Hello, hello hello. Or shall I say ho ho ho.
It's officially Christmas week. It's Christmas if you're
watching this when it comes out, it's Christmas in 2 days and if
you're listening to this, not watching it.
The reason I sound really muffled is I have a giant Santa
beard on and a Santa outfit. And cool fact, this is the only
time my life so far I've ever put on a Santa outfit.
I don't think I've ever dressed up as Santa.
Obviously want Santa hats but I've never actually dressed up
as Santa before. But how exciting.
I'm going to take the beard off because it is so itchy.
So apologies. Anyone who's just had a fresh
shave and then tried to put a Santa beard on will relate to
that. But anyway, how exciting is
Tuesday tea break talks this I think it's going to be our last
episode of 2nd to last episode of the year.
We do another one of these next week.
I will be back. I'm going to talk about next
year next week. And today we're going to talk
about this year, 2025 and what has been going on and what has
happened in the world of e-commerce and the world of
Shopify and a few other bits and pieces as well.
As always, I've got the iPad of justice with all of my we never
call it that. I'm just in a very hyper mood
because I've had too much coffee today.
And yeah, we're going to go through some fun statistics and
some other stuff. And then I was going to say a
very merry, a very Merry Christmas, and I'll be going for
Christmas because I'm actually on my Christmas break already.
But I couldn't miss a Tuesday tea break talks.
So Amazon delivered a very itchy outfit for me.
Anyway, tea of choice this week, mince pie and Brandy, which I'll
be having later and not in the show, unfortunately, we're
having it later tonight. But anyway, let's talk about
what's been going on this year. We normally kick off with quote
or fact of the of the week, but I'm actually going to go through
quotes or facts, sorry of the year.
This is taken from a blog post that Shopify put out.
It would have been 2nd of December.
The post was put out but it's been edited and updated twice.
So some things have obviously changed.
So there's been loads going on and I'm going to go through some
of the statistics specifically from Black Friday, Cyber Monday,
'cause they're quite, quite crazy.
And quite a few of the stats as well have a comparison to last
year to put some level of some level of what's it called
relativity on it as well. You can tell them on my
Christmas break, I'm not on my A game when it comes to acronyms
and adjectives. But anyway, let's go through
some of this stuff then. So over Black Friday sub Monday,
Shopify recorded 14.6, A1, 4.6 billion in global sales from
merchants. This is insane though.
If you don't, if that, if you're like, that's just a big number.
That is a 27% increase from 2024.
So if you think about your company growth or an
organization as big as Shopify and the kind of growth that
Shopify are trying to experience, sorry, someone's
trying to call me, which is why I'm clicking buttons in the
background. Right, let's close that, turn
that off. And but 27% growth is insane for
a Shopify, well, business the size of Shopify.
Sorry, 81,000,000 consumers worldwide bought from Shopify
powered brands. Yeah, you had the right
81,000,000 customers or consumers. 15,800 entrepreneurs
made their first sale on Shopify on Black Friday, Cyber Monday,
so 18 sorry 15,800 plus entrepreneurs and new stores got
their first sale which is insane Just over that weekend more than
94,900 merchants had their highest selling day ever on
Shopify. It's ridiculous.
Hottest product categories, and I think this is quite
interesting because there's two ways to look at these
categories, which is my personality type.
I'm what's called a debater. So I like seeing both sides of
the debate. I'll sometimes argue for the
side I don't even agree with, just to have a balanced debate.
And the hottest product categories, you could take this
as that's a hot category, we should sell products in it.
You could also take it as it's hot because a million people
selling stuff in it and it's really, really saturated and
that kind of thing. So the hottest ones were
cosmetics in it #1 clothing, tops and pants specifically at
#2 active wear, at #3, fitness at #4, and last but not least at
#5 was nutrition. How interesting is that?
