Ecommerce merchandising is considered one of the key factors in becoming successful in the online world. Having a right ecommerce website design and digital merchandising strategy can allow you to engage your customer and encourage them to purchase your product.
Merchandising is not a new term, it was introduced long ago when people used to shop from brick and mortar stores. But after consumers started to rely on online shopping, ecommerce merchandising came into the limelight and became one of the important factors to boost sales, build long term loyalty, and many more.
Understanding how the world’s leading online retailers or sellers are able to merchandise will offer you an idea to improve your online store sales. The main idea is to understand how retail giants like Walmart, Amazon, Apple, and more are merchandising to grab their customer’s attention on their product.
An effective ecommerce merchandising strategy can help you to increase your online store conversion, sales, and allows you to offer an optimized experience to customers. There are many online retailers out there that are nailing sales and overall customer experience just by creating and effective and impactful ecommerce merchandising strategies.
Getting insight into how ecommerce merchandising works and how your business can take advantage of ecommerce merchandising strategies can assist you in building a strong conversion-centric business. But with the abundance of ecommerce merchandising trends and strategies how will you find the best one for your business?
Don’t worry, we have got you covered. In this article, we are going to give you an in-depth idea about what is ecommerce merchandising, why your business needs it, and the best e-commerce merchandising strategies for your business.
If you are looking to create a new e-commerce website then make sure to check our blog on How To Set Up A Fully Functioning WooCommerce Store Using WordPress?
What is ecommerce merchandising?
Ecommerce merchandising is the retail-centric art and science of displaying offers and sales with the goal of increasing sales and revenue. An effective ecommerce merchandising and SEP strategy can help you to get more traffic and sales on your e-commerce website.
Why do online businesses need to focus on ecommerce merchandising?
Whenever an online shopper is introduced to new products, they can’t feel the taste or quality of the product or can not smell the aroma of the product. They have to rely on something that can encourage them to purchase the product and that’s what makes ecommerce merchandising essential for ecommerce websites.
Ecommerce merchandising allows you to help ort take control of your customer shopping process. It allows you to encourage them to buy products which they haven’t brought from your store. A well-crafted SEO strategy allows you to drive user on your website and an effective ecommerce merchandising strategies allows you to convert them into your customer.
Merchandising is considered the key part of a sales strategy that helps the online store to drive more revenues and help you to increase your average order value. Not only that but you will be able too to build a strong and repeat customer base which will result in revenue and well as business growth.
Ecommerce Merchandising Strategies:
1. Mobile responsive and optimized.
The days of a single ecommerce website are gone; the time of omnichannel marketing has come. Consumers expect a seamless ecommerce experience across a range of devices. They want to place items in carts on regular websites and check out using their smartphones later on.
Ecommerce companies with apps have an edge in the omnichannel world. If your business doesn’t have an app, make sure that your site is responsive and optimized for smartphones and tablets as well as desktop computers and laptops.
Here’s Burrow’s homepage again — only this time, you’re looking at the smartphone version.
2. Product discovery should be easy
To buy the right products, shoppers have to be able to find them. You can use the search function on your site to help them do this. To make items easy to find, ensure that they carry appropriate tags: men’s leather shoes, blue wallet, pink shag carpet. If your search tool has a visual merchandising option, use it to display thumbnails rather than a list of products.
Consumers also need to be able to find the newest products on your site. To help them, change the photographs in your hero slider frequently and feature new items at the top of category pages.
3. Get personal with recommendations
Personalized recommendations increase AOV, boost impulse sales, and help customers find what they need. Data is the driving force behind personalization. You can examine information about your site, including pathway trends and conversions, using Google Analytics. You’ll gain more insight into existing customers when you analyze their accounts. You can also use targeted ads on Google and Facebook to drive particular consumers toward specific areas of your site.
Session recording apps and heatmap plugins track visitor engagement on your site, making it easier to identify popular areas and roadblocks. You can use feedback from these apps to create personalized product recommendations and put segmented merchandising campaigns in optimal places.
