’re going relatively slow, first with wholesale to Nordstrom, then with a store in Malibu. Going forward, there’s a possibility for pop-ups. They’ve also had a buzzy collab with actress Mindy Kaling. They also have frequent product drops — like every few weeks frequent. Note: try opening this in an incognito window if you hit the paywall.

💡 Insight - This seems like such a sensible approach to retail. DTC going retail has been a huge trend over the last year, but going too fast too soon is a recipe for disaster. Going with Nordstrom sounds like a smart move to me. It’s a testing ground but also carries some prestige. Wholesale is only 10% of their business for now, though they want to grow it to 50%. The collabs have also been smart, and include a tie-in to the Barbie movie. Good inspo all around.

➡️ You can read the article here...