So cosmetics about the way you look, clothing, tops and pants
is about the way you look. Active wear, fitness and
nutrition is kind of a combo about the way you look and also
the way you feel. People, I guess just at an
absolute glance, either people are being really nice, buying
lots of gifts. So people are being very selfish
with what they buy. But anyway, take from that what
you will. Average cart price over Black
Friday, Cyber Monday weekend, $114.70 and I don't know what
this means, but it says $112.00. So $2.00 less on a constant
currency basis, I guess. Yeah, taking currency conversion
into account maybe, and top selling countries.
Oh yeah, loving this. Obviously the US is first
because the US always wins and it's important that the US feel
good about that, which is fun. I don't know what I mean by
that. And then second is UK.
Come on guys, loving this. Absolutely brilliant.
UK if they're in second, followed by Australia.
Word on guys. Down under Germany.
Word on guys. I don't know any German, sorry.
I know 9, which means no, but yeah, I don't know anything good
in German, like as in a good word, but well done guys in
Germany. And then finally in 5th is
Canada. So USUK, Australia, Germany
calendar, calendar Canada, the top selling countries there, top
selling cities. This is quite interesting.
And again, big up to #3 in there.
So we got LA, we got New York and then we come across the pond
to London. Loving that London in 3rd global
top selling city for Shopify sales for Shopify consumers,
people buying from Shopify stores.
And then we're back to the US for San Francisco in fourth,
which I visited lovely city and also Miami in fifth.
I've been to three of those places which you can have a
guess as to which three and I won't answer because this is a
one way thing. You're listening to a podcast
and this beard is even itchy on my neck.
I can't believe I agreed to wear this right.
Here we go. Peak sales per minute, $5.1
million, happened at 12:01 PM, so one minute after midday.
Eastern Seaboard time. I don't think this was great EST
time, East Coast US on Black Friday, so $5.1 million came
through Shopify at one minute past 12-1 minute past midday on
Black Friday. So it was insane.
I've got three more stats for you here. cross-border orders
represented 16% of global orders.
I, it doesn't say that compared to last year.
I wonder how much that's increased given the popularity
in 2025, what's called Shopify Markets where you can sit quite
quickly and simply set up another currency, language,
etcetera of your existing store and it's much easier to manage
inventory and things using that. So I wonder how much Shopify
Markets has contributed that. It's quite interesting. 39% year
over year increase in sales mode via Shop Pay.
So if you're not using Shop Pay, get on that.
If you're using Shop Pay and you're not using properly and
someone click Shop Pay on an item and it ignores what's
already in the car, explaining it's Lowe's, I don't know if
it's a bug or not, but Shopify should do something about that.
It seems really, really silly, but change that.
Change the way you're using it. If it's a single item check out,
it creates a second kind of express check out, ignoring
what's already in the basket because you're going to lose
those product sales. And 32% of orders were placed
actually on shop pay. So sorry, hang on, let's read
these stats again. So both about shop pay, sorry,
39% year over year increase in sales and shop pay.
And 32% of orders people used shop pay as their payment
method. Okay, so that's some of your
quotes and facts of the week, but we're not done for facts and
we're going to talk about a 2025 overview now as well.
This is the main thing I wanted to cover today on top of those
statistics, which is quite cool. And we're 7 minutes in, which is
fantastic. Probably a little bit less
because I have a few coughs and leave little Easter eggs for for
Byron and the team when I click record.
How exciting it's the little games I play in my own world.
AI integration and artificial intelligence is a major theme.
If you weren't aware, with 80% of marketers reporting they use
generative AI, my tools, 8089% of people.
So that's basically 9 out of 10 people using a a generative AI
tools. The top use case was content
creation. 43% of people are using AI to create content.
Research is 34% brainstorming, which I don't think you can say
brainstorming in the UKI went on AHR course recently.
So we'll say what's an alternative for that?
Inspirational things. Coming up with some
inspirational ideas is 26.927% of marketers.
AI is seen less as a tool and more of an official marketing
channel integrated into search, shopping and PR now as well.
Second thing we're going to talk about is video dominance.
