Google has announced a shopping integration with e-commerce platform PrestaShop, the company announced Thursday. The integration is available now via the “PrestaShop Marketing with Google” add-on, available in France and in countries where Shopping campaigns are available.

Why we care

This new integration gives PrestaShop’s 300,000 merchants an easy way to make their product listings more discoverable across Google properties, such as Search, the Shopping tab, Image search and YouTube.

Making it easier for retailers who may not be working with an agency to show their products on Google strengthens the search engine as an e-commerce destination, which will help it compete against other e-commerce platforms and may also help it attract more retail advertisers.

More about shopping search integrations

• Google expands its shopping integrations to include retailers on WooCommerce, GoDaddy and Square
• Microsoft partners with Shopify to help retailers expand their reach
• Google extends its shopping integrations to include BigCommerce
• Google unveils its Shopping Graph, an expanded Shopify integration and more shopping features at I/O

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Online consumer spend in the U.S. came in at $5.1 billion on Thanksgiving Day, showing flat YoY growth, and Black Friday generated $8.9 billion, which is slightly less than the $9 billion it generated in 2020, according to Adobe. Thanksgiving weekend sales also failed to outperform last year’s figures, although consumer spend is expected to achieve 10% YoY growth for the overall shopping season.

Adobe’s data comes from analyzing direct consumer transactions online. Projections are based on an analysis of over one trillion visits to U.S. retail sites, 100 million SKUs and 18 product categoriess.

Why we care. Cyber Week sales are struggling to meet last year’s levels, but that might be okay because, “With 21 days in November driving over $3 billion in spend, what we know as Cyber Week is starting to look more like Cyber Month,” said Taylor Schreiner, director at Adobe Digital Insights. For reference, last November, only 8 days topped $3 billion by November 28, 2020.

Supply chain issues, labor shortages, new consumer behaviors and even a Google core update the week before Thanksgiving — many variables could be affecting how retailers performed this Cyber Week. Because of these factors, businesses may fall short of their Cyber Week goals. However, Adobe still expects the full season (November 1 to December 31) to reach $207 billion (10% YoY growth). With that in mind, it may be better to assess sales over a longer period, perhaps beginning at the start of November, to get a clearer picture of how your campaigns and promotions did this holiday season. This may also enable better YoY comparisons since customers seem to be shopping much earlier this year.

Thanksgiving and Black Friday. Actual Thanksgiving and Black Friday online consumer spend came in at the low end of Adobe’s predictions: Consumers spent $5.1 billion on Thanksgiving Day (the same as in 2020). On Black Friday, consumers spent $8.9 billion, which is actually less than in 2020, when consumers spent $9 billion.

For reference, Thanksgiving Day drove $4.2 billion in online spend just two years ago (2019). However, this is the first time Adobe has reported decreased spending on major shopping days since it first began reporting on e-commerce in 2012.

Thanksgiving weekend. Online sales slumped even harder over the weekend than they did during Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday: On Saturday, November 27, consumers spent $4.5 billion online, down 4.3% YoY. On Sunday, November 28, they spent $4.7 billion online, which was also down YoY but by a much narrower margin, 0.5%. 

On November 27 and 28, the prevalence of out-of-stock messages rose 16% compared to the prior weekend (November 20 and 21). Supply chain concerns may have contributed to inventory shortages, which could help explain the sales slowdown. But, it is also possible that customers adjusted their behavior to shop earlier to avoid potential inventory shortages or to take advantage of sales earlier in the season: Between November 1 and November 28, consumers spent $99.1 billion, up 13.6% YoY. And, this season, there have been 21 days exceeding $3 billion in online sales, compared to just 8 days that exceeded that amount by this time last year.

The Cyber Monday outlook. Inventory issues and new, earlier consumer shopping patterns are also impacting Adobe’s Cyber Monday projections: Consumers will spend between $10.2 billion and $11.3 billion on Cyber Monday, Adobe predicted. If actual sales meet those expectations, then Cyber Monday will likely be the biggest online shopping day of 2021, although it may retain that title without necessarily exceeding last year’s figure of $10.8 billion.

Cyber Monday discounts are also expected to be weaker than last year. Discount levels have fallen across several product categories, Adobe said: TVs are seeing discounts of -16% (compared to -19% in 2020), apparel is discounted at -15% (-20% last year), computers are at -14% (-28% last year) and appliances are at -8% (-20% last year).

