5 Helpful eCommerce Merchandising Strategies With Examples

July 29, 2019

tagalys

Did you know that by 2021, 2.14* billion people are expected to shop online in the world? Not too long ago, merchandising was only limited to offline stores where it meant displaying products in the window, color-coordinating different aisles, ensuring the sales team has adequate knowledge of the products – you get the drift.But with eCommerce taking the world by storm, merchandising had to be reinvented. No longer do you have a physical store to display a sign in the window to attract a customer. It's the time of eCommerce merchandising. Today you cannot have a successful online store without impactful eCommerce merchandising strategies.While offline merchandising seems like a whole different ball game, there are many aspects of it that correlate to eCommerce. Taking some of the old and finding some new, we’ve listed out a few ways to leverage the use of effective eCommerce merchandising strategies to increase conversions for your business.

The Importance of eCommerce Merchandising

There are approximately 12-24 million eCommerce websites in the world. Imagine this as a digital haystack. Now, finding your eCommerce store is like finding a needle in the haystack. A powerful SEO might lead users to your site, but what makes them stay and make a purchase? Impactful eCommerce merchandising strategies.Here’s what eCommerce merchandising offers for your business:

  • Better visual appeal.
  • Lower bounce rate.
  • Data-led improvements to increase conversions.
  • Increased Average Order Value (AOV).
  • Inspired, returning customers.
  • Enhanced the user experience.

eCommerce merchandising can help you be in sync with the latest eCommerce merchandising trends. You can also start one!

eCommerce statistics

Image Source

How Data-Driven Merchandising Can Help?

There are many ways through which data-driven merchandising can help improve overall eCommerce experience for your customers.

  • Tailor your product listings according to what the customers want, ultimately improving conversion ratio.
  • Get actionable insights into the demographics and preferences of your audience.
  • Know how each product is performing to create powerful product listings.
  • Gain the ability to predict product performance.
  • Catalyze business growth in the long run.
  • Get a better CTR (Click-Through Ratio).

Let's put it this way. If the customer is king, then data is God. You can scale with data. Without it, you are trying to sell a bike to a fish.

1. Use search results to your advantage:

How you configure your site search can make a remarkable difference in your visitor’s experience. Tweaking your results page to display visuals rather than just a text list would give customers a better experience. Apart from that, it’s important to display trending products in the search results.Visitors, particularly on mobile do not go beyond three scrolls. The top few products are very much influential in conversion. Data-driven and dynamic product sorting in search results help the purpose.By using site search enhancement services like Tagalys to optimize your site search, you’ll see a boost in conversion rates.Example: Macy's

macy's search results page

Searching "black dress" can lead to a random display of products that your customer may or may not like. Or, you can show what the user is likely to engage with. New, bestselling products can be displayed in your search results to ultimately increase conversions.

2. Harness the power of listing page merchandising and product sequencing:

Like it is true for Google that people don't navigate beyond the second page of the search results, it is just like that for your eCommerce platform. 80% of visitors drop off after 3-page scrolls in Product Listing Pages.In physical stores, retailers would arrange products in a way that would not just be visually appealing, but would also enable the customer to sort through collections easily. Products that they know don’t sell too well wouldn’t be upfront because they know it isn’t their best. New arrivals, best sellers, and trending products would take the spotlight.Be it the search results or Product Listing page, the top 100 products displayed influence the store conversion. Hence pinning and sequencing give control over the products displayed.In eCommerce stores, sequencing plays a significant role in getting customers to buy. While smaller stores may be able to spend time in arranging products manually, if you have bigger stock or a large catalog, it would be next to impossible. You would need help to automatically sequence products based on different attributes.Learn about sequencing and the best ways to go about it before implementing it on your site.Example: Gilt

GILT PLP Page

Gilt has category pages sequenced by product type (tops and trousers). This type of sequencing showcases the diversity of the category within the top results. You can also use product sequencing to promote your products or to strengthen your digital marketing strategy. Through sequencing, Gilt controls visitor experience and boosts product discovery.Tagalys allows you to sequence your products, filtered by different tags like color, T-score, price, etc. to increase your CTR (Click-Through-Rate). This is dynamic and automated. With Tagalys you can sequence products intelligently, in a matter of seconds.

3. Offer product recommendations:

This tactic can greatly increase your sales simply because you suggested products that go well with the one the customer is purchasing. Also known as cross-selling, you can prompt the customer to look at other products they might be interested in, or would need with the product they are purchasing.For example, if a customer is buying a yoga mat, you can suggest fitness clothes, yoga bricks/blocks, an exercise ball, healthy food products – basically things that go with the other product and complement the lifestyle of the buyer.Example: Amazon

Amazon Product Recommendations

Amazon uses cross-selling for every product you search for on the website (check the screenshot). By showing bestsellers, related products, the probability of people buying products increases, and increases sales. Offer similar products and use the strategies of cross-selling and up-selling.