Want an example? Scroll down The Mountain’s homepage and you come to a section of recommended T-shirts.
4. Make your product descriptions great.
Great product descriptions are vital. Visitors click on product thumbnails to find out more about those items. Put yourself in a potential customer’s shoes: what would you want to know? Begin with a compelling one-sentence introduction to the product and then go into detail about its main features. Bullets help highlight perks.
Accuracy builds trust, so correct spelling and grammar are vital. Shorter paragraphs work better than longer, wordier paragraphs because they’re easier to read. Stay away from passive voice (“the coffee is made with the coffee maker” becomes “make coffee with this coffee maker”). If in doubt, use a Flesch reading ease or Flesch-Kincaid grade level analysis tool to explore your text. Aim for a Flesch reading ease score of 60 to 70, or a Flesch-Kincaid score of 8 to 10.
Lastly, upload bright, clear photographs and product diagrams, and use them to illustrate each product page. Words are important, but people respond to pictures in a visceral way. They need to be able to imagine the product in front of them.
Need inspiration? Take a look at Larq. Notice the purity and simplicity of this product description — a bit like the water in the bottle itself.
5. Keep it simple.
When people go shopping, they want to have fun. They don’t want to be bored, and they want to find products quickly and easily. To make them happy, use analytics data to pinpoint popular products and display them prominently on your site. Carousel sliders under product descriptions add interest and encourage add-on sales.
Sometimes it’s just easier to talk to someone. Live chat boxes answer questions quickly and help visitors find their desired products. Many advanced live chat plugins actually approach visitors first and base their initial messages on user action analyses. Clever, huh?
Solo Stove has a floating help button on the bottom right of every page. Tap on it and you get a simple web form, like this.
6. Focus on telling a story.
Remember branding? Well, that branding story has to continue through every part of your site. The voice you use to describe your business must permeate through each product description you write. Consistency creates authenticity; trustworthy companies acquire new customers and retain existing consumers.
Remember the last time you read a great story? The last time you felt as if you were really there — really part of the dialog? That’s what you need to aim for here. You want your brand story to become entwined with your customer’s personal account. Consumers create tapestries with threads they find in their daily lives: help them make your brand part of that woven reality.
7. Highlight testimonials and reviews
In today competitive market place, most of the shoppers come across trust issues which results in abandoned cart or no sales. If your ecommerce website is failing to win the trust of your audience then they are likely to abandon and not come back on your website. That is the reason why the eCommerce website has started to include reviews and testimonials on their web pages.
Shoppers trust each other than any of the ecommerce merchants, which means they are likely to trust words written by other shoppers (user-generated content). More than 90% of the shopper check reviews before purchasing any product, which means you need to focus on getting more user-generated content (reviews and testimonials.
By showcasing social proofs and getting more user-generated content you can create a strong online presence, spread awareness, win user’s trust, and encourage them to purchase your product. While creating your e-commerce merchandising strategy make sure you include this strategy to enhance your sales and revenue. You can also encourage the user to write reviews by offering them an incentive like super coins,
Final Thoughts
Day by day online selling space is getting competitive that’s why it is important for online businesses to focus on understanding ecommerce merchandising to create an optimized buying journey for better sales and revenue.
Above we have listed all the effective merchandising strategies that are used by most of the online retail giants to increase their sales and revenue. Almost every online store spend their maximum merchandising and marketing budget in advertisement and cuatomer aquisition. Apart from thet customer retention also plays a major role in your online store.
So, in today’s competitive marketplace the key to business growth is cuatomer retention, An effective and impactful ecommerce merchandising will allow you to retain existing customers as well as gain new ones. Make sue of the above-mentioned targets and make sure to test your strategies for better results.
Looking to create an attractive and conversion-centric ecommerce website for you business. If yes then make sure you hire an experienced e-commerce website design company that can offer you a website desired by your colleagues as well as your customer.