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Amazon has announced that it will longer accept payments from Visa cards in the UK, according to Reuters. “As a result of Visa’s continued high cost of payments, we regret that Amazon.co.uk will no longer accept UK-issued Visa credit cards as of 19 January, 2022,” an Amazon spokesperson said in a statement.

Why we care. The change won’t occur until after the holiday season, so merchants on Amazon won’t feel the impact during this crucial sales period. If Amazon and Visa do not reach a resolution, merchants may see sales decline as customers navigate the change and find another payment method.

Sellers on Amazon may see some hypocrisy here as well: Amazon’s referral fees, which it charges to merchants every time they sell a product, range from 3% to 20%, with the majority of product categories subject to a 15% fee.

And, in the U.S., Amazon has a co-branded Visa card that rewards Prime members with up to 5% back on Amazon and Whole Foods purchases. The e-commerce platform is considering dropping the partnership, according to Reuters. If Amazon doesn’t replace this co-branded rewards program, that’s one less reason to shop in Amazon’s ecosystem or maintain a Prime membership.

Forms of payment still accepted. The e-commerce platform will continue to accept MasterCard and American Express credit cards, Eurocard and Visa debit cards.

“We continue to work toward a resolution, so our cardholders can use their preferred Visa credit cards at Amazon UK without Amazon-imposed restrictions come January 2022,” a Visa spokesperson said in a statement.

Brexit enabled the fee hike. After Brexit, the European Union’s fee limits imposed on credit card issuers no longer applied to the UK, meaning that issuers can freely raise fees. Last month, Visa did just that, increasing its fee from 0.3% to 1.5% for online credit card payments between the UK and EU. It also increased its debit card fee from 0.2% to 1.15%.

Before Visa, MasterCard also raised its fees from 0.3% to 1.5%, according to BBC. It is not clear why Amazon’s new policy only affects Visa.

Other retailers may follow suit. These charges are known as “interchange fees” — transaction fees applied to the merchant’s bank account whenever a customer uses a credit or debit card to pay for a purchase from their store. These fees are paid to the card issuer and cover fraud, bad debt and handling costs. Naturally, they can apply to all businesses that accept credit or debit, not just Amazon.

“If Amazon can’t make it work, with all their resources and ability to navigate legislation to avoid costs, then small businesses have no chance and so the government must improve the UK-EU trade and cooperation agreement to keep British businesses competitive,” the UK Trade and Business Commission’s Tamara Cincik said.

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“Their algorithms are garbage,” said Lesley Hensell Demand, partner in Riverbend Consulting, a firm that helps Amazon sellers overcome a host of challenges, including account de-activation and loss of ASINs (a kind of ISBN number Amazon assigns to products. Riverbend is heavily staffed by former Amazon employees.

There was a lot of discussion about Amazon’s algorithms at the AMZ Innovate event for Amazon sellers in New York City this week. The reason: Amazon sellers are deeply invested in a platform which is essentially too big to be held accountable. They’re at the mercy of policy-making and enforcement which can seem capricious or even be downright mystifying.

Hensell Demand offered a grim tour around the problems sellers can face. Amazon attempts to exert control over pricing decisions by third-party sellers. If, for example, it sees a product from a seller listed at a lower price on a competitor website, it will enforce a price reduction. Because the process is automated (those algorithms), it’s not uncommon for Amazon to confuse a “pack of one,” say, with a “pack of three.” If Amazon believes it detects systematic over-pricing, more penalties can follow.

And then there’s the reported practice of simply copying a successful product and putting Amazon branding on it. According to Hensell Demand it has even been known for Amazon to approach the manufacturer and offer to place a larger order than the successful seller.

Sellers and aggregators

The event, put together by Jared Orkin, VP of Product Strategy at Adbeat and an Amazon and Shopify expert, and Brandon Furhmann, a successful Amazon Seller with his own Kitchenware Brand, did not just attract sellers. Also there were the partners who offer services for sellers: PickFu, the consumer research vendor, and GETIDA, an Amazon auditing service, for example.

Also present were a number of aggregators like Thrasio and Boosted. These companies are in the business of acquiring and growing FBA (fulfilled by Amazon) sellers — developing symbiotic portfolios of businesses that allow cross-selling and cross-promoting. Keith Richman, co-founder of Boosted, painted almost as bleak a picture of the space as Hensell Demand, but not without a ray of sunshine.

