12 ms·

Shopify CTO: our platform is now handling Black Friday level traffic every day

315 points by i_am_viet 6y ago

q92z8oeif 6y ago
traffic != sales The whole industry is experiencing a surge in online-window-shopping. Amazon is probably seeing a few blackfridays increase.
- garrettgrimsley 6y ago
  To add yet another data point as the many other commenters have already done: I work at UPS in a distribution hub. Today, Friday April 17th, we're doing parcel volume of around 215,000. On a typical Friday this time of year we do around about 120,000 parcels. My hub is hiring more workers, extending shifts, and asking more workers to work double-shifts. Volume has increased so much at some hubs that the volume is being re-routed through other hubs to help deal with it. Why else would Amazon be hiring 175,000 people in a month? We're experience peak season volume in April. Online sales are absolutely up.
- drclau 6y ago
  Do you have some data or know where I can find something? I'm genuinely curious.
- ambicapter 6y ago
  I work for an ecommerce business and can attest that orders are up in accordance with the headline.
  - guac 6y ago
    Same here. We're seeing very out-of-season numbers. In fact we saw another massive uptick this week that was suspiciously timed with the stimulus direct deposits going out (Tuesday/Wed morn).
- bitreality 6y ago
  It's two facets. On the one hand, people are definitely buying more essential products. They are also definitely visiting more ecommerce sites. They're bored, online shopping is a thing to do. Most people aren't at the point where they feel they need to drastically cut their spending. Most developed countries have some sort of payment going out to at least the unemployed. Also, even the newly unemployed have only been in that position for a few weeks. The people who are still employed, whether that's remote or whatever, have a surplus of money they normally would spend on things like travel, events, and dining out. They are absolutely not worried about spending money on discretionaries. The reality is, people still have a ton of money to spend. And less places to spend it. This recession is just barely getting started.
brd 6y ago
I've been talking to as many companies as I can during all of this. The surge is not evenly distributed but a lot of companies are seeing surprising upticks in online traffic and sales. The big question though is how long will this last? I think the general population has not yet appreciated the possible severity of the ensuing economic downturn. A lot of trade publications are already starting to sound the alarms on how ugly this could get. A return to 2008 era aggressive discounting is likely going to happen. Retail partners may be crippled by the quarantine. A lot of brands are going to be assailed from many directions simultaneously, it's going to hurt.
- goalieca 6y ago
  i saw a lot of brewers move to the shopify platform but the revenues are just not the same as when attached with the restaurants and taprooms. Many are expected to fail which means they will drop off shopify. I think overall, shopify will still be up since this is a wonderful acceleration of a change that was already in progress. But yes, this curve will flatten too as small retail starts failing and wallets dry up.
- trimbo 6y ago
  > I think the general population has not yet appreciated the possible severity of the ensuing economic downturn. My fear as well. The swiftness and ferocity of this downturn is like nothing ever, AFAIK. 22 million out of work in 4 weeks. Many are unlikely to get their jobs back. So while certain companies are seeing upticks due to logistics of the lockdown, I don't think it's safe to assume it would continue long after SIP ends.
  - ben_w 6y ago
    > Many are unlikely to get their jobs back. Their original job? Sounds plausible. Any job? Surely that would be a political choice for their respective governments? Unless there’s a reason we can’t repeat the famous infrastructure jobs programs from a century ago - I’m no economist, so I genuinely don’t know, but Hoover Dam Mark 2 sounds good to me.
    - 6y ago
avalys 6y ago
Really? What are people buying?
- draw_down 6y ago
  Probably the stuff people sell on Shopify
- brianwawok 6y ago
  Good story here https://www.visualcapitalist.com/shoppers-buying-online-ecommerce-covid-19/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/shoppers-buying-online-ecom... Food, workout items, entertainment. A lot of categories are through the roof!
  - thestu 6y ago
