When online shoppers consider your products, they can’t feel the quality of the fabric on a piece of clothing. They can’t smell the aroma of a candle. They can’t taste food or drinks to know if they’ll like it. Online shoppers have to rely on something else to help them make choices about the products they buy: data. And that’s what makes ecommerce merchandising so important for online retailers.
Understanding how to take advantage of ecommerce merchandising strategies can help you boost sales and customer loyalty. But there are so many ecommerce merchandising trends to choose from, how can you know what really works?
When online merchandising is done correctly, it should help you increase conversions and sales and give your customers a better overall experience. So let’s take a look at the brands that are already nailing both those things. These are some of the most successful brands in the ecommerce merchandising game, and we’ve highlighted the strategies they use so you can see what works. Put these strategies into play to get your own products flying off the (digital) shelves.
There’s no better place to learn the ropes of ecommerce merchandising than from the brands that are already crushing it. If you can implement some of the top brands’ strategies when merchandising your products, you’ll be well on your way to maximizing impact and increasing sales.
Strategies you can learn from:
Image via https://www.boots.com/dyson/dyson-haircare
Strategies you can learn from:
Image via https://www.vanityplanet.com/collections/skincare-devices/products/spin-for-perfect-skin
Strategies you can learn from:
Strategies you can learn from:
Strategies you can learn from:
Now that you’ve seen some of the top ecommerce merchandising strategies in action, here are some other strategies your brand can implement to get on the same level as these companies.
What makes all those brands above such successful merchandisers? Their photography and copy all exude the things their brands stand for. Successful brands are instantly recognizable in their visual and written messages. Use a voice in your copy that matches the message you want to send to your potential customers (whether that’s a serious voice or one that’s got nothing but jokes). Use your visuals and copy to appeal to the emotional part of your customers’ brains, because that’s the part that will ultimately get them to click “Add to Cart.”
The user generated content the above brands used is one great form of social proof—it shows that people use and love the products they’re sharing photos of.
You can also use other forms of proof, like reviews and testimonials, visitor or sales numbers or links to your brand’s social media pages that show how many people like and follow you.
Your homepage is often the first encounter potential customers have with your brand. Entice them to convert by offering a deal right there on the homepage. Something like a discount code for first-time shoppers or a free shipping code will do the trick.
Everyone loves instant gratification. So make it fast and easy for shoppers to find exactly what they’re looking for on your site. Use autocomplete in your search bars. Take them to products that match all their search queries (for example, if they search for red high heeled shoes, don’t show them red sneakers or sandals). If shoppers know what they’re looking for, make it easy for them to find it with as few clicks as possible.
Image via https://www.modcloth.com/shop/navy-blue-clothing
For customers who aren’t so sure what they’re looking for, offer a comprehensive navigation menu that lets them narrow down products by all kinds of criteria: size, color, material, features, price, and more. Bonus points if the menu is on the left-hand side of the page so the customer doesn’t need to do any extra scrolling to find it.
Image via https://www.wayfair.com/
Creating original content can help convert shoppers, like how Wayfair offers styled room designs to inspire shoppers and entice them to make multiple purchases per visit.
Like the Marie Kondo of merchandising, you can spark joy loyalty in return customers with a few simple tactics that make it easy for them to pick up where they left off the last time they shopped your site.
Show a reminder for items in their cart that they didn’t purchase. Have a section on product pages to show products they’ve viewed most recently. Offer a promotion on products on their wishlist. Add an “Order Again” button to their past orders page. Whatever it takes to turn a first-time purchaser into a loyal, repeat customer.
Many online shoppers spend hours browsing site offerings without ever really intending to buy anything. When people browse your site, you want to make purchasing something irresistible. One easy way to do this is to promote your best-selling products. This is a psychological trick that makes shoppers feel like if others have to have those products, they do too. Another good trick is to offer a discount code pop-up to shoppers who have been browsing for a certain amount of time.
To encourage shoppers to make more purchases with each visit, group your items together in collections. This will work especially well if the items in a collection all complement one another or work together (for example, shoes and a belt in a matching shade of leather).
Image via https://www.amazon.com/Apple-iPhone-Plus-Unlocked-64GB/
On product pages, add a section for products that will go well with what the shopper is already viewing (“People who bought this also bought…”). Display similar complementary products in the customer’s cart—once they’ve decided to purchase one product, it’ll be easier to sway them to purchase another product that goes with it.
When it comes to creating a customer experience that will make every shopper click “purchase” and return to your store over and over, personalizing the experience is key. That means tracking a lot of detailed customer information and using it to optimize your marketing and merchandising efforts.
As you can see, there’s a virtually endless number of digital merchandising terms and strategies you can put into play. And good merchandising requires keeping track of a lot of data, on both your products and your customers.
You need a good way to organize all that data. Product information management software can help you centralize, optimize, distribute and analyze all the thousands of data points necessary to get your products in the hands of the people who want and need them.
Ecommerce merchandising is a complex and inexact science. But by looking to successful brands using some of the most popular tactics they employ, you too can create a site full of products shoppers won’t be able to wait to get their hands on.