Do you know how one click leads to a potential sale, and an image narrates a story? Yes, this is possible in the evolving world of e-commerce merchandising. In the context of ecommerce, your webpage and online content are your shop windows. Hence, you need a thoughtful strategy to engage the customers and have a long-lasting impression.
In this article, you will find the impressive strategies that are redefining the ways products are shown and sold digitally. You will also get insights into how you can turn browsers into customers, with tricks and examples from the successful brands.
What is E-commerce Merchandising?
E-commerce Merchandising refers to a strategic way to showcase and promote your products through an online store so that sales can be generated. It includes product categorisation, visual showcase, tailored recommendations and promotional strategies. The objective is to improve the buying experience, which affects the customer buying decisions and maximising the customer satisfaction.
One of the prominent examples of E-commerce Merchandising is Outdoor Voices, an athleisure brand. The pictures of every particular product are clear which shows how the cloth fits on the body. Every product has its name, a brief description and the different colour options.
Why E-Commerce Merchandising Matters?
The audience, whether they are customers or businesses are busy people who look for a convenient buying experience. They seek to find what they are looking for quickly and finish their transaction. In this case, if your e-commerce merchandising does not work, frustrated consumers may choose competitors over you. In fact, 80% of the consumers opined that shopping experience is as crucial as the products and services they purchase.
With the growing expectations of the customers, it has become crucial to focus on your e-commerce merchandising efforts to ensure efficiency and convenience.
Create an Appealing Storefront Experience
In the massive world of ecommerce, your virtual storefront is your identity. Hence, it is important to create a compelling experience for the customers. Like a brick-and-mortar store, e-commerce merchandising also requires positioning of best-selling items at the right place. Think about your previous visit to the website that immediately called your attention to the products. This is how e-commerce merchandising works.
Data Personalisation and Merchandising Approach
Data, Personalisation and Merchandising is a revolutionary approach in the e-commerce landscape. Hence, by understanding the preferences of your customers, you can personalise their shopping experience and e-commerce merchandising is making this possible.
Imagine having personalised recommendations based on browsing history and purchasing history by just landing on an online fashion store. Such personalised experience is the core of DPM approach which creates an immersive and personalised buying journey.
Interactive Product Displays
The conventional brick and mortar stores let consumers touch, feel, and try on products. But how is this possible in e-commerce context? Thanks to e-commerce merchandising which makes the interactive product displays possible.
Suppose you are buying a furniture online and can virtually locate a bed in your bed room to see how it looks. This not only helps in engaging the consumers but also reduces uncertainties regarding how the product may look in the desirable space. Interactive displays thus contribute to more immersive and soothing experiences.
Storytelling Through E-commerce Merchandising
In the e-commerce setting, visual merchandising is the narrator that entice the audience, every product picture, banner and layout tells a story that is beyond the tangible benefits. By incorporating emotions into the visuals, e-commerce merchants can develop a strong tie with the consumer. Consequently, the customers have a memorable and satisfying experience.
Recall your last visit to a website and the visuals telling a story. It could be a travel-themed collection that fueled wanderlust or a charity initiative related to the product. These are the examples where e-commerce merchandising turns into an emotional journey.
Social Proof in E-commerce Merchandising
The e-commerce world lets you have a myriad of choices where consumers look for assurance regarding the decisions they are making. Here social proof is required in e-commerce merchandising. For this, you may include customer reviews, testimonials and product or service ratings to cultivate trust and authenticity. This turns your potential customers into loyal customers.
Strategies for Effective E-commerce Merchandising
Developing an effective e-commerce merchandising is not as simple as copying the in-store experience of the shoppers. Rather, ecommerce sites should try to achieve the full potential of their medium in the following ways:
Mobile Optimisation
Around one-third of the internet users in America purchase online using their mobile devices weekly. Hence, ensuring a mobile-optimised online store or a separate e-commerce application is important. You should use your category pages efficiently to make sure that the site is well-established and easy to use. Also, monitor the speed of the site. Infact an improvement in a second can maximise mobile conversions.
Search Results Optimisation
Autocomplete search or predictive search is the automatic suggestions that the site recommends to online customers when they type in the search box. This means if you type ‘toner’ at a beauty brand online store, you will have recommendations for ‘toner spray’ as a result of the autocomplete feature. Also, you can get a list of the most popular toners available on the site.
By adopting an effective predictive search tool in the ecommerce sites, you can direct the digital buyers, recommend them items and even correct the misspelled words and missed characters. This results in increased sales and higher customer satisfaction.
Personalisation
Personalisation is a critical part of e-commerce merchandising as seen above. You can use product recommendations to help customers with their purchasing decisions and buying journey. The use of an algorithm that suggests similar products can be helpful in personalising the experiences. This way, the shoppers can have lots of options and complementary products while finding a particular product. One can also use retargeting, which is a paid ad strategy enabling organisations to display ads on distinct platforms and sites.
Ongoing Trends in E-commerce Merchandising
The online stores can use technological innovations to improve their customer experience by supporting product discoverability. Some of the emerging trends in e-commerce merchandising include:
AI
AI is a potential technology that analyses huge amount of customer data within seconds. Hence, it can be used to analyse the individual customer behaviour and segment the customers into groups. This creates opportunities for more personalisation. By segmenting the customers on the basis of the behaviour and preferences, the businesses can target every group with tailored ads, email marketing and product suggestions.
AI is also a significant technology that predicts consumer behaviour as per the historical data. This reduces the risk of customer churning. The stores can adopt dynamic pricing to improve profitability by keeping an eye on competitor prices, real-time demand and consumer price sensitivity. The key AI tools like chatbots, visual search and image recognition are helpful for customers to identify exactly what they need.
User-generated Content
User-generated content maintains the authenticity of the brands. Potential consumers will develop trust when they see other customers giving their honest reviews. This makes it more promising for the customers to trust the brand than the marketing claims. The user-generated content also motivates the customers to share product pictures, unboxing videos, testimonials, and product reviews by operating contests, giveaways, and using hashtags for social media.
Advanced Search
Searchandising is an advanced technique that online stores use to optimise the search. Intelligent search algorithms utilise natural language processing to unlock the intention behind a search query as consumers may not always sure about what they need. Visual search is also a potential technology that allows the users to upload images to find the related problems.
Wrapping Up
E-commerce merchandising allows a seamless online shopping experience for the customers. By using the customer data properly and providing personalised product recommendations, one can motivate online buyers to repeat their purchases. A well-organised it allows the digital stores to help the buyers throught their purchasing journey, improve marketing tactics, maximise sales and develop a strong customer base. Overall, e-commerce merchandising is an important consideration for any digital store.
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