There are many sources of knowledge about the ecommerce industry for budding entrepreneurs and seasoned businessmen: online discussion groups, trade magazines, conferences, and many more. On ecommerce blogs, you can find articles on various topics and of varying complexity so it’s a good place to search for information on online stores, track the trends and news from the industry.
Ecommerce blogs – why should you stay up to date?
A blog isn’t only an effective brand promotion tool but also a place where readers can find tips that are useful for business.
The advantages of following blogs include:
- gaining knowledge about the ecommerce industry, technology, marketing, SEO positioning, dropshipping, running a store, the issues related to running an online business,
- making contact with other people from the industry (the author or other readers) in the comments to exchange views or start collaboration,
- getting quick information about the industry news by subscribing to a newsletter or blog,
- the ability to download reports, analyses, and other materials sent to blog subscribers and not available to the public.
1. Digital Commerce 360
Digital Commerce 360, formerly known as InternetRetailer, is a huge information platform with articles published in two sections, one about the B2B sector and another, which hosts materials about retail trade. The articles for this page are created by various authors, including industry journalists and people with hands-on ecommerce experience (company CEOs, product team leaders). They focus on industry news, technologies, technological solutions for business and the creation of reports on the ecommerce market.
In addition to reading publicly available articles, readers can purchase access to a large number of useful reports, as well as economic and ecommerce research (e.g. to a report on marketplaces or research on web page design and customer experience).
Digital Commerce 360 looks like an ordinary business magazine because the entries don’t resemble the compendiums of knowledge typical of industry blogs. On ecommerce blogs, entries often consist of many definitions and “raw” knowledge, allowing the reader to delve into a topic that is new to them. The articles on Digital Commerce 360 focus more on actual events in the world of online stores, opinions and statements of the people from the ecommerce industry.
2. E-commerce Nation
E-commerce Nation is another big portal that publishes articles related to the ecommerce market. In addition to regular authors specializing in the ecommerce industry, the editorial office is also open to materials created by independent authors. You just need to create your own profile on the page. The final modifications and the decision to publish it, however, are left to the regular team. Its editors categorise the published content into seven different thematic categories:
- logistics,
- payments,
- m-commerce,
- marketing,
- conversion,
- cross-border,
- ecommerce platforms.
Source: E-commerce Nation
This page is a huge knowledge base for beginners and experienced ecommerce professionals. In addition to the blog itself, on the page you can find webinars, podcasts, e-books, infographics, as well as a separate subpage with interviews with the people well-known in the ecommerce industry (such as Frieder Egerman, who started his career at Yahoo! or Clark Boyd, specializing in digital marketing, who collaborated with American Express and Adidas).
3. EcommerceBytes
EcommerceBytes is a blog founded by Ina Steiner, an often quoted by ecommerce journalists specialist in selling on marketplaces, and the author of Turn eBay Data Into Dollars. By browsing the published news from the ecommerce industry, you’ll learn what is happening at the largest ecommerce companies in the world, such as eBay and Amazon.
The site consists of three blogs: EcommerceBytes, AuctionBytes and Letters to the Editor. Letters to the Editor is a blog, co-created by the readers. Anyone can describe a certain problem or situation. It’s also worth mentioning that the readers can reply to every letter. Therefore, a discussion arises between the members of the community, and readers can learn not only from the person who wrote the letter, but also from other people leaving comments. AuctionBytes is written by salesmen running their own online stores and selling on marketplaces, and it addresses the current problems of these entrepreneurs. The third blog – EcommerceBytes – contains the news published by the founder of the site. The articles on this blog are aimed mainly at those who like to keep their ear to the ground, and whose business decisions may depend on the moves of big brands. Among the news, however, you can also find more extensive texts on the new trends in ecommerce (e.g. drone deliveries, methods of monitoring the employees working remotely, or the possibility of using artificial intelligence).
The Tools tab contains industry guides written by the readers, e.g. about international shipments and the strategies related to them. An interesting idea was also to create the Ecommerce EKG section, where readers can report information about the errors or difficulties they found on various ecommerce platforms. It’s possible to subscribe to the newsletter in order to be up to date with the new entries.