    I went to my local big box store maybe three weeks ago and the whole fitness section had been cleaned out. It seems like bikes are getting very popular (at least here in PNW) and I wouldn't be surprised if it's very hard to find a decent bike in 2 or 3 months. As we cycle through the seasons different items / categories are going to get unexpectedly popular. Nobody really knows how to keep themselves sane during August in a pandemic, but there's probably a product or product category that will help with that.
    - karakot 6y ago
      we will get forest fires in August and everyone will be sitting inside.
  - matwood 6y ago
    > workout items I wonder if gyms will ever come back from this. Gold's announced yesterday they are permanently closing 30+ locations. Even when people go back out, gyms were never the cleanest places to start with. Some places will require masks for the near future, so how does that work at a gym? Now that I'm been forced to finish my home gym, I'll likely cancel my membership once things open again.
casperb 6y ago
Same here. We have provide a warehouse management system specifically for e-commerce warehouses, as SaaS. We are (one of) the biggest player in the Netherlands, and since "social distancing" started here 4 weeks ago we see Black Friday 2019 levels of orders every day, for 4 weeks straight now. We have some customers that saw there orders come to a stop, even a few bankruptcies already. But almost all see a 30-40% bigger order flow. Some customers that sell DIY hair products see a doubling or tripling in orders per day and revenue. When I talk to the biggest e-commerce players in the Netherlands and the top 3 parcel shippers, they all see (near) black friday levels of orders/shipments.
- polote 6y ago
  Same in France, most makeup brands are x2-x3, fashion is x1.5 to x6 In France there is no increase of unemployment, instead they are at home getting paid, I guess they have a lot of money to spend as they can't party or go the restaurant It is actually quite visible here : https://contentsquare.com/covid-19-ecommerce-impact-data-hub/ https://contentsquare.com/covid-19-ecommerce-impact-data-hub...
  - gamblor956 6y ago
    France's unemployment numbers don't include the many contract workers that are not full time employees under French law. A lot of them are out of work right now and receiving nothing from the French government. Because French law makes it so hard to fire a full-time employee, many businesses only hire workers on a part-time basis. In contrast, most US unemployment numbers generally include all individuals seeking work, regardless of the type of employment they previously had.
    - hadrien01 6y ago
      False, unemployment numbers include part-time and fixed-term contracts, and they've only gone up 42k compared to last year[1]. Part-time and fixed-term contracts are covered under the French partial furlough reimbursement plan. [1] https://www.lesechos.fr/economie-france/social/coronavirus-hausse-soutenue-des-inscriptions-a-pole-emploi-1195069 https://www.lesechos.fr/economie-france/social/coronavirus-h...
ceohockey60 6y ago
Shopify is majority GCP, minority AWS for its cloud infrastructure [0]. Curious how they are splitting workloads between these two clouds during this extended usage spike. [0]https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/2018/03/29/shopify-picks-google-for-e-commerce-site-hosting/ https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/2018/03/29/shopify-picks-...
- blahbhthrow3748 6y ago
  Everything is on GCP
ssharp 6y ago
I hold a pessimistic viewpoint because it's a lot more insightful to look at losses than it is gains. With so much brick-and-mortar retail shut-down, retail has to happen somewhere, so it's going to happen online. Increases in product sales online could result in net declines for the product group when you factor in the loss of B&M sales. I think the logical result here is pretty well-represented in how some public companies in this space's stocks prices are playing out. Distribution companies are likely to prosper because their competition has decreased substantially: * Amazon is at an all-time high * Overstock has recovered their dip * Wayfair is recovering their dip * Chewy is at an all-time high None of this means the manufacturers who these distributors are selling are doing well, though. On the flip side, the product categories that are down substantially online are likely facing devastating loses. They already aren't selling in retail so if ecomm is it and they're down there, it's really bad. Outside of distributors, I think the D2C ecomm space is a huge mixed bag but likely net negative for a few reasons: 1. A lot of DTC companies play in the product categories that are seeing lower online sales 2. Most DTC companies are positioned as being accessible, but still premium. There are cheaper alternatives people may be more inclined to go with, given the economic uncertainty. Given that, layoffs at Away, Everlane, Third Love, Stitch Fix, Casper, etc. make sense, even if online sales as a whole are up. Some of them may even need to start paying attention to unit economics now! I'd guess a lot are scaling back advertising and trying to focus on lower-cost acquisition channels to keep a tighter grip on cash flow.