4. Personalize user experience:

When you’ve been a regular customer at a store, and the staff or owner recognizes you, it’s a feeling all customers enjoy. This is because – be it a restaurant or an apparel store – they know what you like, they know what you bought before, and they offer you discounts and special treatment. Just how do you replicate that in your online store with no support staff?Ecommerce stores are able to do this by displaying products “Based on your past engagement.” A business should recognize the traits of different customers, such as the price point at which a particular customer is purchasing products. What kind of products are they looking for? Are they putting quality over price or vice versa?For example, an online grocery store would know the monthly grocery pattern of the shopper based on past purchases. Offering them an option to just buy things from their usual shopping list would enhance their experience as they wouldn’t have to spend time searching for these products every time.Example: Adidas

Adidas

Adidas uses the strategy of personalization brilliantly. Look at how the same search results give different results. A woman will find no use for men's shoes, and men wouldn't want to shop heels. This is possible only when you utilize your analytical data for every user.

5. Pay attention to your home page display:

While your customers may not necessarily land on your home page, the entrance to your business needs to make the best impression. Through data analysis, you can truly know your customer and what they would like.For example, if you’re selling antique furniture, you might want to keep your home page more delectable with a focus on “home.” But if you’re selling funky accessories, you might want to jazz up your page to make it vibrant and fun.Remember what is unappealing to one customer need not be unappealing to another. You need to understand who you’re catering to, for example, a camping equipment site would need peace and calm, but to sell sports shoes, you’d need to keep it young and energetic.Your home page should display products that would interest your customers. Remember, customers no longer have the time or patience to navigate through a complicated site. Keep things simple, easy to find, and ensure you offer products relevant to them.Example: Poketo

Poketo

Home pages are the first impression. Whether your customer will explore the website further or not, depends on the home page experience.Poketo is known for its colorful and vibrant home page designs. Colors are known to attract humans. When you are visually attracted to a website, you are likely to explore its products and eventually make a purchase. With data-driven merchandising, you can understand the eCommerce trends for your platform and design your home page accordingly.

Wrapping Up on eCommerce Merchandising

Developing a strong foundation with eCommerce merchandising enables you to strengthen the core driving force of your business. You can spend thousands on advertising and getting people to your site, but once there, you need to bring your A-game and deliver!

“Advertising moves people toward goods; merchandising moves goods toward people.” – Morris Hite.

Merchandising is all about presenting the right goods to the right people at the right time. When you get that right, you’ll flip the seesaw bringing your bounce rate down and pushing your conversion rate up.While you might feel overwhelmed about how to implement these interesting strategies for your eCommerce platform, we have a simple, automated, and smart solution for you - Tagalys.Using Tagalys’ merchandising tools for listing pages, site search, and product recommendations can be the difference between failure and success.

The advantages offered by Tagalys’ eCommerce merchandising tools are:

  • Automated, doesn’t need external technical support.
  • Personalized real-time recommendations
  • Enhance your visitor’s overall journey
  • Allows for drag & drop product page curation
  • Tap into data to facilitate better decision-making
  • Fine-tune your digital marketing campaign to improve results
  • Intelligent, intuitive, relevant, data-driven, and quick site search experience that can improve conversion by 30%.

Just by using Tagalys, leading Magento retailers have been able to increase their conversion rate upwards of 30%. You can empower your business, too, with Tagalys.Tagalys maximizes conversion rate & gives merchants visual control of products displayed in Site Search,Category Pages&Product Recommendations at their online store. To know more about our solutions and features, get in touch with us now.References

  1. Statista

Trusted by retailers worldwide

Vanja S

Sheike

"Tagalys makes merchandising effortless. Their data driven sequencing and sorting drastically improves our effectiveness. Tagalys takes the guesswork out of merchandising and product recommendations."

Ryan R.

Camilla

"I love that Tagalys listens to customer needs and has an innovative + agile team around them which can support addressing those needs and adding improvements to the roadmap."

Rafaelle C.

Blue Bungalow

"Tagalys is the powerful and reliable data-driven solution that we were looking for when it came to search & merchandising for our Shopify Plus store. There is no limit as to how custom you can get with your merchandising, which is exactly what we were after!"

Tiarne Warren

Meshki

"The dedication of Tagalys team is evident from the feature developments. I appreciate their effort in understanding our business needs and feedback. We have saved numerous working hours and achieved great performances."