4. eCommerceFuel
The eCommerceFuel blog was created on the initiative of the entrepreneur Andrew Youderian, and today many ecommerce experts publish on the platform. In addition to the moderators, editors and employees responsible for supporting the community, the blog is also co-created by specialists in various fields, e.g. email marketing or product shipping. Readers will find on this platform numerous articles about:
- sales optimization,
- business scaling,
- branding,
- SEO,
- influencer marketing,
- photography,
- video creation,
- transport.
Among the materials, you can find content in various forms. Extensive specialist articles, industry news, annual reports on the ecommerce trends and training courses are available to interested readers. The podcasts created by the site founder are a large part of the content that makes up the blog. Sometimes by himself, and sometimes with the invited guests, he talks about creating one’s own brand and business, referring to his own story. He mentions, for example, how living in two different places at once had an impact on his career.
Excerpt from the report on the ecommerce trends in 2019. Source: eCommerceFuel
The recipients of the materials published on eCommerceFuel create an active community. The membership is paid, but after joining the forum, you’ll be able to participate in discussions with other entrepreneurs and have access to the materials available only to people belonging to the community. Closed networking meetings are also held.
5. A Better Lemonade Stand
A Better Lemonade Stand is a blog founded by Richard Lazazzera – an entrepreneur, advisor and investor from the ecommerce industry. He was developing the Shopify platform before deciding to seriously focus on developing his blog. Originally, his site was in the form of a blog, where the entrepreneur shared with his readers his own experiences gained while creating and running an ecommerce company. Today it’s created by many authors, and some guest texts sent by readers are also published.
This blog is aimed at a wide audience – both novice entrepreneurs and experienced experts from large corporations who are able to shape the ecommerce industry will find useful knowledge there. You can find entries about ecommerce platforms, interesting marketing tools, using various communication channels for promotion and many other materials.
Source: A Better Lemonade Stand
The texts on the blog can be filtered according to the phases of business development the text relates to (“build, launch, grow”). When browsing the articles in the section about the business building phase, we’ll find texts about interesting business ideas and general tips on ecommerce. In the texts on launching a store on the market, we can find information on interesting technologies and marketing. You’ll learn from them how to promote your own business. The publications on the growth phase include evaluations of useful business tools and tips on how to scale your business. It’s worth subscribing to the newsletter in order to receive notifications about the texts you are interested in.
6. Ecommerce Platforms
Ecommerce Platforms is a blog founded by Catalin Zorzini. The author is the creator of the Mostash content marketing agency, he recently released a free mindfulness app with Zen teachings and built the ethical.net page, which enables finding ethical alternatives to the mainstream products and services.
Ecommerce Platforms is a page almost entirely devoted to online store building software and related technologies. We can find comparisons of ecommerce platforms, and information about the latest software versions. You can also expect mentions of payment systems, reviews of IT solutions for ecommerce and industry news.
On the blog, we can find two interesting subpages: Resources and Definitions. The first one contains links to the software, tools and articles recommended by the author. The second contains an alphabetical list of ecommerce terms. After clicking the query, we are redirected to the definition of a particular issue.
7. Sylius blog
Sylius is a Symfony-based system for building online stores. On the official website of this solution, there’s also an industry blog with many interesting entries about ecommerce solutions.
Source: The Sylius blog
On the blog, you can find information aimed at developers, about the possibility of using this software to build an online store, and tutorials on creating and developing an ecommerce website. In addition, there are also published articles about the current trends in the industry, business strategies, and available Sylius functionalities for stores – such as the possibility of integrating various payment methods, availability of analytical tools, etc.
8. Droptica blog
We also invite you to follow our blog. The ecommerce entries are an important part of its content. The articles on online business constitute a solid dose of knowledge about the industry and interesting solutions such as Drupal Commerce and Sylius, which we implement.
Our blog will certainly be of interest to you, regardless of whether you are already active or just a beginner in the ecommerce industry. If you’re wondering which technologies are most suitable to meet your specific business needs, we’ll be happy to share many interesting facts about store design. We advise between choosing a marketplace and an ordinary online store. We also advise on how to approach the sale of electronic products and show what interesting functionalities for ecommerce you can implement at your store.
Ecommerce blogs – summary
It’s worth following popular blogs from the ecommerce industry and absorbing the news. This way, you can efficiently learn about the trends and solutions that you may later use in your own business. Browsing through multiple pages can be time-consuming, so be sure to subscribe to your favorite blogs to get notifications. Subscribe to the Droptica blog to find out what’s new in the ecommerce industry.
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