- m0zg 6y ago
  Amazon not only recovered their dip, but renewed their 52 week max several times already. And they don't even make much from online retail. To make matters more interesting, AWS seems to be _much_ busier than usual, and spot capacity is all but gone, at least at the price we were paying before. I'm not even sure why that is.
  - throwaway1777 6y ago
    Because people are online more since they can’t go outside.
  - Leherenn 6y ago
CodeSheikh 6y ago
Most of the items I have ordered from non-Aamazon small businesses during COVID-19 crisis is backed by Shopify platform. Their checkout form has a very unique layout so it is easy to tell without looking at the page source.
- pavlov 6y ago
  Is Shopify’s form the one that has awesome address autofill? I love that because my street name is like 40 characters long, it doesn’t even fit in the legacy IT systems used by utilities.
  - jeromegv 6y ago
    Yes, they do have autofill.
- deepfriedbits 6y ago
  My hunch is that Shopify is seeing surges in some areas because Amazon has been picked over for many items and can no longer adequately stock what consumers are looking for in some cases. Many small Shopify retailers have pivoted quickly and are stocking some items that Amazon is having trouble keeping in stock.
frequentnapper 6y ago
question as I've been looking at Shopify direct ship: Is it viable anymore? I mean sourcing from hundreds of suppliers listed on their Oberlo service all the while competing with thousands of others who are trying to sell the exact same products as well as the suppliers themselves selling it at much lower price (same price as their wholesale price) on Alibaba, etc. Shopify material makes it sound like you can easily sell it for 4x the cost if you spend enough on marketing, etc. Has anyone here have experience setting up dropshipping on shopify recently and making a decent profit?
acwan93 6y ago
There’s also the ripple effect of Shopify’s data. We run an omni-channel API connector service for our wholesale distributors to connect Shopify/marketplaces to our own back-end on-premise ERP, and the distributors that have utilized this service are seeing record breaking numbers that are in-line with what Shopify is saying. The downside? We launched this service less than a year ago and could’ve showcased some staggering numbers if we launched earlier. We’re trying to show the limited data we have to our customers to convince them to pivot to e-commerce while their wholesale channels are suffering.
bdcravens 6y ago
It'll be interesting to see if this results in much extra revenue for Shopify. They have extended their free trial from 14 to 90 days, and if a lot of the traffic is via new merchants, I assume some percentage of them may close the store once their brick and mortar opens back up. (That may be sooner than a full resolution of the pandemic - Texas for example announced retailers can all open back up in a week for pick-up orders)
jsonne 6y ago
I am presently scaling a client on Shopify who started at a 30k a month ad budget. Today we scaled past $8,000 per day (So a little under 250k a month). I fully expect and we'll hit $500,000 a month in ad spend for them monthly probably in the next 2 weeks. The combination of increased screen time and major companies pulling ad dollars has cratered media prices, and in the process, created a once in a decade opportunity for DTC brands that have cash on hand and are ready to scale up production. This announcement from Shopify themselves surprises me not at all.
- MuffinFlavored 6y ago
  I'm seeing the opposite. I'm seeing clients who are able to turn off a $30k/mo ad budget and instead seeing sales double based on such an increase in organic traffic from strong SEO.
  - chrischen 6y ago
    Yep, we also got a massive spike in organic traffic as well possibly due to stay at home orders.
- mparr4 6y ago
  What are they selling?
  - jsonne 6y ago
    It's in the semi-custom home goods category. Can't get more specific than that.
