Creative Merchandising Ideas
Published October 2, 2024.
Merchandising is an essential element of any eCommerce business. It’s something customers expect, and your task is to make it as engaging and successful as possible. Creative merchandising ideas can be hard to come by, but they can have a hugely positive payoff. This post will take you through some creative merchandising ideas to inspire your future strategy.
Categories
People want convenience when they shop. Categories make the browsing and sourcing process easier for shoppers, as well as providing some buying inspiration. The more creative you make this, the better.
For example; categories such as “his” and “hers” are necessary but not exciting. Try categories such as:
- Festival outfits
- Gifts for her
- Cowboy theme
- Things to wear by the pool
- Hottest trending fits
These are all unique, interesting and exciting categories that could work for a modern fashion brand. Depending on what you are selling, you could give shoppers inspiration about what to wear and how to wear it.
You can also offer personalized categories based on customer segments, or personalized filters. These will help to make the categories within the categories even more robust. These categories can then change depending on season, trending topics and current business goals.
Creative Copy
The tone, style and amount of content used within your merchandising strategy is very important. You need to keep things short, sweet and effective. Don’t use too much text that misses the point. It should be precise, persuasive and creative. Pick a tone that matches your business, and then have fun with it!
Bundles
Bundles are a hugely important element of eCommerce. Why? Well, they help you sell more products in fewer clicks. It does much of the work for you, and can be curated to suit your business needs. There are a few main types of product bundles:
- Packages or kits
- Upselling bundles
- Discount bundle
- Cross-selling
- Market segmentation
Make sure your bundles are prominently displayed so shoppers know where to find them, and they are attractively displayed.
Product Recommendations
Personalized product recommendations are sure to take your merchandising to the next level. AI powered recommendations can move your customers’ experience from standard to exceptional. It helps showcase brand products, whilst at the same time helping customers find products they are interested in.
Social Proof
The power of social proof can’t be overstated when it comes to eCommerce. A huge percentage of customers will only make purchases if they can see that other customers have already bought and approved of the products.
Having a strong social proof strategy can rely on reviews, user generated content, connections to social media, or testimonials. Displaying social proof on checkout pages, products and collections pages is a great idea. The easier the customers can access the feedback the more likely they are to make the purchase.
Being creative with your social proof means that you can add videos from TikTok to your reviews strategy, or display the reviews brightly. The more eye-catching and exciting they are, the more positive outcome you will see.
Funky Images
A great way to increase the creativity of your eCommerce store is through using images that are exciting. Having high quality images is important, and you should vary the environment and setting of the photo shoots as well as the models used.
Using a range of different gender identities, ages and body sizes within your images is a great way to be creative. It also will demonstrate your values to your customers at a time when shoppers are more interested in seeing that their brands align with their values.
The images should have fast load times, and should demonstrate your products in the most appealing way possible.
Make It Unique
The way you merchandise your store says a lot about who you are as a brand. What is your USP? How do you want to stand out? Which colors represent you? Could this change over different seasons? These are all questions you can ask yourself to keep things fresh.
In the eCommerce world things move fast. Technology advances quickly, trending topics and certain things that are ‘in’ are constantly evolving. As well as the merchandising need to adapt to seasons.
With all of this in mind, make sure you are doing the most to ensure that your merchandising ideas memorable. Don’t be afraid to take risks with new colors, slogans, bundles and categories. Make sure that you stand out from the crowd, and watch as the benefits come back to you.