So video content is leading. So I'm just going to comment on
AI. Actually, I've kind of brushed
over that very, very quickly. What's interesting with AI is
everyone says that AI is the future, it's the present.
It's the biggest thing and we should spend so much time and
energy on it. You've probably heard me having
a little moan about AI and I've had a conversation with one of
the big AI players because they reached out and said, why don't
you like AI? You should use ours.
So I use theirs and it's the same as everybody else's.
So I won't call out who they are.
But I think at the moment AI is becoming a tool rather than it
being a sales engine itself. So rather than people actually
going on ChatGPT perplexity or Gemini and saying, hey Gemini, I
want to buy some some products and it recommending some
products I'm actually going through to to purchase rather
than that AI is being used. As you can see here from 43% of
people using it for content, 34% are using it for research, 26
are using it for idea creation of so lost for words today, but
not the brainstorming word. And I'll say that here, but
yeah, I mean that we're down to 26% now.
So less than one in four people is using it to buy products.
There's only the top three that we've got on the data I've got
in front of me today. But isn't it interesting how
it's not being used as a search engine as such?
We're not searching. It's not being used as a a sales
channel in the same way giggle ads or meta ads or something
would be to drive people in. But yeah, the second one, as I
said earlier, so video, dominant video content is the leading
format for marketers to plan to prioritize in 2020. 693% of
marketers expect to spend the same or more on video marketing
in 2026. Short form video such as TikTok
and Instagram, Rails is the most used format that delivers the
highest ROI. What's interesting I think is
when I look at the like, we've got access to lots and lots of
Google Analytics accounts, as you can imagine, GA 4.
So we can see the channel breakdown and where people's
sales are coming from and what's actually driving the revenue.
So we've got some really good data as as an agency here to to
see that. One thing I find quite
interesting though is when I look at those sales channels,
the ones that continue to dominate is Google Ads is
always, not always, but it's almost always the highest
channel. So it's driving 30 to 45%,
sometimes over 60% of all sales. The second one then tends to be
SEO. I'm, I'm, I'm brushing over
direct here. And the reason I'm brushing over
direct is repeat sales. We generated that customer from
somewhere else. So I'm gonna ignore direct
because that quite often is second, sometimes first, but
it's always in the top three. It's often second.
It often goes PPC, which is specifically Google advertising,
Google Shopping, selling products.
Then it's often direct, and then it's SEO or it's SEO.
Then it's direct. And those three channels don't
involve video really at all until you land on site.
And then when you land on site, I look at the usability
statistics. People are not watching video.
So I don't disagree with these comments about video dominance.
So I think we just need to be really careful as we go into
2026. And I think people needed to be
a bit more careful this year just in how we use video, where
actually sits in the marketing funnel, if you like view and it
sits at the top, that's where it should start.
TikTok is changing that. TikTok is a, I've never heard of
a product. I wasn't even shopping.
Now I'm watching a video and now I've purchased it.
All in all, in the space of two or three minutes or 5 minutes or
10 minutes, somebody actually make that purchase and buy a new
pop shield or something for their phone or a new accessory
for the car, a new T-shirt they've seen online.
That's going to make them look and feel better about their
life, Which is all very good marketing and all very good
products. But I think video, we need to be
really careful about this because we've seen some brands,
certainly in 2025, spend a huge amount of money on video.
And the problem with the money they're spending on video is
they're driving all the all of these views.
And but the brand or the video content or the product, they're
putting it, it, it's not what I call sticky enough.
It's it, it doesn't stick with people.
So they come back and purchase later.
So the video bit is very expensive, tells us people who
exist and then they forget about you.
So a lot of the money you're spending on video then gets
wasted because it doesn't generate sales.
This is where you need a full funnel approach to this, which
is as soon as somebody's watched a video, how can we encourage
them to click or do some sort of interaction?
So at least now they've hit my website and there's some sort of
cookie interaction through the browser.
So now we can just remarketing and hook them in.
