Hi Dashnex Community and welcome to this episode of Dashnex Insider, the video series where we bring you announcements, updates and news to help you grow both on our platforms and online in general. If you miss anything I say or you need further clarification or help links, the link in the description will help you out.
Marketing and Business News
Facebook Releases a New Overview of how its Ad System Works
If Facebook Ads have you flummoxed then you’re not alone! With more and more people starting online businesses and looking to drive traffic to their ecommerce stores via Facebook Ads, so many people are looking to get a better understanding of how the platform actually works.
And luckily, Facebook themselves have recognized this! As part of its “Good Questions, Real Answers” series, Facebook have published a new overview of how it all works.
You can get the link to Facebook’s article if you go to the link in the description here, but I’ll just give you a summary of the key points:
Firstly, Facebook have noted that it uses two key factors to determine which ads to show users:
Number 1: Audience targeting, which is selected by advertisers, and determines which people are eligible to see each ad
Number 2: It’s ad auction process, which is based on a range of factors relating to bid price, individual user engagement and ad quality
While that may seem very simple, the remainder of the overview is, unfortunately, not quite as straightforward. The calculation which Facebook uses to decide how and to whom to serve an ad is further explained if you read the whole overview but essentially it says that Facebook knows more than you ever could about your target audience!
But on that note, they do stress that they do not use the content of people’s text messages or phones’ microphone to inform ads or to change what they see in News Feed.
Snapchat Launches New “Snap Focus” Advertising Education Courses for Marketers.
Next up, we’re talking about Snapchat’s new educational platform for marketers, Snap Focus.
Structured similarly to Facebook’s Blueprint, Snap Focus offers a range of courses to equip marketers with the tools and advice they need to take full advantage of the platform’s many ad options.
If you’ve never really considered Snapchat as a valuable funnel for your ad campaigns, then let me quickly run through a few figures that might change your mind.
A few weeks ago, at its 2020 Partner Summit, Snapchat noted that:
There are now approximately 229 million daily users on the platform with 100 million in the US alone. If this last fact doesn’t pique your interest, then listen to this: at present, Snapchat now reaches more people in the US than Twitter and TikTok – not individually – but combined. Not only this, in the US, Snapchat reaches more 13-34 year olds than both Facebook and Instagram.
Factoring in this data alone, if you’re planning on appealing to a younger demographic then Snapchat should definitely be on your radar.
Google Adds Quick Insights on Ad Performance and Keyword Themes for Ad Targeting
Next, to our favorite search engine, google. Google is looking to further simplify its Smart Campaigns service by adding an option that will allow you to quickly check on the performance of your Google Ads.
Simply put, through the Google mobile app, you will soon gain the option to check your ad performance with a quick Google search. All you need to do is type “google ads” or “my ads” into the search bar and you will see a basic overview of your active campaigns. So, if you’re looking for an efficient and accessible way to check on your ads, then this feature is definitely worth checking out.
Along with this new ad check, google is also rolling out a new “Keyword Themes’ listing that will help to ensure that your ads are reaching the right people. This feature will highlight related search queries to target based on your products and services.
Emerging E-Commerce Behaviors on Pinterest
Moving on, we’re now looking at e-commerce behaviors on Pinterest.
Last week, Pinterest published some new insights regarding online customer behavior. Here, they found that amid the global pandemic, shoppers are turning to online stores to place their grocery orders. Specifically, an estimated 50% of US consumers have now grocery-shopped online, which is a whopping 40% increase since last year.
Undeniably, COVID-19 has complicated our lives in a massive way, forcing us all to rethink how we lead our daily lives. So, as a result, consumers are seeking simple “no-fuss” solutions wherever they can find them. To this extent, consumers are opting for speed and convenience over cost and selection. Therefore, as more people become comfortable with the idea of doing their ‘essential’ shopping online, the more they will actually prefer it – leading to an extensive shift in eCommerce behavior.
In fact, marketers are even predicting that this shift is here to stay – even after things return to “business as usual”.
If we draw our attention back to Pinterest for a moment, it has been noted that the number of online purchases that the platform drove for grocery retailers has rose to around 70%, in February. If you take one thing away from this, it’s that this activity presents an opportunity for grocery or foodie retailers to connect through recipe pins and such.
