Blog

Our blog features a combination of eCommerce and paid media advice and guidance, from various members of our team. Our content has also been featured on the following blogs and sites.

Nov 2021

Introducing Census, By Vervaunt Labs

I’m delighted to write this article to introduce the first publicly available Vervaunt technology / tool; Census - a Shopify and Shopify Plus app that allows users to ask a series of strategic questions post-purchase.

Nov 2021

Preparing for a UAT Period - The Importance of Prioritising UAT for a Replatforming Project?

UAT, also known as User Acceptance Testing, is a fundamental part of any project. A UAT phase could take an infinite amount of time, with endless testing possible - but, based on our experience, covering the aspects we will talk about in this guide will be thorough enough to make a decision on passing or failing line items.

Nov 2021

How Borough Kitchen Tripled Ecommerce Growth in Lockdown

Borough Kitchen is a London-based cookware retailer with an online shop and four brick and mortar locations, three of which include a cook school. The brand opened their original store in Borough Market in 2013 and they have seen tremendous growth online and instore over the last few years.

Oct 2021

15 Inspiring Examples of Cart Upsells - Intuitive, Unique and Clean UX Design

Finding the balance of good UX design in cart upsells can be a challenge for retailers. Many eCommerce platforms only have simple out-of-the-box templates and building bespoke designed solutions can be expensive.

Sep 2021

Google Trends 2021: Smart Bidding, Changes to Exact Match, New Discovery Led Formats and More

Google and all of its entities are continuously evolving, and the way in which we run our performance marketing channels through these channels has changed considerably over the past year. These changes align with the stark changes in online behaviour brought on by the pandemic, but with the continual roll out of new features, online advertising is more accessible than ever.

Sep 2021

eCommerce Landing Pages for Paid Media - Examples & Best Practices

I’ve wanted to write this blog post for a long time, as I see landing pages as one of the most under-considered areas and missed opportunities in performance marketing - with one of the biggest opportunities being to drive more value from prospecting campaigns.

Aug 2021

Building a Marketplace on Shopify - Pros & Cons + Overall Suitability

Over the last few years, the number of online marketplaces has increased considerably, due to various market changes and a number of high profile success stories. We’ve worked with a number of marketplaces over the years and, although it’s a great business model when done well, it’s a very complex area of eCommerce.

Aug 2021

Shopify Unite 2021 - Takeaways from the Virtual Conference

Shopify Unite was hosted a few weeks ago now, and we’ve had time to digest the announcements and understand what sort of effects they’re going to have on our agency and the brands we work with. This year was certainly more development focused than previous conferences, but we still got some insight into Shopify’s roadmap and future functionality.

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Aug 2021

No More Audience Insights Tool - Building Prospecting Audiences for Facebook Advertising

Facebook’s Audience Insights tool is being removed from the platform in July 2021, and as a result many advertisers will see their main source for targeting inspiration disappear. How can you build prospecting audience lists for Facebook advertising without the Audience Insights tool?

Jun 2021

Launching New Products on Amazon - Paid Ads and Organic Listing Optimisation

When you launch a new product on Amazon, you want to optimise your listing and take advantage of all marketing channels in order for it to be a successful launch. How can you maximise your Amazon sales with your new product launch?

May 2021

Creating Combined Reports for Multiple Shopify Stores Using Google Data Studio

As some of you may or may not know, Google data studio is Google's free data visualisation platform. You can use a selection of prebuilt dashboards to help visualise data from places like Google Ads, Search Console and Google Sheets without any third party integrations, as well as creating more bespoke reports from a variety of data sources. Google Data Studio is brilliant for scenarios like this where we want to take multiple sources of data and report in a simple, digestible way.

Apr 2021

Taking Shopify Mobile - A guide to native eCommerce applications

In this definitive guide Technical Ecommerce Consultant, Liam Quinn demonstrates how brands are shifting from a web-browser based mobile experience to a native application using Shopify.

Apr 2021

Top Examples of Sustainable & Eco-Friendly eCommerce Brands, Websites & Content

Sustainability is a key word for most businesses big & small right now, this article looks at great examples of innovative ways to bring this into ecommerce.

Jan 2021

Creating Bundles & Product Builders with Shopify & Shopify Plus - The Definitive Guide

In this definitive guide Technical Ecommerce Consultant, Liam Quinn, demonstrates how businesses can create product bundles within Shopify, whilst simultaneously highlighting the platform's limitations.

Dec 2020

Most engaging & Best-Designed DTC eCommerce brand websites

In this article, we look at the DTC eCommerce sites that are leading the way in design and innovation.