Or if they then later go on Google and search for that new
phone holder for their car, for example, when they're looking
for that phone holder, we've already shown them the phone
holder they should buy or that gardening equipment or whatever
it might be. So be really careful about the
way you use video. And this is where one of the
biggest issues I've seen in my SEO career, which is coming
towards 20 years now. So I've, I've seen a few things
over my time. I'm really old, I've seen
things. But with the SEO, with the SEO
side of things, we're trying to pull together the PR team to
help build links for us. We're trying to pull together
the video production team and whoever deals with video and
creative because everything they're doing on YouTube's
great, but we're not getting enough views and it doesn't link
back to the site. So all these, all the different
marketing bits tend to come into one big epicentre to make your
SEO go faster and make your conversion rates go up and make
the brand more sticky. So you get more brand search on
Google, which on SEO it's free to get the clicks.
So I think with video, what you really want to do is get all the
different heads of different teams around the table and say,
right, guys, we've got the budget to shoot video, we are
shooting video. What else could we do with our
video content that could be smarter than this?
Is it actually we should make some installation videos.
So once you bought the product, you then get sent a video and
this is how to install and use your product, for example.
That could be quite good. And actually that can also be
used as pre sale if you buy this product.
Here's a video of how to use it. And I think any DIY product I've
ever bought, it arrives and you're like the screws, it's
come with the rubbish and I need to get the exactly the right
size screwdriver. And you kind of put it off for a
bit. If it's like, no, no,
everything's included in this kit or your, your, your
product's going to arrive in three days.
So in the next three days, you need to get a drill ready and
charged up. You need to have your wall
plugs, your screws spirit level. And there's a literally a step
by step video. These are the 8 tools you need
and we'll show you on have the video playing on your iPad or
your laptop or something while installing the product.
I think video can be really powerful.
They're both pre sale, post sale, which is then going to,
it's going to come back to, to support the business more
because I'm going to buy from them because I'm literally a
demo video of how to set up those shelves.
I'm going to buy all my shelves from now on from these guys.
What else do they sell? What other emails are coming in?
Plus, I'm going to leave a review because I'm so happy and
the reviews mean more. You want to buy because it's
high, highly reviewed and highly rated.
And the third thing as well is that data-driven strategies.
We've doubled down on this in the agency this year and I'm
going to tell you a little bit more what we've done and why
we've done it in a second and how it affects you guys.
So marketers are increasingly using data to inform their
strategies, with data analysis seen as a critical way to employ
with ROI and reach target audiences more effectively.
The reason I want to pause on this one for a SEC is I don't
disagree with any of that. And actually you probably could
have written that as a what's happened in 2025 and what we
think's going to happen in 2026. You probably could have written
that any one of the last 10, maybe 15 years that there's more
data available. So we're using more of it.
What we seem to be finding more and more of now though is brands
are with all the data available, brands are becoming time poor to
actually analyse it properly. And half the time it's not
having the experience or the know how to actually go to the
right piece of data in the 1st place to then start your start
and do your analysis. So what we've been doing is
we've, we've doubled down on data as an agency and our whole
website now is it's profitable revenue growth and it's all
about the data. And actually with a lot of our
clients as well, we're starting to get to a point with every
project we do, every SEO recommendation we put forward,
every SEO change we deploy, everything we do on Google Ads.
It's always the sort of, if I can't show you this is going to
widen your profit margin and make your your business more
profitable, I'm not sure I can justify actually doing this
thing. And we put them into the two
buckets. So 80% of the time we are
spending 8% of the energy on things that are like, right,
I've checked all the data. These are your products that
actually sell on Google Ads. These ones that actually make
profit. These ones are the biggest
margins, but they're not getting indexed and showcased enough on
Google Ads. So we're going to try and index
and showcase the more because they've got bigger margins.
So even if the ROI comes down slightly, we've got more margin,
we make more profit and we can get hold of those products
quicker. 20% of the time then. So that's the 80 percent, 20% of
the time. Then creative.
