November eCom Recap - All You Need to Know

Hey there 👋

November was a crazy month for eCom — and we’re here to give you a recap of the biggest news, including:

2024 BFCM Stats 💹 

Perplexity’s AI Shopping Tool 🤖 

TikTok Gets Banned in Canda (Sort of) ❌ 

Amazon’s Temu Clone 🤔 

Shopify’s New Finance Platform 💲 

Amazon Beats Walmart & Target 🎯 

Youtube Adds Gifting Feature 🎁 

OpenAI Releasing “Operator” 💻️ 

Let’s get into it 🔥

1. 2024 BFCM Stats 📈 

It’s been over a week since BFCM ended, and I don’t think there’s a single stat that hasn’t improved substantially compared to 2023 🤯 

Here are the top metrics:

1️⃣ Record Online Spending — consumers in the U.S. made online purchases totalling between $10.7 billion and $11 billion on Black Friday 2024, marking a 10.2% increase from last year's $9.8 billion

2️⃣ Global Spending Surge — according to Salesforce, global online spending reached $74.4 billion within a single day, showing a 5% rise compared to 2023

3️⃣ Thanksgiving Spending — shoppers spent $6.1 billion, up 9% from last year

4️⃣ Mobile Shopping — over 57.6% of all online sales were done via mobile devices, up from 55.5% in 2023

5️⃣ Toy Sales — huge discounts on toys, averaging over 27% off, led to a 178% increase in toy sales on Black Friday compared to average sales figures from October

Anyone remember how crazy Black Friday used to be back in the 2010’s? These stats feel like that, but just digital 😂

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2. Perplexity’s AI Shopping Tool 🤖

Yup, the all-AI company Perplexity (backed by Jeff Bezos, Tobi Lutke, by the way), launched “Shop Like a Pro” — an AI shopping assistant, only available to Pro subscribers.

Here’s a little of what that looks like:

It can suggest things based on what you searched for, with visuals, comparisons, reviews. It’s even got a carousel mode, and that’s cool and all — but how would you get your brand’s products to appear first?

If you want to learn more about “Shop Like a Pro” and how to get into it’s special Perplexity Merchant Program (which is free btw), check out our post on the eCom AI Search Era 🔥

3. Did Trudeau Really Ban TikTok? 🤳 

The Canadian government ordered TikTok to shut down it’s operations in the country, due to, the classic “national security concerns”.

But.. it didn’t really “shut down”. All Canadians can still use the app, just the offices are banned from operating locally within Canada — which is hilarious 😂

This “local ban” made hundreds of Canadians lose their jobs at TikTok’s offices, and with this being extremely unfair, TikTok actually decided to file a legal challenge of the fed’s shutdown order, claiming it was unreasonable and driven by improper purposes.

Well, this isn’t the first time we hear about a TikTok ban — but why ban people from their jobs instead of banning the app..? 😬

4. Amazon Launches “Haul” 📦️ 

Don’t be surprised if it’s your first time hearing about “Haul” — it’s Amazon’s version of Temu 🤔

It’s a low-cost marketplace that ships items directly from China, trying to compete and outperform Temu, Shein and other marketplaces the U.S. consumers have been loving these past few years (primarily for the cheap prices).

Haul features items with a max price of $20, and shipping times of up to two weeks — a complete 180 from Amazon’s usual next-day delivery and wild pricing, but I can see the appeal.

We got ANOTHER Temu clone, but this time — it’s American 😂

5. Shopify Finance 💲 

Shopify’s been “unifying” a lot recently, and they’ve finally combined all of their financial solutions into one big home called “Shopify Finance”.

You can find it in your admin panel, and here’s what it looks like:

Merchants now have access to these tools all in one place:

1️⃣ Shopify Balance — a free business account that allows merchants to receive funds from orders on the next business day (comes with a 3.39% APY balance)

2️⃣ Shopify Credit — a pay-in-full visa business card that gives 3% cashback on eligible marketing, wholesale & fulfilment purchases (you can also get up to 10 months to pay over time from a percentage of daily sales)

3️⃣ Shopify Capital — a financing program to borrow working capital of up to $2M, with no credit checks or impact on credit score (with repayments auto-deducted as a % of daily sales).

4️⃣ Shopify Tax — automates tax calculations, collections and reporting, while enabling you to automatically set aside sales tax into your Balance account

5️⃣ Shopify Bill Pay — a tool that lets you schedule, pay, and manage business bills directly from the admin panel by credit, debit, bank transfer, or Shopify Balance (now you can make batch & recurring payments and combine payments, too)

6. Amazon Beats Walmart & Target 🎯 

For the 8th year in a row, Amazon has the lowest prices across 15 categories against 22 US retailers.

The study by Profitero reveals Amazon had an average price advantage of 14% over them, and Walmart is still the runner up to Amazon, with only a 5% price difference on the exact same items.

Here are some more interesting stats from the same study:

1️⃣ Target’s prices are only 13% higher than Amazon’s, compared to 16% from last year

2️⃣ Best Buy is now in 2nd place for video games, overall 9% higher in prices compared to Amazon

3️⃣ Target & Walmart actually tied in the toys category, both having a 2% price difference from Amazon

Try as they may, most retailers can’t beat Amazon on deals, but that might chance soon 🤔 

7. YouTube’s New TikTok-like Gifts 🎁 

YouTube’s implementing a gifting feature for it’s livestreams that lets users buy digital “Jewels” for streamers to show their love.

The gifts, much like TikTok & Instagram emotes, will show up on the stream, and make the whole experience more “fun & interactive”, according to Google.

This gifting feature will be rolled out in the next few weeks for US content creators that are eligible (we don’t know what the requirements are for eligibility yet, though).

But to help launch Jewels, YouTube is offering a 50% bonus to creators on gift earnings, capping out at $1K/mo.

They really are just adopting & adapting features from any platform possible.. and while no one asked for gifts on YouTube of all things, this could improve the bottom line for content creators, and, on the eCom side, UGC 👀

Speaking of UGC, if you want to learn how to let your customers do the marketing for you, check out our UGC Guide for Merchants 🔥 

8. OpenAI Releasing “Operator” 🤖 

You thought we had enough AI with Perplexity’s new little gadget? Well, OpenAI is almost ready to launch an AI agent called Operator.

This little bot will take actions on your behalf, like writing code, making online purchases for you, or even booking reservations. Operator & other AI agents could come as soon as next January, and this is sorta huge for eCom.

Will we begin optimizing product listings for these agents, instead of people? How do we rank higher in the eyes of these agents? 😅 

Bonus News & Gift 🎁 

Here are some more news you might find interesting:

TikTok made a guide to help marketers capitalize on the Q5 opportunities

Amazon got approval to use new drones for Prime Air

OpenAI bought out Chat.com, which now redirects to ChatGPT

GrubHub under legal fire for funnelling consumer data to TikTok

And here’s a little thank-you for reading to the end, an all-encompassing guide to retaining your BFCM shoppers by PeelInsights:

🎧 ECORN Radio This Week:

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Thanks for reading and supporting E&U (Ecommerce & Unicorns)

Daniil from ECORN