Amazon’s Still Got It

As the hype around artificial intelligence reaches a fever pitch, it's easy to overlook the core business that has propelled Amazon to its current heights: retail. This week's Prime Day event serves as a powerful reminder of the e-commerce giant's dominance in this space.

Analysts predict robust growth during the two-day shopping extravaganza, with JPMorgan projecting a 12% increase in gross merchandise value to $12.4 billion. The bank also expects Amazon to surpass Walmart as the largest U.S. retailer this year, a testament to its expanding market share.

While much of the recent excitement surrounding Amazon revolves around its AI initiatives and the profitable Amazon Web Services (AWS) division, retail remains the primary contributor to sales. Online stores and third-party seller services accounted for nearly 65% of Amazon's revenue in 2023.

Prime Day presents an opportunity for Amazon to showcase the efficacy of investments made during the pandemic to enhance its retail operations. Improved efficiencies are expected to boost margins significantly, with Jefferies analysts projecting a fourfold increase in Ebit margins this year.

The event also serves as a catalyst for Amazon's advertising business and drives membership growth. The launch of Amazon's AI shopping assistant, Rufus, adds an extra layer of intrigue, potentially reshaping how customers navigate the sea of Prime Day deals.

Early user feedback however suggests that Rufus may not be quite ready for prime time. Many users have reported that Rufus is providing inaccurate, irrelevant, or overly generic responses to their queries. While Amazon encourages users to rate Rufus' answers to help improve its performance over time, it's clear that the AI assistant has a long way to go before it can truly revolutionize the shopping experience.

For investors, a strong Prime Day performance could provide further justification for Amazon's 29% stock rally this year, which has pushed its market valuation above $2 trillion. While AWS and AI generate more buzz, the retail business remains a critical pillar of Amazon's long-term growth story.

As the dust settles on this year's Prime Day, analysts will be closely watching for signs that Amazon's retail investments are paying off. A solid showing could reinforce the bull case for the stock and cement Amazon's position as the undisputed king of retail.

6 Tactics For Emotion-Driven SEO Content

As an ecommerce business, your content needs to do more than simply rank well in search engines. It needs to connect with potential customers on an emotional level, drive engagement, and ultimately persuade them to convert.

By strategically infusing emotion into your SEO-optimized content, you can satisfy both the logical algorithms of search engines and the emotional decision-making processes of your target audience. Here are six actionable tactics to help you leverage the power of emotion-driven content:

1. Map search intent to customer emotions

• Understand the emotions behind different types of search intent:

• Informational intent - curiosity, confusion

• Navigational intent - efficiency, familiarity

• Commercial intent - indecisiveness, caution

• Transactional intent - decisiveness, purpose

  

Tailor your content tone and structure to align with these emotions. Provide clear answers for informational searches, easy navigation for navigational queries, helpful comparisons for commercial searches, and confidence-building content for transactional intent.

2. Infuse product and category page copy with power words

• Choose high-impact, emotional power words for your key pages:

• Product titles and descriptions

• Category page headers

• Unique selling proposition statements

• Calls-to-action

Words like "premium," "exclusive," "game-changing," "guaranteed," "jaw-dropping," etc. can elevate your copy and provoke an emotional response. But use them strategically and don't overdo it.

3. Create helpful content focused on real customer pain points

Mine customer reviews, support queries, forums and interviews to understand the challenges, frustrations and desired outcomes of your audience. Create genuinely helpful blogs, guides and tools that:

• Empathize with their emotions

• Provide detailed solutions

• Offer product recommendations when appropriate

• Avoid superficial content that only targets keywords. Go deeper to forge an emotional connection through being truly helpful.

4. Optimize for "I want to buy" micro-moments

Identify the micro-moments your customers experience on their journey, especially the "I want to buy" moments preceding a purchase. Create dedicated pages optimized for queries like:

• "Best [product] for [specific need]"

• "[Product] reviews"

• "[Brand 1] vs [Brand 2]"

• "Buy [product] near me"

Make this content scannable, mobile-friendly, and emotionally reassuring to cater to impatient searchers on the cusp of converting.

5. Leverage storytelling in your blogs and About Us page

Harness the power of narrative to humanize your brand and create content people connect with. Share your brand story, customer success stories, and employee spotlights that convey authentic experiences and emotions.

Storytelling techniques like the hero's journey, open loops, and sensory language make your content more engaging - for both humans and search engines as dwell time and engagement are positive ranking factors.

6. Split test emotion-driven CTAs and click triggers

Your calls-to-action are opportunities to use emotionally compelling language that inspires clicks and conversions. Test variations of your CTAs that:

• Spell out a specific benefit or outcome

• Create a sense of urgency or scarcity

• Overcome objections or hesitations

Pair short, punchy CTAs with click triggers - short supporting statements that offer social proof or risk reducers to further persuade prospects.

By applying these six tactics consistently, you'll create a website with emotionally engaging, high-converting content that also ranks well. You'll satisfy searcher intent while persuading them to become loyal customers - a win-win for your ecommerce SEO and your bottom line.

• WhatsApp's new beta update lets users create AI-generated images with Meta AI. Future updates will enable Meta AI to interact with and edit user-shared photos, enhancing convenience and user experience within the app.

• Target's new AI chatbot helps employees with tasks, aiming to boost efficiency and enhance shopping experiences amid rising costs. Currently piloted in 400 stores.

• Thrive AI Health, backed by OpenAI and Thrive Global, aims to democratize expert health coaching using AI. This tool will personalize advice on sleep, food, fitness, stress, and connection to improve health outcomes and address chronic diseases, focusing on health equity.

• Garrett Sussman explains AI Overviews, Google's new AI-powered search snippets. They come in three types: informational, shopping, and local. Optimizing for AI Overviews involves ensuring content relevance and using authoritative language, quotes, and statistics.

• Check out Google Ads’ three recent key updates.

Globe Explorer - Visual-hierarchical search on any topic you want.

Niji 6 by Midjourney - A model meant for anime style images.

Fforward - Copilot for customer interviews.

Record Once - Video tutorial creation and auto-editing

Google VideoPoet - An LLM for zero-shot video generation

Doclime - Get answers from your documents

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🙄It sucked