Baremetrics has this week announced a new metrics dashboard integration for Shopify Partners. As a leader in SaaS analytics, Baremetrics is now streamlining metrics analysis for developers who are building apps for the Shopify App Store, granting them comprehensive and accessible insights into user data directly impacting the profitability of their apps. Key integrations will include cancellation insights, failed charge recovery, as well as transparency into the metrics of companies like ConvertKit, Buffer and other startups which share their data with other users.
PRIME DAY RESULTS: CEO Ismael Wrixen appeared on Cheddar TV this week to give expert insights on this year’s Amazon Prime Day from the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Sellers interested in what it looks like to be successful on Prime Day can watch the full segment here. Amazon has announced that this year’s Prime Day yielded a higher sales volume than the most recent Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined, noting top selling items included over 100,000 laptops, 200,000 TVs and 350,000 luxury beauty products. It wasn’t just third-party items performing well: Amazon stated in the press release that this was “the biggest event ever for Amazon devices when comparing two-day periods.” Since the first Prime Day held in 2015 to honor the company’s 20th anniversary, the number of countries shopping during the event has doubled to 18. The first day of this year’s event saw Amazon capture more new Prime signups than any other previous day in history, with day 2 following closely behind, and existing Prime Members shopping at record numbers in the United States.
- If Amazon wants to remove a seller from the platform, it will have to provide 30 days’ notice and explain why
- Europe-based merchants can sue Amazon in their home country
- Changes will be coming to product descriptions (according to the Federal Cartel Office)
- Amazon’s terms of service will be easier to understand, and
- Customer reviews will be given “fairer” presentation
These updates were announced just as major changes for sellers come to European e-commerce policy. In light of the fact that credit card fraud is about ten times the rate for online transactions versus in-store (as estimated by Mastercard), the European Commission has passed a new ruling called Strong Customer Authentication. Scheduled to go into effect on September 14 across all European countries, the SCA will mandate that merchants, banks and payment processors implement two-factor authentication on all electronic transactions over €30. This brings with it concerns for merchants, who are worried that the added friction might negatively impact sales. Online sellers should begin optimizing their checkout flow now in order to ensure the payment process is as smooth as possible once two-factor authentication is enacted.
The online payments world this week also saw a Stripe outage impact clients utilizing the platform for two hours on Wednesday. During the off-and-on downtime throughout the day, which disproportionately impacted sellers relying solely on the payments giant, some companies were not able to process purchases from customers. While this resulted in online sellers losing $100,000 or more in sales, some small businesses are offering their affected customers discounts in an attempt to recapture lost revenue.
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In events news, the FE team will be attending SaaStock Local in London on July 23 at 6pm, so feel free to reach out if you will be in attendance and want to visit our London office at One Canada Square! The week after, Founder Thomas Smale will be speaking at ASD Market Week covering 5 Lessons from Over $500 Million in Business Acquisitions. Make sure to stop by booth #C3124 on July 30 at 2pm if you will be there, or reach out to set up a meeting if you will be in Las Vegas and want to connect!
Continue reading below for more on Baremetrics for Shopify Partners, Amazon Prime Day results and Amazon and EU e-commerce policy updates.
Listings
New
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In the News…
Baremetrics Launches Integration with Shopify Partners
Baremetrics has just launched a dashboard for Shopify Partners, in an effort to bring more transparency to the metrics which are important for app developers building for the Shopify app store.
Within a “lively and inspiring” interface, the dashboard will leverage the robust capabilities of one of the prominent market leaders in SaaS benchmarks, goals and trial insights featuring augmentation, segmentation and customer analysis. Key among the features are cancellation insights, which will help app developers collect useful feedback, display the lost revenue and attribute it to a given reason, as well as send personalized emails to try and recapture the client. Another feature, “Recover”, will help reduce delinquent churn in an automated way, to avoid the unnecessary leakage that comes with it.
Baremetrics also features companies which share their metrics publicly, for those interested in benchmarking against similar SaaS businesses.
Amazon Prime Day Results
Amazon Prime Day 2019 was the biggest shopping event in Amazon’s history, according to a press release the company put out announcing results from the event.
The mid-year shopping event proved to be a win for the e-commerce giant in many ways; on top of record sales volume, the first day of Prime Day 2019 also brought in more Prime Day subscribers than any other day in the company’s history. Amazon reported that customer savings surpassed $1 billion dollars, with 18 countries included in the shopping days. Amazon tech products did extremely well, chief among them Amazon kids’ devices, as well as double the number of Fire TV Edition Smart TVs as last year. This was also a record day for Alexa devices with screens, including the Echo Show and Echo Show 5.
This year also saw a record number of Prime members shopping during Prime Day in the US.
EU Passes Two-Factor Authentication Mandate for E-Commerce
In an effort to combat rising levels of fraud when utilizing electronic payments, the European Commission has passed a new legislation called “Strong Customer Authentication”.
Euromonitor International estimates that in 2019, customers around the world will spend $6.77 trillion on goods and services online. The new legislation, SCA, will take effect on September 14 of this year and mandate that European merchants change the way their customers complete purchases. Intended to add greater security to payments authentication, the SCA comes as part of the Payments Service Directive, which is a suite of European This rule is part of the broader second Payments Service Directive (PSD2), a collection of regulations in Europe that will impact the way customers in the EU both submit payment and the information they see. Online transactions will require two-factor authentication moving forward. In an interview with Euromonitor International, Mastercard President of International Markets stated, “I think it will provide more trust and confidence because of the two-factor authentication. You might have to accommodate at the beginning because the first time may not be seamless or intuitive.”
Online merchants should seek to make the checkout process as seamless as possible when updating the payments process.
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