Digital Merchandising Strategies To Boost Your eCommerce Sales
Digital merchandising, also known as eCommerce merchandising, refers to the positioning and sale of products online. Just like merchandising in store, the way products are presented have a big impact on how sales go.
Published December 10, 2024.
There are different digital merchandising strategies and tactics that one can put in place in order to achieve optimal merchandising. In order to drive sales and attract customers, merchandising can be utilized as an art. Let’s take a look at some examples of these digital merchandising strategies.
Optimize Your Home Page
Your homepage on your digital store is equivalent to the storefront in a brick and mortar store. This means it’s very important. It’s the first impression your brand will have on shoppers, and this counts for a lot. Many times, people can immediately tell from the first glance alone if your store is something that appeals to them. You want to make sure that you are attracting your target demographic.
Some ways you can ensure your merchandising strategy is used optimally on your home page is:
Sharing your values
Coordinate your color scheme
Include branded merchandise
Any discounts or deals
Make sure your homepage is user-friendly. The search bar should be clear and accessible for high-intent customers, and the products you want to push should be most prominent. Any seasonal offers or promotions should be clear, and most of all everything should look appealing.
Leverage Customer Data
Customer data can really help you put your best foot forward when it comes to your merchandising strategy. In order to protect customer privacy, you can use click profile data that monitors customers actions on your store, and make predictions based on this.
Understanding which users act in which way- why purchases aren’t completed, or what the most popular products are, will all help inform your strategy moving forward. Platforms analytics dashboards can help give you valuable information such as:
Visitor demographics
Time spent on site
Average order value
Popular search terms
Posts with most engagements
If you have a strong social media strategy, then you can also use data regarding engagement on social media posts to understand more. Polls and surveys, as well as A/B testing are also useful ways of interpreting what is and isn’t working online on your store. This can help create a more personalized experience, and optimize the digital merchandising your store is offering.
Personalized Merchandising
Offering a personalized experience is crucial in order to provide the best eCommerce experience possible. Digital merchandising can provide superior personalization through AI based technology. Presenting different merchandising strategies to different customers based on their interests will boost sales and AOV.
Understanding your customers preferences and needs is a great way to make sure that you are serving them well. Offering personalized recommendations of products at the correct points in the eCommerce funnel is super important. Whether this is ‘you may also like’ or at checkout, or even in the search bar, personalized merchandising can go a long way.
Searchandising
Don’t forget that you can include a merchandising strategy within your search bar. This is known as searchandising. This means that in the drop down search, you can choose which products are shown first, last and in which order. You want to make sure that shoppers can find their products, but also not to waste an opportunity to inspire product discovery within the search bar.
Visual Merchandising
Merchandising is by nature a visual practice. The way that your merchandising presents visually is very important. The color, layout and imagery of your store has a big impact on the ways that consumers behave. Where you position images, and how the images look also make an impact- they should be high quality. Lastly, you can use different mixed media such as videos and dynamic content in order to spike interest.
You can integrate this with your social media strategy, by using videos from TikTok or Instagram on your store. With the rise of UGC (user generated content) more content on the store should reflect the customers personal preferences. Drawing this all together into your digital merchandising strategy can be a great idea.
Conclusion
Digital merchandising is one of the backbones of any eCommerce store. These strategies outlined here are a great way to get started on maximizing profits whilst boosting your user experience. Remembering that merchandising comes in many different forms and can impact many different areas of your site ensures that you are offering the best possible digital experience.