Event Summary: The Wix eCommerce Growth Summit
On Tuesday, June 22, 2021 Wix hosted The Wix eCommerce Growth Summit; an online event with a series of sessions all about how to market and grow your eCommerce business.
Each of the sessions in the summit fell under the overarching theme of helping eCommerce businesses succeed by presenting actionable insights, growth strategies, and tools to help online sellers grow their businesses.
The summit kicked off with a panel of industry thought leaders discussing the significant trends in eCommerce. After the panel discussion, the day included three sessions led by marketing pros who spoke about optimizing traffic, conversions and sales. The day's events then concluded with a hands-on workshop on Wix marketing and business management tools.
Read on for an overview of the summit's most important lessons, and some of our favorite highlights from the event.
Watch the full Wix eCommerce Growth Summit:
Chloë Thomas, Founder of eCommerce MasterPlan, led a conversation with David Schwartz, VP of Product, Wix, Ghazal Asif, Director & Head of Channel Sales EMEA, Google, Nick Noyer, Head of Marketing EMEA, Stripe, and Mike Rossi, CEO & Co-founder, at Smile.io.
The panel opened with an appraisal of the new eCommerce landscape, a market ripe with opportunity for eCommerce business owners, but also filled with increasing competition.
The good news? “Consumers are more open than ever to discovering and trying new brands,” explained Ghazal Asif, Director & Head of Channel Sales EMEA, Google. “In fact,” she continued,
“46% of shoppers say that they're discovering new brands compared to pre-pandemic.”
Even with increased competition, this means there has never been a better time to get in front of new customers. So where should online sellers focus their efforts?
Nail the basics
When it comes to eCommerce, simple things can make the biggest difference. One of the most important and impactful steps is ensuring that your business can get found.
“Four out of five consumers use search engines to find information like website, business hours, addresses, and contact details.”
Using services such as Google My Business ensures that your customers get the information they need in order to find your store, whether it be online or brick-and-mortar. Later, the importance of visibility was touched on in a different vein: finding ways to demonstrate your values to your customers.
Businesses who make evident their values, such as being LGBTQA+, Black-owned, or Woman-owned are finding that making this transparent to potential shoppers helps draw in buyers whose values align with their own. “71% of consumers prefer to buy from companies that align with their values,” said Ghazal.
Painless payments
The way online stores are thinking about the impact of payments has changed enormously in recent years. Where the discussion around payments used to revolve only around payment processing rates, the impact of offering payment options and seamless check out is now a major focus for online stores of all sizes. Nick Noyer, Head of Marketing EMEA, Stripe, discussed the conclusions from a study of the 500 largest eCommerce businesses across Europe.
“Even across the largest companies, the majority have at least three issues or errors with their checkout, whether it be autofill, or the types of payments they accept or localization.”
The panel continued with each member addressing the most pressing issues facing eCommerce businesses, and what trends we can expect to continue into the future.
In this session Dania Bernard, (aka The Website Godmother) broke down the basics of how to build your online brand, attract customers to your site, and encourage audience engagement.
“If you have a product, service or message you believe in, knowing how to create a steady stream of online traffic is essential so you can do the work you're meant to do in this world.”
Dania is one of the most well-loved web designers in the Wix Partner Community, and brought her expertise to this session, outlining four low, or zero cost strategies you can use to bring the right traffic to your online store.
Rob Goodman, Executive Producer, Wix, and Noah Rosen, Founder, Forge To Table, sat down for an intimate conversation about how Forge To Table has grown their eCommerce business, which saw a remarkable 345% growth YOY in fourth-quarter sales last year.
The marketing tools that have fueled growth
Noah discussed his learnings from building a successful business, covering in-depth his strategy behind his use of various marketing tools, including email marketing, affiliate marketing, coupons, blog, social media and more.
Noah's honest appraisal of his path to success and the lessons he’s learned along the way provide insight for any entrepreneur interested in how to navigate the world of online selling.
In this session Liat Karpel Gurwicz, Head of eCommerce Marketing, Wix, began with some data, demonstrating the incredible growth the eCommerce sector experienced in 2020.
Last year, Wix eCommerce stores saw 140% YOY growth in sales transactions, and over $5.4 billion in online transactions.
“If 2020 was the year of the eCommerce pivot,” said Karpel Gurwicz, “2021 is the year of the eCommerce strategy.”
More eCommerce businesses than ever are deploying DTC (direct to consumer) marketing strategies, and in this session Liat explained some best practices behind these strategies, via examples of some amazing eCommerce businesses.
Watch this session recording to learn how shopper behavior impacts three critical growth metrics including conversion, Average Order Value and purchase frequency.
Rinat Klapholz, CRM Product Lead, Wix, gave a hands-on demonstration of Wix marketing and customer relationship management (CRM) tools that create efficiency and streamline processes for your online store. The session focused on best practices for getting subscribers, efficiently managing business communications, streamlining your workflow, and how to use analytics to optimize your sales.
This workshop was a natural continuation of the day’s events, as the success behind bringing traffic, driving conversion, and optimizing sales can be hard-earned. Using marketing and CRM tools can help streamline processes and ensure that eCommerce retailers can focus on future success, rather than customer relation and marketing maintenance tasks.
When asked about the impetus behind organizing the event, David Schwartz, VP of Product, Wix, stated:
“At Wix our #1 KPI (Key Performance Indicator) has always been our users’ success...”
The Wix eCommerce Growth Summit was a dynamic event filled with impactful information relevant to seasoned eCommerce professionals and budding entrepreneurs alike.
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Brielle Gordon
Marketing Writer, Wix eCommerce
Brielle is a Colorado native with a passion for innovation and helping to mobilize entrepreneurs. Brielle is a marketing writer for Wix eCommerce, which powers over 700k online stores worldwide.
