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And now, onto this week's Shopifreaks newsletter….

? Stock News

Mon, Feb 16th – Open: $1,468.53 – Close: $1,474.00

Fri, Feb 19th – Open: $1,396.96 – Close: $1,435.01

Today (Feb 22nd) – Open: $1,397.78

1) SHOP on Wednesday reported 4th quarter net income of $123.9 million and a profit of $0.99/share. Revenue jumped 94% to $977.7 million. Earnings, adjusted for one-time gains and costs, were $1.58/share, up 267% from the year earlier period, beating Wall Street expectations. 

2) Despite surpassing investor expectations, the stock fell 7.1% after the earnings call, as investors expect growth to slow in 2021 due to vaccination rollouts. I don't agree. I believe that Shopify is extremely well positioned with small business retailers and has tremendous opportunity for vertical growth amongst its existing subscriber base via their point of sale, merchant processing, and fulfillment solutions. Not to mention the launch of their new gaming platform (read more below). What are your thoughts? Hit ‘Reply' and let me know. 

3) Zack's Research says to forget Shopify and buy the soaring Etsy stock before Q4 earnings are released on Feb 25th. Last quarter, Etsy grew its active sellers by 42% to 3.7 million, while its active buyers jumped 55% to 70 million. I think much of that growth is already baked into the share price, but I just run a newsletter. 

? Shopify News

1) Shopify is taking a leap into the gaming world with Rebellion, a brand new e-sports organization. They've already onboarded some big names onto the platform. Makes perfect sense as Shopify is well positioned to merge the worlds of e-sports and merch. 

2) Amazon's purchase of Shopify competitor, Selz, spraked so much interest in the company that they've temporarily suspended new sign-ups. I would imagine we should expect some feature and price restructuring before opening up again. 

3) Shopify's U.S. based fulfillment centers handled record volume during the 2020 holiday season. Shopify revealed that client self-onboarding is launching in the near future, which will allow them to rapidly scale the platform.

4) Fakespot, a free Chrome extension that detects fake product reviews and flags sketchy eCommerce sellers, announced the launch of Fakespot Guard for Shopify Stores, a new feature to protect consumers from scam websites that are powered by Shopify. As you might remember from our Jan 25, 2021 Shopifreaks newsletter, this is following Fakespot's January report that 21% of Shopify stores are selling fraudulent goods or not delivering on sales.

Hmmm… a scam reporting Chrome extension reporting a high volume of scams. Feels a little convenient. Although I would imagine that the truth falls somewhere in the middle between non-existent and their reported 21% — because we've all seen Shopify scam sites.

5) Jebbit, an interactive quiz software, announced the launch of its Shopify App, as well as Klaviyo partnership. Shopify businesses can now use Jebbit to create product match quizzes that improve engagement, conversion, and personalize the customer journey. I've seen a lot of quiz softwares in my day, and admittedly, Jebbit's got it going on. 

6) ReviewBolt compiled a list of the top 90 Shopify stores by traffic. Their report showcases the stores' traffic growth, FB ad spend / month, and revenue, as well as other metrics. Their data was sourced from Similar Web. The accuracy of some of the metrics in the report is questionable due to the use of 3rd party tools, but it's interesting to see what the big stores are doing on Shopify, even though the numbers are just estimates.

7) It's rumored that Google Analytics JavaScript will be permanently disabled on Shopify beginning March 1st. This shouldn't affect your basic Google Analytics tracking but would affect advanced post-checkout tracking or cross-domain tracking. At the moment I could not find confirmation by Shopify, but I hope to provide confirmation next week. If you receive any info about this, please e-mail me. 

? Shopify Apps

Last week Shopify added 46 new apps to the Shopify App store. Here are a few that look promising. 

1) Audit Wuff – Receive daily emails with a list of events that happened in the last 24 hours in your store to help find suspicious activity on past events early on. Great idea if you have multiple staff members working on your store. $0.01 / configured alert.

2) ENKEL Swipe to Buy – Create a unique shopping experience and differentiate your store from the rest with a swipe to buy feature on your product pages. So, Tinder shopping? $9.99/month. 

3) Raven – Custom Delivery Rates – Create real-time local delivery rates based on actual travel times that take live traffic conditions into consideration using various modes of transport including car, truck, bike, or on foot. $9.99 – $124.99 / month.

4) Scroll Freely – Replace pagination with never ending collection pages using Ajax-based infinite scrolling or by adding a Load More button. $7.99/month.

5) InterPages – Split test product pages using a single URL to A/B test prices, headlines, photos, and description verbiage. $29/month. 

6) Whisk Easy Recipe Management – Put your products into recipes on Whisk's platform and inspire customers to buy. Free for Whisk Studio Platform users.

7) Nada: Sort & Hide Out-of-Stock – Auto-move sold-out products to the end of the collection and put products that are in stock first, so your customers see what they can buy. $4.99/month.

8) ShipTection – Give your customers the option to add shipping protection to their orders at checkout. $150/month.

9) Highlight & Social Sharing – Allow visitors to highlight any part of your content and share it on Twitter, Facebook, Linked In, Reddit, WhatsApp, Telegram, or via email. You can also auto-highlight popular sections of your site to boost sharing. Free. 

10) Cartoshare – Share My Cart – Allow visitors to share their cart with friends or family, or create shareable cart links to use with promotions or social media. Free – $20/month.

? Thanks for being a Shopifreak!

If you have any Shopify news, apps, or deals that are worthy of sharing in our next newsletter, e-mail [email protected] or hit ‘Reply' to this e-mail.

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See you next Monday!

PAUL

Paul E. Drecksler
www.shopifreaks.com
[email protected]

PS: The other day I was hanging out with a snowman. He said, “Am I crazy or does it smell like carrot in here?”