    - mparr4 6y ago
      I sell wall maps: https://ramblemaps.com https://ramblemaps.com Just started 3/22. They aren't exactly flying off the shelves. We're getting good traffic but conversion rate is very low. Would you expect a business like mine to be doing well in this climate? Since we're a new business it's hard to tell if it's our product or the market that is our problem.
Waterluvian 6y ago
I work around stuff related to the online shopping supply chain. We are absolutely seeing black Friday numbers. Really wondering if this forces people out of old habits and into new ones. Retail might never be the same.
kaishiro 6y ago
We run an e-commerce platform and have seen our traffic/signup numbers jump from initial launch fairly dramatically in recent months, which we can only attribute to the current climate at the moment as we're not yet doing a hard marketing push.
- gdsdfe 6y ago
  which e-commerce platform ?
  - kaishiro 6y ago
    Link is in my profile.
codingslave 6y ago
Their stock is booming as well. This is a fundamental repricing, going forwards ecommerce will become the norm as the slow adopters move onto it quicker. SHOP could be worth way more under a post pandemic economy. This isnt the same economy as three months ago, certain companies are worth more and certain ones are worth less. The money to be made in options is in understanding these repricings and exploiting them, a stock at ATH right now is a stock that may actually grow more in the future, its post pandemic outlook is only in the process of being priced in......
shakezula 6y ago
I think it would be really interesting to collect some data on web traffic before, during, and after this pandemic.
treyfitty 6y ago
Just want to add a datapoint: I run a skincare brand (www.mendskin.co) for men. No discernible difference in traffic, but a significant drop in conversions. I've stopped all Ads because the click through rate actually increased, but the conversions plummeted. I've been hearing over the past 2 weeks that online traffic and revenue has been soaring for others, but I'm skeptical. I think it's just traditional brick & mortar shops that never had the time nor the impetus to set up an online presence now doing so. Just my 2c.
jaxn 6y ago
In the past 3 weeks, we have helped over 150 brick and mortar retail stores (our customer base) open Shopify stores. They are not only opening stores, but doing meaningful revenue. Shopify has not be helpful as an organization, and their processes and red tape have been a challenge. But, it's apparently working for them.
ptrenko 6y ago
Strange. I'd expect less traffic from novelty type e-com sites ...
- fma 6y ago
  I expected the same. Colleague of mine runs a local SaaS to give restaurants an online presence, including online ordering. This week orders went up 60%...because people got their $1200. Americans don't know how to budget and will buy stuff just because they feel like it. Edit: I did buy a pricey swing set for my 2 toddlers. But I wanted to buy one last year was denied. This lockdown convinced my wife otherwise.
  - ptrenko 6y ago
    People have it really easy there. I'm from India and the needy are getting $10 per month. I think its $70 per month accounting for PPP, but even then the difference is massive
    - revendell_elf 6y ago
      Citation please. I haven't heared about it.
      - ptrenko 6y ago
        Sorry not $10, more like $7 Source: https://www.bloombergquint.com/coronavirus-outbreak/not-rs-500-indias-poor-need-at-least-rs-3000-a-month-george-mason-university-researchers https://www.bloombergquint.com/coronavirus-outbreak/not-rs-5... >India announced a Rs 1.7 lakh crore economic relief package >ensuring cash transfers of Rs 500 a month, and food >security. However, the package is less than one percent of >the country’s GDP.
mhoad 6y ago
Might be a good time to revisit the old rumour that Rails doesn’t scale.
- ksec 6y ago
  I dont think anyone said that actually meant it doesn't scale. What they meant was it doesn't scale cheaply. Rails is still great ( or possibly best ) for SaaS or Paid per usage model. Not so good for ad based or traffic driven per revenue model.
- celloductor 6y ago
  that rumour died a long time ago. no need to revisit it.
TristansLady 6y ago
I'm quite surprised at the lack of comments about the fact that a little over a week ago, Shopify withdrew guidance and now an insider made comments during their quiet period before earnings that materially affected stock price. Elon Musk has been called out by SEC a few times for this type of activity

