I'm not enshittifying you. 💩

Congratulations to the word, “enshittification” for being named 2024 Word Of The Year by Macquarie Dictionary. It joins millennium bug, #hashtag, and dumpster fire as previous winners. What an honour.

But I think we can all relate to it, right? Who else longs for the time before LinkedIn tried to woo you as one of the few experts to answer their AI questions? Or when you’d see drunk friends on Facebook instead of drunk weirdos on community pages? Or when you could kick back on a Friday night and order Uber Eats confidently? These were all PE. Pre-Enshittification.

But it can happen pretty easily in ecommerce too if we let it. It can happen suddenly or with many cuts over time. Growing bigger. Going international. Acquiring more brands. Expanding range. Reaching for new customers. Dropping prices. All can be triggers for enshittification in ecommerce.

Here’s some examples of enshittification in ecommerce…

• Pop-ups as soon as you hit the site.

• Log in to access “member discounts”.

• Paying for returns.

• Out of stock at the checkout.

• Temu.

• Crack the AI-chatbot to get to a human.

• Automatically adding “shipping insurance”.

• Feeling relaxed? I randomly now want your CVC.

• Oops, we forgot/are sorry/love you. Here’s the last 10% off for BFCM.

By themselves, not overly irritating. Put together, an enshittification. Worse than cold fries delivered to your talkative neighbour.

It’s easy to justify these changes as our businesses grow and we aim to make more money. The tech bros have done this very well. But the Macquarie Dictionary has just fired a warning shot.

Your customers see it. And now, they’ve named it. You better watch it.

Cheers
Bushy

Don’t bother searching enshittification on the Macquarie Dictionary site. It’s the definition of an enshittified experience.

ECOMMERCE NEWS

🏴 Black Friday Recap: 10% Growth and a massive hangover
Yeah I know it’s the Tuesday after BFCM but here’s what we know so far - 10% growth is the US benchmark.

Adobe’s Live Dashboard is showing Americans spent $10.8b on Black Friday alone which is 10.2% growth YoY (more than the previous year’s growth of $9.8b sales and 7.5% growth). Toys were the category with the biggest discounts of 27.8% on Black Friday.

Meanwhile over on Shopify, I got access to their “secret password protected” BFCM dashboard. While it is still ticking along, so far I can tell you that Australian sales peaked at 10am on Black Friday. The average order value is $187.68, only 15% of orders are cross-border and the top categories by order volume are Clothing Tops, Cosmetics and Dresses. If these numbers are too much with a BFCM-hangover, the annual Shopify order tracking globe will dull your senses.

🌟 Australian Retail CX Batting Above The Australian Top Order
I missed it a couple of weeks ago but KPMG’s Australian Customer Experience Report is worth the download. Retail still leads the CX charge, scoring an average 7.42 (compared to 7.18 overall). Mecca, Specsavers, and Bunnings topped the list, while Ikea took home most improved. Unsurprisingly, AI, personalisation, and value for money remained the CX buzzwords. But we should be proud to be part of a retail sector who is keeping the CX bar high and continually pushing for innovation.

🧴 Kaladé Wins TikTok’s Business of the Year
The TikTok Awards came and went last week with a bunch of influencers and content creators who made me feel very inadequate in front of camera. That sounds worse than it is. Kat Clark from Australian-made skin care brand, Kaladé, picked up the award for the TikTok Business Of The Year - you can find her work at @kalade.

🕵️‍♀️ Auntie Exposes Scam Sites. Your Auntie Learns Ecommerce.
The ABC exposed a number of International scam websites in this great interactive article. The majority are using Meta to look big, run fake promos, appear local, house fake reviews and have dodgy returns policies. The best part is the ABC explaining dropshipping, Trustpilot, and Meta ad targeting to its audience. While we’re on the theme of trust, this Accenture Life Trends 2025 report delves into our changing relationship with tech. It is good. But I am going to have an extra long shower after plugging both Accenture and KPMG reports in the same newsletter.

📋 Oxfam’s Naughty & Nice List For Fashion Brands
It’s the fashion industry’s equivalent to the naughty and nice list. Except the naughty list is full of retailers who don’t meet Oxfam’s worker treatment benchmark. Using their Company Tracker, Oxfam has called out retailers such as Kmart, Big W and CottonOn who are generating billions but not meeting their benchmark of a liveable wage - especially for women in developing nations. Big props to the team at Lorna Jane for being the first fashion retailer to get a tick in all of Oxfam’s four criteria.

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Nathan Bush is an independent Australian ecommerce transformation consultant, with expertise in marketing, technology, and team leadership. If you're looking for fresh ideas, facing key decisions, or implementing significant investments, I'd love to work with you. Learn more and get in touch.