Google announced this week that it has joined forces with Walmart in a new initiative to promote Walmart products via Google express. This is taking direct aim at Amazon, the dominant player in the e-commerce space. Walmart’s proactive steps in addressing the decline of its retail business is starting to succeed since the 2016 acquisition of Jet.com, with a clear two-horse race starting to emerge. This is big news for both e-commerce store owners and also affiliate partners. Founder, Thomas Smale, explores the merits of both platforms in his recent blog post on the topic.
In the advertising world, Google is following in the very recent footsteps of Facebook by announcing that it will block intrusive ads such as pop-ups, full-screen scrollovers, auto play videos and more for users of Google Chrome. Google’s preferred method of advertising is native ads, which are seemingly less offensive to the all-important millennial demographic. PageFair’s 2017 adblocking report indicates that 11% of the global internet population is blocking ads on the web, costing advertisers billions of dollars in revenues each year. Interestingly, FE has recently listed an adblocking business with $51K/mo. in gross revenues, which is primed to take further advantage of this growing niche. Request more information today!
New businesses listed this week include a highly profitable e-commerce business in the collectible toys niche that sees revenues of $6.5M per year. Also listed this week are two new SaaS businesses, the first of which is a $25K MRR business in the real estate marketing space with c.500 customers and strong LTV of $1,150. The second is a B2B SaaS company in the payment transaction niche with $6.7K MRR, a compound monthly growth rate of 8% and a very low customer churn of just 2.8%. These top-quality listings have gathered significant buyer interest, so be sure to request more information today if you would like to learn more!
In entrepreneurial news, founder Thomas Smale was featured on Ryan Tansom’s Solidity podcast, where he discusses what business owners can do to get their business ready for sale. We also hosted our monthly Boston E-Commerce Meetup this week. We were thrilled to see our numbers grow again in what is usually the slowest month of the year! CEO, Ismael, was joined on the panel by Erik Bullen, CEO of GrooveJar (a MageMail company), VP of Product at Rue La La Saurin Shah, and Jonathan Bianchi, Senior Account Executive at Feefo, for a lively discussion on topics such as the difference between authenticity and transparency, and how to build a more trustworthy brand through responses to customer reviews. If you weren’t able to make it, don’t fret, you can watch the whole event from our livestream. Keep an eye out for the date and location of our next meetup in September! Also in September, Thomas will be speaking at the Seller’s Conference in Seattle, so be sure to reach out and set up a meeting if you are planning on attending.
Continue reading for more on Google’s new partnership with Walmart, Google’s new adblocking initiative and the decision to move site security to https, and BinaryTree’s new Office 365 transition software.
Deal Highlights
New:
E-Commerce – Collectible Toys & Merchandise – $546K gross/mo
- Strong year over year growth, reaching c.10% CAGR for the period 2013 to 2017 (forecast)
- Sales diversified across thousands of SKUs and multiple channels
- Authoritative brand and strong supplier relationships built up over seven years of operations
- Proprietary system for backend logistics, inventory management, and reporting
- Stable website traffic with over 2.6 million visitors generating over 12.5 million page views in the last 12 months alone
Yearly net profit: $880,000
Asking price: $2,150,000
SaaS – Real Estate Email Marketing – $25K MRR
- Strong and consistent revenue growth with a CAGR of c.24% between 2012 to 2016 and still growing
- Diversified customer base with c.500 customers across various sectors
- Strong customer LTV of c.$1,150
- Stable MRR of $25.4K and still growing
Yearly net profit: $109,000
Asking price: $413,000
SaaS – B2B Payment Transaction Integration – $6.7K MRR
- Rapidly growing client base, growing by 200% over the last 12 months
- Growing MRR, reaching over 8% compound monthly growth rate over the last 12 months
- Low MRR and customer churn of 1.6% and 2.8% over the last 12 months, respectively
- Early presence in an expanding niche
- Very little owner involvement with a developer willing to stay on at a discounted rate for a 3-month period
Yearly net profit: $60,000
Asking price: $240,000
In the News…
Google and Walmart Join Forces to Take on a Common Rival
Their target, the e-commerce giant Amazon. For the first time in the United States, Walmart is upping the e-commerce ante and will make its products available online outside of its own website. A partnership between Google and Walmart was announced on Wednesday, stating that Google will start offering Walmart products to those who shop on Google Express.
Brick-and-mortar stores, such as Walmart, have been struggling to stay competitive against the increase in popularity of online shopping. Walmart and Google explain that this partnership is less about what is happening today and more about what online shopping will look like in the future, such as voice based shopping. Many companies including Target and Costco are one of the 50+ retailers on Google Express.
In addition, Walmart and Google are sharing customer information gathered from Google Home, Google Assistant, and Walmart customers linking their Walmart accounts to Google to gain insight into their customers’ buying habits.
Google Cautions Your HTTP Pages are Getting a New Warning Message
If you have forms or other types of login fields on your HTTP website, you are going to want to migrate to HTTPS by October. Once this new feature is released, Chrome will show a “Not secure” warning in two situations: first, when the user enters data in an HTTP page, and secondly, on any HTTP page that is visited in Incognito mode.
Why the switch? Data that is sent using HTTPS as opposed to HTTP is secured with TLS (Transport Layer Security). This type of security provides three things: Encryption, Data Integrity, and Authentication. These precautions are put in place to keep the information that site goers plug into the fields on websites protected. While this is certainly a step to protect information, that does not mean that HTTPS secures your website.
Binary Tree Create M&A Transition SaaS Platform
Organizations going through a merger experience complex challenges, one of them being end-user productivity. Binary Tree has recently launched a SaaS platform called Power365 to help make those challenges a little easier. Power 365 helps keep your organizations operational while these transitions are happening by moving, integrating and modernizing emails, directories and applications that are on the Microsoft Azure cloud.
Many people lose access to their Office 365 account when going through a merger and Power 365 provides a seamless solution to cross-tenant integration and migration projects. The platform was built to minimize end-user impact during cross-tenant Office 365 projects. There are three different solutions to choose from, so each organization can select the option that works best for their needs.
Google will Block Ads, but Don’t Let that Block your Marketing
Anyone who has surfed the web knows what it is like to be bombarded with ads when you are simply trying to buy your favorite product on super sale. While these ads are everywhere, they are not very effective in the marketing world, with a very low click rate of .17%. Why? Simple: because people don’t want to see them!
When ads are blocked, revenue is lost and not just from publishers, but Google as well. Lost revenue for publishers is estimated to be $41.4 million. So, where is the balance? Google is releasing a plug-in that will only block the most annoying of pop-up ads, and is releasing three new kinds of ads that are less “in your face”.
What does this mean for online business owners? Marketers are going to be tasked with becoming more adept at creating ads that are not flashy but fit into the pages content seamlessly. Chrome, which dominates 54% of the browser market space, is turning to focus on the user experience and content instead of ads. Marketers are going to need to rethink their ad game in order to play by these new rules.