Dec 2020

Shopify Multi-Currency Feed Issues - Forcing Currency & Preventing Shopping Feed Disapprovals

This article is designed to help people overcome issues with different Shopify currencies causing issues with shopping feeds.

Dec 2020

Recommerce; Deconstructing the Reselling Phenomenon in eCommerce

In this article we look at how fashion brands are responding to the ever-growing trend towards sustainable and eco-conscious living, with recommerce.

Nov 2020

Should I go headless on Shopify / Shopify Plus? Pros & Cons of Headless

In this article Technical eCommerce Consultant, Liam Quinn, discusses the pros and cons of choosing a Headless approach to Shopify.

Nov 2020

Preparing for Peak: Actionable Paid Search, Shopping & Social Optimisations to Drive More Holiday Sales

The peak shopping period leading up to christmas provides significant revenue opportunities for all retailers. In this guide Josh demonstrates actionable tips to optimise campaigns in order for retailers to reach target consumers amongst the heavy competition.

Oct 2020

Planning Paid Advertising For Black Friday And Cyber Monday

It’s never too early to start planning your Black Friday Activities. It’s one of the few times of the year that you can make trading decisions in real time as you make adjustments to pricing and media spend in response to performance, competitor activity and product availability. However, to do this effectively you need to have a solid plan that everyone can work off and we hope the below can help guide you with this.

Oct 2020

Localising Theme Content in Shopify - Changing Content (Based on IP) Using Geolocation Services

In this guide, Liam talks about how Shopify and Shopify Plus users can adapt theme content using geo-location services. Liam provides detail around different third parties and Shopify's own geo-location capabilities.

Oct 2020

Magento Google Shopping Best Practices - The Definitive Guide

This guide was written by Josh, to help Magento users understand best practices for creating and optimising shopping feeds, the pros and cons of different feed tools, optimal account setup and much more.

Sep 2020

5 of The Best Sports e-Commerce Sites

Sports retailers need to showcase their products just as well as fashion retailers, and make it easy for customers to shop. This guide takes a look at five of the best sports eCommerce stores.

Sep 2020

Internal Search - Optimisation and Data Use

Online retailers often underestimate the power of internal search, but tapping into the data it reveals can really help with optimisation, personalisation and even buying and sourcing decisions.

Sep 2020

Content Audits for E-commerce

Strong and consistent content is vital for the success of any ecommerce business. Undertaking a regular content audit will ensure that you stay on track with your content over the long term.

Aug 2020

Fraud Prevention & Protection for Shopify & Shopify Plus

Even the most high-profile of eCommerce stores can fall foul of online fraud, so it pays to put in place some protective measures. This guide explains what fraud protection and prevention tools are available within Shopify and Shopify Plus.

Aug 2020

Paid Social Strategy and Structuring Campaigns

Effective structuring of paid social campaigns is vital if you want to really achieve significant goals. This guide explains how to build a paid social strategy.

Aug 2020

Tactics and Strategies for Increasing Lifetime Value

Identifying customer lifetime value is one thing - but improving it over time is a challenge in itself. This guide provides advice and tips for long-term CLV improvements.

Aug 2020

Lifetime Value

Lifetime value is an important KPI for any e-commerce business. This guide outlines how to calculate it, how to improve it, and how to predict future returns using it.

Aug 2020

Analysing Homepage Performance

First impressions really do count, which is why it's so important to understand how well your e-commerce homepage is working. This guide will show you how to measure homepage performance.

Aug 2020

Customer Account Reactivation & Migration with Shopify & Shopify Plus

Customer reactivation forms a central part of any replatforming project, and this guide explains how the process works in Shopify and Shopify Plus.

Aug 2020

Budgeting for Digital Media

Digital media budgets can often be a source of tension and confusion, but there's no need for this to be the case. This guide will walk through the process of setting up and maintaining and accurate budget for your digital media projects.

Aug 2020

Best Examples of BigCommerce Stores

BigCommerce has really made a name for itself in recent years, with plenty of top retailers choosing the platform. This guide is intended to showcase some of the best BigCommerce stores around.

Aug 2020

The Ultimate Guide to Reporting on Paid Search

Paid Search is only worthwhile if you know for certain what you are achieving. This guide outlines how to create a robust reporting system, for effective and accurate analysis of your PPC campaigns.

Aug 2020

Paid Search Forecasting

In this blog post, we provide a guide to accurate forecasting for paid search campaigns, to ensure your project stays on track and achieves its goals.