Let's just let's just change something on the website that
just without even looking at the data, completely irrational
seems oddly, you know, let's change the colour scheme
slightly. Let's move things around on the
product page on the collections. Let's put three in a row instead
of four and just see what happens.
And then it comes back to the data, you know, do something
creative and a bit wacky, even ask your customers and survey
guys, what do you think we should be doing?
So these are the big three things that have happened in in
2025. Final thing is we've got a
webinar coming in January. I think it's waiting on me to
agree a date because I'm going to host it, but Tax Cloud and
Saguna are going to be talking about.
So keep an eye on your inboxes. If you haven't already, go to
wwspodcast.com, sign up to our newsletter and make sure you're,
if you sign up to newsletter, you'll be first to hear about
that as well. And we're going to be announcing
something very big, very exciting in January.
Sorry, announcing in January, January, it's happening in on
1st of September and we're just waiting for Mark from our lovely
partners at Glaze to to update our website for us, which I'm
told is going to be live first thing in the new year as well.
Time for Quivia and then we're off Quivia.
If you've never seen him before, it's a question about a piece of
trivia. But today I'm just going to give
you a really cool fact. And we selfishly decided to to,
to have the Santa special. Santa being me to have the Santa
special, If that is, there's actually bits of beard on the
microphone. How exciting.
We decided to do a question about the podcast today.
So the question is, and I made a slight typo, I'll read it out
with the typo, then I'll read it out with the correcting the
typo. What WWS channel guessed the
most weekly views? And now I'm going to read it
properly. What WWS?
The Winning with Shopify channel gets the most weekly views?
Is it Instagram, Apple podcasts, TikTok, Spotify, YouTube or
Amazon podcast? So go through it again.
So is it a it's like a pub quiz? There's like Christmas quiz.
Is it a Instagram B Apple podcasts C TikTok D Spotify E
YouTube or EF? Is it F Amazon podcasts as well?
Let's have a quick think. Shout out your best answer,
especially if you're in public. Just shout out whatever.
Shopify is awesome and it's this channel.
The correct answer. Turning my iPad off for the
Santa special today. The correct answer is Instagram.
We a few weeks ago hit 1,000,000 views on a single reel that we
put out shortly after the show and I was reading the stats.
I think it's one 1.3 plays per person.
So 30% of people are watching our Instagram reels twice, which
means 300,000 people watch the Instagram Reel at least twice,
possibly longer as well. So if you were one of those
people, you've been tuning into the show all year, you've just
discovered it and you're going through the back catalog, you
poor thing, listening to my voice.
But thank you so much everybody for having such an amazing year
with us. It's been a phenomenal Christmas
so far. I think pretty much everybody's
delivery cut off has now been reached.
So Christmas is officially over. I think in the in the retail
world, two days before Christmas, if you haven't
already as well, you know, it's a super last minute Boxing Day.
I read out a stat a week or two ago.
I've shot my iPad now, but it's on there somewhere and I read
out a stat. Boxing Day is the one of the
biggest. I think it might be the biggest
grossing day of the entire year. It's actually bigger than Black
Friday for a lot of brands. I don't know which one's bigger
overall. Apologies, I haven't got the
data to hand. But Boxing Day is an enormous
time. Even if you're not on sale.
Loads of people are shopping on Boxing Day.
Yeah, two days after they finish work and they're already looking
for some escapism from the family, who I'm sure are lovely.
Thanks so much for tuning in. And we have an incredible
Christmas. I am going to be back next week.
We're going to be talking about 2026 ahead of the new year
coming in as well. So an amazing Christmas.
I hope you have an amazing Christmas.
Love to you and all the family. Again, thanks so much for tuning
in and being part of everything we do.
Thank you for all the emails. We've had thousands of emails
this year from you guys. Thank you so much.
Been absolutely awesome and I'm so looking forward to both next
week and into 2026. An amazing Christmas and a Happy
New Year and goodbye from me.