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 or essential oil. Neither can they taste samples of food or drink 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.
From best-selling to collection-based products, homepage layout to category pages, photography to social proof, eCommerce merchandising is an indispensable part of any online store. When done correctly, online merchandising should help you increase conversions, sales, and give your customers a better overall experience.
This article details how eCommerce merchandising can save you time to streamline costs and greatly boost your store’s efficiency.
1. What is eCommerce merchandising?
E-commerce merchandising has one goal in mind – connect shoppers with the right product so that they “Add to Cart” fast.
Great online merchandising isn’t only about displaying products enticingly, or setting an attractive discount, and plastering the offer all over your valuable real-estate. It’s also about:
- Optimizing your path to purchase no matter where customers enter your website or where they are in the path;
- Getting users to products they’re looking for (or products most likely to drive the desired business metric) as quickly as possible;
- Connecting users with your brand and giving them a great experience.
2. Examples of eCommerce merchandising
Today, world-class merchandisers start from a different perspective. They think about the customer first. Then they apply their product expertise and merchandising skills to fit what their customer segments want.
You will want to incorporate specific merchandising strategies to help win these different types of customers – from visitors “just browsing” to your most valuable returning buyers. Below are some examples of reduced manual tasks.
Merchandise the Right Product to Win the Sale
- Arrange products based on customer preferences: Sort out and prioritize products on your online stores based on different criteria such as total views, total sales, reviews or purchases, etc.;
- Feature specific products: Add certain products or ones that meet pre-defined conditions to the “Featured” list, attracting more traffic & a higher chance of purchase;
- Product categorization: Assign products to pre-defined groups such as “Utility products” or “Black-Friday sales” or “70% discount”.
Earn loyalty with returning visitors and customers
- Dynamic price list for customers: Apply specific pricing strategy (a percentage discount or special shipping method, etc.) for a certain group of customers;
- Recently viewed products: Promotes “Recently Viewed” items on every product page. This makes it super easy for a returning visitor to jump right back to what they were interested in, without having to browse around your site.
Win BIG with high-purchase intent shoppers
- Product discount: Apply discounts to all products that belong to a certain category;
- Recommend complementary products that go great with a recent purchase: Suggest similar or supplementary products on the checkout page;
- Pre-order: Switch to “Pre-order” for upcoming or out-of-stock products
3. How to effectively apply eCommerce merchandising
Creating your own in-house systems or engineering your own connections between your platform and tools requires a lot of work. Atom8 is an out-of-the-box solution you can use to create automated workflows across your eCommerce merchandising activities, even when that’s just pushing buttons.
In its purest and simplest form, almost all Atom8’s automation happens through the workflow of Trigger – Condition – Action, which can be built and deployed in minutes. Or you can use pre-made workflow templates, both without ever writing a single line of code.
Key takeaways
The key to your online merchandising success is to figure out what each visitor is most likely to buy and how to make them “Add to cart” as quickly as possible.
It’s not easy. But you can drive many more sales by thoroughly understanding your customers, employing the latest technology, and leading-edge online merchandising strategies.
Atom8 is one of many platforms to help you strategize and execute eCommerce merchandising activities for BigCommerce stores. Make sure to get the 14-day free trial of the app & optimize your business today!