Aug 2020

Forecasting Paid Social

For a paid social campaign to meet the expectations of all stakeholders, it's essential to spend time on forecasting. This guide explains how to approach this crucial aspect of your campaign.

Jul 2020

Brand Bidding - Should I Bid on My Brand in Google / PPC

A question that will always be asked of performance marketing teams is ‘should we be bidding on brand terms?’ In the below we'll address when you should and shouldn't consider brand bidding and how you can test if it's driving profitability for your business.

Jul 2020

Bid Management Platforms - Choosing The Right Technology, When They’re Needed & How They Work

Bid Management platforms can be a powerful tool for paid media teams running performance marketing activity at scale. In this piece we will look at some of the considerations about when, how and why you should consider adding a bid management platform, as well as taking a very quick overview of three of the main options.

Jun 2020

Linking Audiences In Display And Social Campaigns

Previously we have examined how to use the customer journey to break down website performance and to prioritise development work, here we look at leveraging audiences within each channel, helping to create value from your display and social investments.

Jun 2020

An Introduction to Social Media Advertising Attribution

In this piece we’re going to address attribution models in social media. This will mostly be focussed on Facebook (and Instagram) as this is where the bulk of social advertising spend goes, but the principles are applicable to other networks like Twitter, YouTube or LinkedIn.

Jun 2020

Building an In-House Digital Marketing Team - Roles, Structure & Hiring

Bringing together an in-house digital marketing team is both complex and time-consuming. In this article, we look at how to ensure your team is built on the right foundations, and at how agencies can provide a long-term solution or short-term support whilst an in-house team grows.

Jun 2020

Choosing a Performance Marketing / Paid Media Agency

Selecting a paid media or performance marketing agency is a complex process - get it right and the rewards speak for themselves, but get it wrong, and the result could be serious. This guide should help you to make all the right decisions along the way to choosing the right agency for your project.

Jun 2020

Best Practices & Optimisations for eCommerce Product Listing Pages

Not all ecommerce listings pages are created equal - in this guide, we look at various optimisations for listings pages, in order to offer the very best user experience and conversion rates.

May 2020

The Pros and Cons of Smart Shopping Campaigns

In this guide, we explore the pros and cons of Google's smart shopping and look at some of the latest developments across the shopping channel.

May 2020

Creating & Setting Budgets For eCommerce

For any eCommerce project to be successful, it needs a carefully considered budget, with accurate costs and regular reviews and updates. This post aims to guide you on how to prepare a realistic budget for any eCommerce project, and how to handle it when your allocated budget isn't what you'd planned for.

May 2020

A Guide to eCommerce Internationalisation

This guide is designed to help retailers and brands understand some of the considerations around eCommerce internationalisation and the various opportunities in different areas.

May 2020

Magento Segmentation - 5 straightforward uses

This post outlines five suggested use cases for customer segmentation within Magento.

May 2020

Benchmarking And The On Site Customer Journey

This guide is designed to help with one of the key tools in creating and running an ecommerce function - the customer journey and setting benchmarks against it.

May 2020

How To Write A Marketing Brief

As a marketing manager, one of the key responsibilities you have in running marketing campaigns is to make sure that everyone is on the same page. This document aims to bring everything that you need for a campaign together, and allows the various parties - creative, media, operations, customer service - to prepare and propose executions for you all to align.

Apr 2020

Guide to Writing a Paid Media RFP

This guide is designed to help with writing a paid media RfP and was written in collaboration with one of our clients, Damian Koblintz. Damian is an experienced Head of eCommerce / Head of Digital and has run and participated in several RfPs.

Apr 2020

An overview on the impact of COVID-19 on eCommerce Paid Media

This guide provides an overview on the trends we've seen from managing our clients' paid media campaigns, around search demand and the impact on overall performance.

Apr 2020

A Guide to Google Shopping for Fashion Brands

This guide is designed to help fashion brands and retailers understand how Google shopping campaigns should be set up and managed, as well as best practices for on-going optimisation.

Mar 2020

Paid Media Strategies for Luxury Brands - Targeting A High-Net-Worth Audience

Paid media in the luxury space is notoriously difficult, from justifying formats & channels to building the most granular audiences to competing with wholesale customers - this guide is designed to provide suggestions and best pracices around targeting high-net-worth individuals for premium brands.

Mar 2020

Magento Product Types and Examples of When to Use Them

This guide provides an introduction to all of the native product types in Magento and when it makes sense to use them.

Mar 2020

Magento 2 Launch Checklist

This checklist is designed to provide support for retailers looking to launch a new Magento 2 store - detailing areas that should be considered prior to going live, through the project and post-launch.