315 points by i_am_viet 6y ago

traffic != sales The whole industry is experiencing a surge in online-window-shopping. Amazon is probably seeing a few blackfridays increase.

garrettgrimsley 6y ago
To add yet another data point as the many other commenters have already done: I work at UPS in a distribution hub. Today, Friday April 17th, we're doing parcel volume of around 215,000. On a typical Friday this time of year we do around about 120,000 parcels. My hub is hiring more workers, extending shifts, and asking more workers to work double-shifts. Volume has increased so much at some hubs that the volume is being re-routed through other hubs to help deal with it. Why else would Amazon be hiring 175,000 people in a month? We're experience peak season volume in April. Online sales are absolutely up.
drclau 6y ago
Do you have some data or know where I can find something? I'm genuinely curious.
ambicapter 6y ago
I work for an ecommerce business and can attest that orders are up in accordance with the headline.
- guac 6y ago
  Same here. We're seeing very out-of-season numbers. In fact we saw another massive uptick this week that was suspiciously timed with the stimulus direct deposits going out (Tuesday/Wed morn).
bitreality 6y ago
It's two facets. On the one hand, people are definitely buying more essential products. They are also definitely visiting more ecommerce sites. They're bored, online shopping is a thing to do. Most people aren't at the point where they feel they need to drastically cut their spending. Most developed countries have some sort of payment going out to at least the unemployed. Also, even the newly unemployed have only been in that position for a few weeks. The people who are still employed, whether that's remote or whatever, have a surplus of money they normally would spend on things like travel, events, and dining out. They are absolutely not worried about spending money on discretionaries. The reality is, people still have a ton of money to spend. And less places to spend it. This recession is just barely getting started.

brd 6y ago

I've been talking to as many companies as I can during all of this. The surge is not evenly distributed but a lot of companies are seeing surprising upticks in online traffic and sales. The big question though is how long will this last? I think the general population has not yet appreciated the possible severity of the ensuing economic downturn. A lot of trade publications are already starting to sound the alarms on how ugly this could get. A return to 2008 era aggressive discounting is likely going to happen. Retail partners may be crippled by the quarantine. A lot of brands are going to be assailed from many directions simultaneously, it's going to hurt.

goalieca 6y ago
i saw a lot of brewers move to the shopify platform but the revenues are just not the same as when attached with the restaurants and taprooms. Many are expected to fail which means they will drop off shopify. I think overall, shopify will still be up since this is a wonderful acceleration of a change that was already in progress. But yes, this curve will flatten too as small retail starts failing and wallets dry up.
trimbo 6y ago
> I think the general population has not yet appreciated the possible severity of the ensuing economic downturn. My fear as well. The swiftness and ferocity of this downturn is like nothing ever, AFAIK. 22 million out of work in 4 weeks. Many are unlikely to get their jobs back. So while certain companies are seeing upticks due to logistics of the lockdown, I don't think it's safe to assume it would continue long after SIP ends.
- ben_w 6y ago
  > Many are unlikely to get their jobs back. Their original job? Sounds plausible. Any job? Surely that would be a political choice for their respective governments? Unless there’s a reason we can’t repeat the famous infrastructure jobs programs from a century ago - I’m no economist, so I genuinely don’t know, but Hoover Dam Mark 2 sounds good to me.
  - 6y ago

avalys 6y ago

Really? What are people buying?