If this shift remains intact – as predicted – many companies will be forced to re-access their approach and may see a rise the implementation of in-stream buying tools throughout many platforms.
New Report Looks at How COVID-19 Consumption Behaviors Will Influence Gen Z Activity Moving Forward
Next, we’re taking a look at COVID-19 consumption behaviors and their direct effect on Gen-z activity moving forward.
In a recent report, Snapchat and Boston Consulting Group have teamed up to investigate Gen-Z’s digital behaviors amidst the pandemic and whether their responses will reflect a change in future.
Garnering over 9,500 responses from participants aged 16+ located across the world, this report looked at behaviors which experienced a major increase during the lockdown period, and which are most likely to hold in the long-term.
One of the key findings surmised from the report, is that Gen Z and millennial consumers are spending more dramatically than their older counterparts. In terms of dollar spent, the younger generation are also leading on that front. Throughout the pandemic, 33% of younger consumers increased their online spending to a net increase of 6%. While, on the other, only 23% of older consumers up-ed their online spending, amounting to a net increase of 1%.
This is not exactly surprising, since younger users have grown up with access to online shopping options. But, with the staggering rise of eCommerce over the past eight weeks, it appears that this move to online shopping will only continue to exacerbate over time.
If nothing else, this surge in online activity has revealed a push to market ‘digital-only’ products and exclusively online services to not only position your business above physical retailers but to also develop lasting relationships with consumers.
Only time will tell if these trends will hold, but as consumers adjust to this ‘new-normal’, it’s very possible that these behaviors will stick.
Development Team Update
IES
Latest solved bugs are:
- Security: Especially for Ecommerce business is important, that our users and their customers are doing the business in a safe way. Because of that, we’ve even improved by increasing the security on the IES platform.
- Emojis on IES store: Emojis are used for many different reasons, like increasing the engagement and also to get more customers attention. Since emojis can drastically increase the likelihood of engagement, there’s no reason why you shouldn be using them. By adding the latest feature “reviews” and noticed a bug which prevented showing submitted reviews from mobile devices, we’ve fixed it to leverage the use of emojis in reviews as well.
- Watermark and country detection: With our automated checking, our system noticed bugs related to watermark and country detection, which are now working as they are meant to.
- Cloning a product variants: There was reported a bug, that when users cloned a product variants, they were multiplied on the page editor. Our developers found which triggers caused that bug and solved it, so that it doesn’t multiply product variants on the page editor when users take this action..
- Reordering product images: We know that imported images of the product are not always listed as we would like to show them to customers. There was noticed and solved a bug, which prevented users from reordering images in place.
- Improvement on the “Review dashboard”: While we’ve added reviews our tables needed to be improved, so that all information is now clearly showing to not miss any of them.
We can announce that “Cash on Delivery” is on its way and it will be soon available on our IES platform. Our team is also aware how important it is for our customers to add an option “multi shipping” to their stores, and this is in progress too.
DashNex Pages
The development team who is working on DashNex pages is at the moment finishing with speed optimization, which is one of the most important factors with a huge impact on the business. Because of that, we’ve dedicated a good portion of time to maximizing the speed on user’s sites and we are really close to improving it from different angles, which will have a huge impact. Beside that, we’ve also fixed a few bugs, which will help us on that way.
- Assigning a custom page as a home page: Sometimes users also change their homepage and those who are more creative are often using custom pages. Because of that it’s even more important for us that we’ve solved a reported bug which prevented them from assigning a custom page as a home page.
- Lead pages: We’ve noticed bug which sometimes occurred on lead pages when there were at the same time a “buy” button and personalized timer, which is now fixed and shouldn’t appear anymore.
And other small bugs which are not directly noticed to our users, but are making difference for a better user experience and will make a big difference in the future.
As soon as the team will finish with speed optimization we continue with the big new Editor inside of the DashNex Pages, which we’ve mentioned last time and will be a huge benefit for our users. It also reflects our fundamental values with developing new products “Speed, Simplicity, Results”.