Monthly ecommerce #11

Changes in Salesforce branches

One of Salesforce's branches in China announced its closure of Hong Kong and Beijing offices.

Previously, the operations in that region were primarily under the authority of Salesforce's China branch. Currently, Alibaba Cloud will handle operations in Hong Kong and China, while Salesforce's Singapore branch is in charge of operations in Taiwan, which falls under the Southeast Asia region.

It started at the Apsara Conference when Alibaba and Salesforce officially established their strategic collaboration, and Salesforce chose Alibaba as its unique supplier of service delivery in China. Reports say that before the COVID-19 epidemic, communication between the parties was sporadic. It is predicted that we will be able to some exciting news later this year, as the companies are preparing new projects for the masses.

Learn more about the possibilities of Salesforce ecommerce platform.

Shopify reduces its personnel by 10% as economic growth slows

According to the WSJ, Shopify is letting go of a thousand employees (ooops…), almost 10% of its workforce. A Canadian company noted in a memo sent to its staff that the reductions are necessary since clients make fewer transactions and choose to return to previous buying practices.

In one of the latest articles, the CEO Tobi Lütke states: "Our company must manage and unfortunately face the decline in people in around 10% by the end of summer." "We have to say "goodbye" to the professionals from three big departments: sales, customer support, and human resources. Furthermore, we are getting rid of a couple of departments that are not useful for us currently since they are too distant from producing things. We are also referring to employees who cannot be considered "in demand" at Shopify." The organization admits that such changes are needed for future Shopify improvements.

As stated by the founder, practically all businesses migrated online after the coronavirus pandemic, driving up demand for Shopify. The firm had made the mistake of assuming that the outbreak would not cause a halt to its soaring e-commerce sales and earnings and that it would instead require expansion to increase supply. The company also hopes to return the employees forced to leave next year and increase the company size again.

Shopping via DMs on Instagram

Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, officially unveiled that the business is introducing a new "pay in conversation" function on Instagram. Instagram visitors may place orders with companies and follow their orders via direct messages. 

Customers can begin by contacting a certified local company they want to buy from directly using the service. They can then accept, monitor their order, and get to the company on any other concerns within the same chat. Customers will now pay merchants straight through the Instagram message thread, which means their shopping experience will be simplified again! Meta states that clients can easily access in-app support while going through the purchase inside the app. It all becomes simpler since users know that there is someone they can reach out to if they face any problems.

Many users have already shared their feedback regarding the feature. People believe this new thing will change the industry, making it much easier to make impulsive purchases. As for the company, it is predicted that this feature will increase revenue and attract some new users to the app.

Read more about the newest feature here.

How profitable was Amazon Prime Day this year?

Wondering how successful did the company perform this time? Well, the answer is - VERY, duh… However, probably not to the extent that the sector has come to anticipate, and certainly not for the enormous firm that pioneered it. 

Amazon admits that it has been its most successful event in terms of items sold and revenue earned. Talking about numbers, the company sold around 300 million items from its website and beat the previous year's record (250 million).

Even though the world is going through some severe inflation, Amazon beat the results of the previous year, and the most popular products turned out to be electronic devices. Analysts believe that Amazon Prime Day's estimated revenue is $12 billion.