As e‑commerce merchandising evolves, owning an online store isn’t only about displaying attractive products anymore but mainly about optimizing the consistent shopping experience. Setting up a convincing and customized user experience can increase the chances of higher conversion rates and create a lasting brand image that will make loyal customers come back to you often.
E-Merchandising Software, also known as e-merchandising or digital merchandising, helps show relevant products at the right time and places to increase sales and promote the most products you want to promote. This article will explain what e-merchandising is, its benefits, essential e‑commerce merchandising systems, and how you can improve your e‑commerce businesses.
What is e-merchandising, and why is it important
E‑commerce merchandising is structuring and organizing product offerings on a website to influence customer intent through online shopping and reach sales targets. This process often includes managing promotions, curating search results, and testing improvements to guide users through customer journeys.
Every online retailer wants to improve their business and increase conversion rates constantly, and what would be the world of e‑commerce without customers? That’s why e‑commerce merchandising is a must, and retailers should primarily focus on customer experience and engagement through their e‑commerce merchandising strategy.
Benefits of e-merchandising
Arouse the interest of your customers
The first purpose of e‑commerce merchandising is to touch up the visual appeal, capture customers’ interest, and control the customer experience. You can customize any page based on customer insights to maximize revenue and improve overall performance. Better control over product images and attributes enhances visual appeal and customer satisfaction.
Increase product engagement
Customers will likely leave your site instantly without engagement, which means you lose potential customers. To engage customers, you should enable them to have the most straightforward customer journey by finding and viewing interesting products quickly and easily.
Lower the Bounce Rate
A high bounce rate means your online store has problems with the page layout, content, or user experience. With e‑commerce merchandising and a great online merchandising strategy, you can prevent potential customers from leaving your website and visiting competitors’ websites because they don’t get what they are looking for.
Increase visitor retention
You constantly compete with other e‑commerce stores or mobile apps that want your customers’ interest. Chances are, your visitors might not buy something during the first visit; hence they are unlikely to return without being engaged the first time.
Boost your conversions
E‑commerce merchandising could help automate the sales processes in your e‑commerce store. With analytics, you can instantly understand who your customers are and what they want and show them automatically what they are looking for.
Types of e-merchandising systems
1.Search
Search is a fundamental part of online activity and the online merchandising process; therefore, a great search needs to be intuitive, undemanding, direct, and easy to use. The most important part of the search is a search bar that should always be easily discoverable for users to get what they are looking for as quickly as possible. An excellent investigation is essential for an ideal user experience.
2. Personalized product recommendations
Online customers expect accurate and relevant results. When they get results that align with their search query and interests, they will be more satisfied and engaged, and there is a high possibility of returning. This feature was developed primarily with the help of artificial intelligence algorithms, which started to play a big part in e‑commerce. Websites have come a long way since the early days of the internet and have grown to be much more user-friendly, especially when it comes to e‑commerce.
3. Product Listing
Product listings are lists of products based on a category or search query. They work great for encouraging clicks through search because they provide visual confirmation that the shopper has found the product they’re looking for. What is underrated is the way these products are put in order. It’s crucial that their ranking encourages conversion. For example, products with high CTR should be placed in the top spots in the listing.
4. Filters and facets
Modern-day e‑shops should be able only to display product-specific relevant filters, so the users get a great experience. Especially if your website has a vast inventory of products, add filters to the end of your search function. Filters and faceted search allow users to narrow their search scope by product category quickly, and facets allow users to do so based on multiple search dimensions. These can be structured in such a way as to highlight or promote certain types of products to customers.
5. Autocomplete
An autocomplete feature allows the search engine to predict a user’s search query and suggest related terms as they type a search query. Great autocomplete shows product recommendations or the results from the first character, which saves a lot of time while searching, can lead to more purchases, and minimize problems with searching for short words or words with few characters. Autocomplete and query suggestions allow you to not only increase click-through rate by speeding up the search process but also know to direct users toward specific products.