Online advertising is getting more expensive and difficult, he said. There’s no end in sight to the supply chain crisis. It’s really hard to hire talent right now. Amazon’s policy making and rule enforcement is hopelessy inconsistent. Sellers are under constant threat of being de-listed. And yes, success means the risk of being copied by Amazon, or indeed by other sellers. “Why is everything so hard?” he asked.

Things might be hard at present, but Richman also painted a rosy picture of the future. Massive changes are underway, he said, in digital shopping habits, fueled in part by social media. Consumers are open to trying new brands as never before. Established companies often lack the agility to respond to these changes. “This is just the beginning,” he said.

PPC, coupons and keywords

This mixture of horror and hope set the backdrop for much more granular explorations of how sellers can simply push their products to the top of Amazon’s search results. Casey Gauss, VP of SEO at Thrasio (a college dropout and self-taught programmer) came armed with actionable advice.

To get the prized Amazon Best Seller badge, for example, consider switching your product from its existing category to a sub-category where you can beat the competition. Purse a “big coupon” strategy, offering significant percentage or price discounts for a limited time, then gradually phasing them out (25% off for two weeks, then 15% off, and so on). Refresh your keywords regularly. Invest in PPC campaigns.

Most importantly, said Gauss, do all these things together. You might only be making “micro-improvements,” but your listing in the search results will be headed in the right direction.

Living with a giant

The event felt like a tribe of Davids all trying to make peace with the giant Goliath. Slaying the giant is not an option. They’re angry at many things the giant does, but they’re also fascinated by his quirks, needs and moodswings. We commented to Furhmann that the relationship between Amazon sellers and Amazon looked not unlike the relationship between search marketers and Google. He agreed.

“All these big tech companies are the same,” he said. Rather than devoting adequate human resources to executing policy, “they trust the algorithms — and the algorithms make really bad decisions.” It’s not just Amazon, he said. The same complaint could be levied against Facebook and Google.

“That’s where the frustration springs from.”

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The European Union’s General Court has rejected an appeal by Google and upheld a $2.8 billion fine against the company, originally levied in 2017 for favoring its own content in shopping search results. Separately, the UK Supreme Court ruled in Google’s favor in a 2017 class action-style lawsuit in which the company was accused of illegally collecting data on iPhone users.

The EU’s General Court upholds $2.8B fine. In 2017, the European Commission levied the largest antitrust penalty in its history up to that point — 2.4 billion euro ($2.8 billion) — against Google for allegedly favoring its own comparison shopping service. Google appealed the fine but, on Wednesday, the EU’s General Court upheld the European Commission’s 2017 decision, stating, “The General Court concludes its analysis by finding that the amount of the pecuniary penalty imposed on Google must be confirmed.”

“The General Court finds that, by favoring its own comparison shopping service on its general results pages through more favorable display and positioning, while relegating the results from competing comparison services in those pages by means of ranking algorithms, Google departed from competition on the merits,” the court said in a press release.

Google can file another appeal with the European Union’s highest court, the EU Court of Justice, but the company has yet to state what course of action it intends to pursue.

UK Supreme Court dismisses lawsuit over alleged tracking of iPhone users. Although Google lost its appeal in the EU, the UK Supreme Court ruled in its favor in a class action-style lawsuit which also dates back to 2017. The lawsuit claimed that Google bypassed the privacy settings of 4.4 million iPhone users in the UK between 2011 and 2012. The claimant, Richard Lloyd, former director of consumer rights group Which?, alleged that Google cookies gathered user data on race, health, sexuality, ethnicity and finance, regardless of users’ “do not track” privacy settings in the Safari browser. The damages could have cost Google up to three billion pounds.

“The claimant seeks damages … for each individual member of the represented class without attempting to show that any wrongful use was made by Google of personal data relating to that individual or that the individual suffered any material damage or distress as a result of a breach,” the UK Supreme Court said in its judgement.

Why we care. In the EU, the General Court’s ruling may strengthen the European Commission’s drive to regulate big tech, which doesn’t bode well for other platforms — like Amazon, Apple and Facebook — that are also currently under investigation. This also adds momentum to the proposed Digital Markets Act, which threatens to end self-preferencing in app search results. In addition, the tighter regulations may ultimately work in favor of Google’s competitors in the shopping vertical.

Google would have suffered another substantial blow if the UK Supreme Court ruled against it, since the decision could have paved the way for more class action-style lawsuits. In the UK, such lawsuits currently require people to opt-in, which can draw out the process. This also carries implications for other platforms, such as TikTok, which is being sued over the use of children’s data.

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