draw_down 6y ago
Probably the stuff people sell on Shopify
brianwawok 6y ago
Good story here https://www.visualcapitalist.com/shoppers-buying-online-ecommerce-covid-19/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/shoppers-buying-online-ecom... Food, workout items, entertainment. A lot of categories are through the roof!
- thestu 6y ago
  I went to my local big box store maybe three weeks ago and the whole fitness section had been cleaned out. It seems like bikes are getting very popular (at least here in PNW) and I wouldn't be surprised if it's very hard to find a decent bike in 2 or 3 months. As we cycle through the seasons different items / categories are going to get unexpectedly popular. Nobody really knows how to keep themselves sane during August in a pandemic, but there's probably a product or product category that will help with that.
  - karakot 6y ago
    we will get forest fires in August and everyone will be sitting inside.
- matwood 6y ago
  > workout items I wonder if gyms will ever come back from this. Gold's announced yesterday they are permanently closing 30+ locations. Even when people go back out, gyms were never the cleanest places to start with. Some places will require masks for the near future, so how does that work at a gym? Now that I'm been forced to finish my home gym, I'll likely cancel my membership once things open again.

casperb 6y ago

Same here. We have provide a warehouse management system specifically for e-commerce warehouses, as SaaS. We are (one of) the biggest player in the Netherlands, and since "social distancing" started here 4 weeks ago we see Black Friday 2019 levels of orders every day, for 4 weeks straight now. We have some customers that saw there orders come to a stop, even a few bankruptcies already. But almost all see a 30-40% bigger order flow. Some customers that sell DIY hair products see a doubling or tripling in orders per day and revenue. When I talk to the biggest e-commerce players in the Netherlands and the top 3 parcel shippers, they all see (near) black friday levels of orders/shipments.

polote 6y ago
Same in France, most makeup brands are x2-x3, fashion is x1.5 to x6 In France there is no increase of unemployment, instead they are at home getting paid, I guess they have a lot of money to spend as they can't party or go the restaurant It is actually quite visible here : https://contentsquare.com/covid-19-ecommerce-impact-data-hub/ https://contentsquare.com/covid-19-ecommerce-impact-data-hub...
- gamblor956 6y ago
  France's unemployment numbers don't include the many contract workers that are not full time employees under French law. A lot of them are out of work right now and receiving nothing from the French government. Because French law makes it so hard to fire a full-time employee, many businesses only hire workers on a part-time basis. In contrast, most US unemployment numbers generally include all individuals seeking work, regardless of the type of employment they previously had.
  - hadrien01 6y ago
    False, unemployment numbers include part-time and fixed-term contracts, and they've only gone up 42k compared to last year[1]. Part-time and fixed-term contracts are covered under the French partial furlough reimbursement plan. [1] https://www.lesechos.fr/economie-france/social/coronavirus-hausse-soutenue-des-inscriptions-a-pole-emploi-1195069 https://www.lesechos.fr/economie-france/social/coronavirus-h...

ceohockey60 6y ago

Shopify is majority GCP, minority AWS for its cloud infrastructure [0]. Curious how they are splitting workloads between these two clouds during this extended usage spike. [0]https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/2018/03/29/shopify-picks-google-for-e-commerce-site-hosting/ https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/2018/03/29/shopify-picks-...

blahbhthrow3748 6y ago
Everything is on GCP

ssharp 6y ago

I hold a pessimistic viewpoint because it's a lot more insightful to look at losses than it is gains. With so much brick-and-mortar retail shut-down, retail has to happen somewhere, so it's going to happen online. Increases in product sales online could result in net declines for the product group when you factor in the loss of B&M sales. I think the logical result here is pretty well-represented in how some public companies in this space's stocks prices are playing out. Distribution companies are likely to prosper because their competition has decreased substantially: * Amazon is at an all-time high * Overstock has recovered their dip * Wayfair is recovering their dip * Chewy is at an all-time high None of this means the manufacturers who these distributors are selling are doing well, though. On the flip side, the product categories that are down substantially online are likely facing devastating loses. They already aren't selling in retail so if ecomm is it and they're down there, it's really bad. Outside of distributors, I think the D2C ecomm space is a huge mixed bag but likely net negative for a few reasons: 1. A lot of DTC companies play in the product categories that are seeing lower online sales 2. Most DTC companies are positioned as being accessible, but still premium. There are cheaper alternatives people may be more inclined to go with, given the economic uncertainty. Given that, layoffs at Away, Everlane, Third Love, Stitch Fix, Casper, etc. make sense, even if online sales as a whole are up. Some of them may even need to start paying attention to unit economics now! I'd guess a lot are scaling back advertising and trying to focus on lower-cost acquisition channels to keep a tighter grip on cash flow.