6. E‑commerce personalization
E‑commerce merchandising also evolved in personalizing the user experience. At the beginning of the e‑commerce era, it was not easy to track users, customize pages, or create customized adverts. Nowadays, e‑commerce retailers can see who’s visiting their site in just a few clicks and learn about their individual customers’ preferences based on historical data and previous interactions with the site. The personalization engine builds customer profiles for every customer by learning from their actions on the site and mapping them to reach product data. Using this, the AI finds and shows relevant content that the customer would be looking for and purchasing.
7. Visual Merchandising
Online visual merchandising is strategically displaying visual and design elements on the website. This can help communicate the brand image and increase customer engagement through their experience, from stunning photos, excellent design homepage storytelling, and rich product descriptions. Effective visual merchandising displays the most relevant products at every touchpoint and establishes trust through high-quality images and user-generated content.
8. Customer reviews
Customers often look for social proof before deciding to complete a purchase on a specific website. Customers and product reviews, especially photos of the product, provide social proof for customers that your website is safe. However, they don’t have to be restricted to the product pages. Showing them dynamically when users search can provide quick validation to the products they’re searching for.
Improving your e-merchandising
What you can do yourself to boost your e-merchandising efforts
Optimize your website to be accessible on every device
Optimizing your e‑commerce website for every device is crucial. Especially nowadays, when everyone is constantly communicating or looking for information. By 2025, almost 75% of Internet users will use only their mobile devices to access the Internet. Therefore, most websites or apps should be mobile-friendly. A lagging, confusing, or frustrating mobile website can quickly make customers leave your online store. Optimize your search, mainly by providing clear categories and keeping your products searchable.
Keep your product descriptions updated and also visually attractive
The product description is typically the first place customers will go to learn about the products they’re interested in. Descriptions should contain helpful information about the product uses, specifications, materials, production, and benefits. Those descriptions should always include high-quality photos or videos.
How to choose third-party software that will boost your e-merchandising efforts
What to look for
E‑commerce software provides various optimization tools for e‑commerce businesses to maximize profits for their online store. Key goals are to increase customer conversion, reduce shopping cart abandonment, create more straightforward site navigation for customers, and make personalized recommendations to encourage additional purchases.
How much does it cost?
You can find plenty of e‑commerce merchandising software, and their pricing varies. Some softwares have pricing, which depends on the number of customers you serve, the size of your product catalog, and the number of events you execute. Some of them must be contacted to get information about pricing. The prices of softwares that publish their fees range from 0.99$ to 500$ per month.
How to pick the one for you
If you want more information about what software suits your e‑commerce business, visit the G2 website, research the listed companies, and choose the one that offers the most of the e-merchandising tools you want and the best price for you.
Conclusion
E‑commerce merchandising is an ongoing and iterative process and is evolving every year. Bringing your online merchandising to the next level is not difficult. It just takes a good e‑commerce merchandising strategy. We believe this article with a few know-hows will help you achieve your e‑commerce goals.
Frequently asked questions (FAQs)
What is e‑commerce merchandising?
E‑Commerce merchandising is a strategy of organizing, structuring, and standardizing the products and offers on an online website to increase sales. This method often includes promotions, increasing search results, and mainly focusing on the overall needs and customer satisfaction.
Why does e‑commerce merchandising matter?
Effective merchandising helps e‑commerce businesses to lead potential customers through the buyer’s journey and aims to convert them into loyal customers before they bounce to a new website.
How can search boost e‑commerce merchandising efforts?
By using intelligent searchandising techniques, you can not only ensure that the results are relevant but that they also highlight the things you want users to see and act upon, such as trending products, seasonal items, and related products with higher profit margins so that you can lower bounce rates from your website and increase your profits and achieve high rates of clickability.
What is the best e‑commerce tool?
Many platforms on the market guarantee your data’s scalability and security protection and offer a wide range of operational benefits and analytical tools. Still, Luigi’s Box seems to be the platform that has the most types of e-merchandising tools.
Barbora does magic with words in Luigi's Box as a product marketing specialist. She got into writing while studying at university as a volunteer for various civic associations. Besides being part of Luigi's Box marketing team, she co-organizes the TEDxBratislava conference, where she cares about marketing and PR.
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