⚠️ They’re suing Shopify stores

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are around the corner, and we’ve got two major threats lurking that could sabotage your holiday sales.

Experied emails turning into spam traps and ADA accessibility lawsuits are both set to pounce on your e-commerce empire. 😱

But don’t worry! 

We’re one step ahead.

In today’s issue:

• Big BFCM no-no. If you’re thinking about reaching out to old/cold contacts for BFCM, watch out for this.

• 3,000% revenue growth. Breakdown of how an online pet furniture did it.

• Predatory lawsuits targeting Shopify stores. Plus a cheatsheet on how to safeguard yours.

TACTICS

Avoid disaster this season

With Black Friday and Cyber Monday around the corner, re-engaging your old, inactive email subscribers may sound like a great way to drive traffic. 

But with recent deliverability changes, it could end in disaster if you're not careful. 

Here's why:

Big players like Microsoft, Gmail, and Yahoo are now sunsetting accounts that haven't been used for 12-24 months. These expired email addresses can become spam traps, which will cause hard bounces and drastically impact your domain reputation. As these platforms continue to push for privacy and security, failing to clean your list could cripple your deliverability and campaign effectiveness during the critical holiday season.

What’s Happening:

• Sunsetting Accounts: Yahoo is marking accounts inactive after 12 months; Gmail and Microsoft follow suit after 24 months.

• Spam Traps and Hard Bounces: Once expired, these accounts may act as spam traps, leading to hard bounce reports that hurt your sender score.

• Stricter Spam Complaints: Platforms now enforce stricter limits on spam complaints, with thresholds like 0.3% in place. Exceeding this can send your emails straight to the spam folder.

How to Protect Your Deliverability: don’t email accounts that haven’t engaged with you in past 6 months. If you want to be safe. If you’re feeling adventurous, you can venture closer to the 12 months limit, but at your own risk. 

TESTIMONIAL

How a Content Campaign Increased Revenue By 2,964% 😮

Cute animal content rules the web — but that wasn't the case for modern cat furniture company, Hepper.

When the eCommerce company Pangolia acquired them, the website was only receiving ~150 daily pageviews.

But the content team at Pangolia knew from experience that they could attract millions of readers per month from organic searches. 

Here’s how they did it:

1. Performed keyword search. Using Semrush’s Keyword Research Tool, they checked the popularity of different search terms, looking for those with lower difficulty rankings they could compete for. 

2. Searched for keyword variations. AKA how to find the hidden gems. It’s hard to think of all the keywords to check yourself, but you can use Semrush’s Keyword Magic Tool. Just enter the beginning of a keyword, e.g. “why do cats [?]” and it will give you all the variations people are actually typing. 

   Hepper found over 100 article ideas with the keyword variations from “why do cats [?]” alone.

3. Stole the best tactics. They typed in the top keywords in Google and found their competition on the first page. Then, using Semrush’s Organic Research Tool, they identified what kind of content their competition was getting the most traffic through. 

4. Focused on long-tail keywords. They were competing against websites that had been in the cat game for decades, so medium and high difficulty keywords wouldn’t have worked. Hepper focused on low difficulty ones first. 

Process: they aimed for 5,000 posts in 2 years. 

Result: a million monthly visitors in 9 months & a 2964% revenue increase over 2 years. 

Takeaway: Check your keywords and competition - there might be a big opportunity there. 

GOOD READS

…But 15 eComm tools to help your store do better and you stress less

Who doesn’t want that?

Not you.

COMMUNITY TALK

Shopify owners are getting hit with ADA accessibility lawsuits.

Now, you may be wondering…

The Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) was originally enacted in 1991 to ensure equal access to physical spaces. A precedent set in 2017 (The case Gil v. Winn-Dixie Stores) officially expanded its application to digital stores, and since then, there has been a rise in predatory litigation against these. 

A.K.A. ADA lawsuits.

It’s made the news, and there are a bunch of reports from victims on Reddit and the Shopify Community forum, and it. Shopify owners getting sued for things like:

“Missing alt attributes, wrong headings, [...] a hosted pdf document that had a diagram (and they said the) diagram was not properly accessible. No joke.”

- u/ObviousDave

In other words, pretty much anyone can get hit with these at any time. Once you get sued, you either have to settle, or fight back, both of which are pretty expensive. No one wants that, so we made you a cheat sheet to avoid getting got. 

1. Some themes offer more accessibility options than others. Look for one that claims accessibility and features WCAG 2.1 AA conformance. That’s not enough, though.

2. Accessibility apps are no good. One victim even says it could worsen things for you.

3. Follow WCAG Standards. There’s no way around it - study them, and do what you can to follow them. This will likely involve getting a dev on board to help. It’ll cost less than a settlement. 

4. Keep logs. These will prove that you were actively checking your site for errors and have a history of progress. They help immensely in case of a lawsuit. 

Bonus tip: If the plaintiff does not reach out to you before suing, they don’t have a case. The precedent for this is Yugely Nunez vs Beardbrand, LLC in the Southern District of New York.

FROM THE DARK SIDE

Do you have a ton of views and no sales?

“Check your sites. Our checkout isn’t working and Shopify Status has an “investigating” status for Admin Checkout Settings.”

- u/SpicynSavvy, 13 days ago.

 ⚠️ Test your site’s checkout!

Dear readers,

As you can see, we’re powering up the content. Let us know if we’re doing it right below!

With ❤️,

The Early Checkout Team

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