m0zg 6y ago
Amazon not only recovered their dip, but renewed their 52 week max several times already. And they don't even make much from online retail. To make matters more interesting, AWS seems to be _much_ busier than usual, and spot capacity is all but gone, at least at the price we were paying before. I'm not even sure why that is.
- throwaway1777 6y ago
  Because people are online more since they can’t go outside.
- Leherenn 6y ago

CodeSheikh 6y ago

Most of the items I have ordered from non-Aamazon small businesses during COVID-19 crisis is backed by Shopify platform. Their checkout form has a very unique layout so it is easy to tell without looking at the page source.

pavlov 6y ago
Is Shopify’s form the one that has awesome address autofill? I love that because my street name is like 40 characters long, it doesn’t even fit in the legacy IT systems used by utilities.
- jeromegv 6y ago
  Yes, they do have autofill.
deepfriedbits 6y ago
My hunch is that Shopify is seeing surges in some areas because Amazon has been picked over for many items and can no longer adequately stock what consumers are looking for in some cases. Many small Shopify retailers have pivoted quickly and are stocking some items that Amazon is having trouble keeping in stock.

frequentnapper 6y ago

question as I've been looking at Shopify direct ship: Is it viable anymore? I mean sourcing from hundreds of suppliers listed on their Oberlo service all the while competing with thousands of others who are trying to sell the exact same products as well as the suppliers themselves selling it at much lower price (same price as their wholesale price) on Alibaba, etc. Shopify material makes it sound like you can easily sell it for 4x the cost if you spend enough on marketing, etc. Has anyone here have experience setting up dropshipping on shopify recently and making a decent profit?

acwan93 6y ago

There’s also the ripple effect of Shopify’s data. We run an omni-channel API connector service for our wholesale distributors to connect Shopify/marketplaces to our own back-end on-premise ERP, and the distributors that have utilized this service are seeing record breaking numbers that are in-line with what Shopify is saying. The downside? We launched this service less than a year ago and could’ve showcased some staggering numbers if we launched earlier. We’re trying to show the limited data we have to our customers to convince them to pivot to e-commerce while their wholesale channels are suffering.

bdcravens 6y ago

It'll be interesting to see if this results in much extra revenue for Shopify. They have extended their free trial from 14 to 90 days, and if a lot of the traffic is via new merchants, I assume some percentage of them may close the store once their brick and mortar opens back up. (That may be sooner than a full resolution of the pandemic - Texas for example announced retailers can all open back up in a week for pick-up orders)

jsonne 6y ago

I am presently scaling a client on Shopify who started at a 30k a month ad budget. Today we scaled past $8,000 per day (So a little under 250k a month). I fully expect and we'll hit $500,000 a month in ad spend for them monthly probably in the next 2 weeks. The combination of increased screen time and major companies pulling ad dollars has cratered media prices, and in the process, created a once in a decade opportunity for DTC brands that have cash on hand and are ready to scale up production. This announcement from Shopify themselves surprises me not at all.

MuffinFlavored 6y ago
I'm seeing the opposite. I'm seeing clients who are able to turn off a $30k/mo ad budget and instead seeing sales double based on such an increase in organic traffic from strong SEO.
- chrischen 6y ago
  Yep, we also got a massive spike in organic traffic as well possibly due to stay at home orders.
mparr4 6y ago
What are they selling?
- jsonne 6y ago
  It's in the semi-custom home goods category. Can't get more specific than that.
  - mparr4 6y ago
    I sell wall maps: https://ramblemaps.com https://ramblemaps.com Just started 3/22. They aren't exactly flying off the shelves. We're getting good traffic but conversion rate is very low. Would you expect a business like mine to be doing well in this climate? Since we're a new business it's hard to tell if it's our product or the market that is our problem.

Waterluvian 6y ago

I work around stuff related to the online shopping supply chain. We are absolutely seeing black Friday numbers. Really wondering if this forces people out of old habits and into new ones. Retail might never be the same.

kaishiro 6y ago

We run an e-commerce platform and have seen our traffic/signup numbers jump from initial launch fairly dramatically in recent months, which we can only attribute to the current climate at the moment as we're not yet doing a hard marketing push.

gdsdfe 6y ago
which e-commerce platform ?
- kaishiro 6y ago
  Link is in my profile.

codingslave 6y ago

Their stock is booming as well. This is a fundamental repricing, going forwards ecommerce will become the norm as the slow adopters move onto it quicker. SHOP could be worth way more under a post pandemic economy. This isnt the same economy as three months ago, certain companies are worth more and certain ones are worth less. The money to be made in options is in understanding these repricings and exploiting them, a stock at ATH right now is a stock that may actually grow more in the future, its post pandemic outlook is only in the process of being priced in......

shakezula 6y ago

I think it would be really interesting to collect some data on web traffic before, during, and after this pandemic.

treyfitty 6y ago

Just want to add a datapoint: I run a skincare brand (www.mendskin.co) for men. No discernible difference in traffic, but a significant drop in conversions. I've stopped all Ads because the click through rate actually increased, but the conversions plummeted. I've been hearing over the past 2 weeks that online traffic and revenue has been soaring for others, but I'm skeptical. I think it's just traditional brick & mortar shops that never had the time nor the impetus to set up an online presence now doing so. Just my 2c.

jaxn 6y ago

In the past 3 weeks, we have helped over 150 brick and mortar retail stores (our customer base) open Shopify stores. They are not only opening stores, but doing meaningful revenue. Shopify has not be helpful as an organization, and their processes and red tape have been a challenge. But, it's apparently working for them.

ptrenko 6y ago

Strange. I'd expect less traffic from novelty type e-com sites ...

fma 6y ago
I expected the same. Colleague of mine runs a local SaaS to give restaurants an online presence, including online ordering. This week orders went up 60%...because people got their $1200. Americans don't know how to budget and will buy stuff just because they feel like it. Edit: I did buy a pricey swing set for my 2 toddlers. But I wanted to buy one last year was denied. This lockdown convinced my wife otherwise.
- ptrenko 6y ago
  People have it really easy there. I'm from India and the needy are getting $10 per month. I think its $70 per month accounting for PPP, but even then the difference is massive
  - revendell_elf 6y ago
    Citation please. I haven't heared about it.
    - ptrenko 6y ago
      Sorry not $10, more like $7 Source: https://www.bloombergquint.com/coronavirus-outbreak/not-rs-500-indias-poor-need-at-least-rs-3000-a-month-george-mason-university-researchers https://www.bloombergquint.com/coronavirus-outbreak/not-rs-5... >India announced a Rs 1.7 lakh crore economic relief package >ensuring cash transfers of Rs 500 a month, and food >security. However, the package is less than one percent of >the country’s GDP.

mhoad 6y ago

Might be a good time to revisit the old rumour that Rails doesn’t scale.

ksec 6y ago
I dont think anyone said that actually meant it doesn't scale. What they meant was it doesn't scale cheaply. Rails is still great ( or possibly best ) for SaaS or Paid per usage model. Not so good for ad based or traffic driven per revenue model.
celloductor 6y ago
that rumour died a long time ago. no need to revisit it.

TristansLady 6y ago

I'm quite surprised at the lack of comments about the fact that a little over a week ago, Shopify withdrew guidance and now an insider made comments during their quiet period before earnings that materially affected stock price. Elon Musk has been called out by SEC a few times for this type of activity