INTRODUCTION
Finding the best ecommerce merchandising tools can be a long and difficult task. But don’t worry, I’ve done it for you. There are many ecommerce merchandising tools available, but not all of them are worth your time and money. In this article, I will help you decide which ones meet your needs.
When it comes to merchandising your e-commerce website you have a lot of options. You can build it from scratch using platforms like WordPress, or use a dropshipping service like Oberlo that was built from the ground up with ecommerce in mind. But some of your other options are more specific like custom chatbots or visual merchandising tools. So how do you decide which ecommerce merchandising tools are best for your store?
What Is eCommerce Merchandising?
eCommerce merchandising is a strategy of organizing, structuring, and standardizing the products and offers on an online website with the purpose to increase sales. This method often includes promotions, increasing search results, and mainly focusing on overall needs and customer satisfaction.
Online merchandisers do not manage the inventory but what they do is actually focus upon optimizing the performance of the inventory based upon every customer’s behavior.
Elements of eCommerce Merchandising
The sole purpose of using merchandising is to increase more average order value(AOV) from your customers as well as driving your sales policy in such a way that it stimulates your customers to make repeat purchases in the future.
So, Are you ready to raise up your customer’s online shopping experience? Let us move through the most promising elements of eCommerce merchandising-
- HomePage Merchandising
- Collection-Oriented Merchandising
- Optical Merchandising for Product Pages
- Category-Based Merchandising
1) Optimize Your Site To Be Accessible On Any Device
As per WordStream, an average click-through rate in Google Ads through the mobile across all industries is 4.10% on the search network and 0.60% on the display network.
Other than that,
- 70% of mobile searchers call a business directly from Google Search.
- 70% of mobile searches result in action being taken within an hour
Therefore, it is foremost important for you to provide your shoppers with a mobile-friendly shopping experience so that they become assured that whenever they want to use it they can use it from any device.
- Introduce a responsive website, which includes the same content & information as on your eCommerce website but only optimizes its display as per accessibility of the given device.
- Avoid the use of flash on your site. Flash is a technology of Adobe, mainly used to show animation on your web pages. Due to this element, a page takes a lot of time in loading & it is neither accessible on mobiles too.
- Eliminate autocorrect forms on your site, as it creates a long process for users to enter their information in inquiry forms. Compressing your site images as non-compressed images takes a lot of time in loading which hinders the visibility of mobile users.
2) Use Product Recommendation Tools
While doing online shopping through Amazon, you might have noticed that they often enforce you to buy a combo of products rather than buying a single product. Like, if you are purchasing a mobile, they will offer you to also have a look over the mobile cover, screen protector, etc.
How come they used to make this plan successful? All this is possible by using a product recommendation tool. This tool is an artificial intelligence technology that usually predicts & shows those products to the customers which they would like to buy.
Major eCommerce giants like eBay, Amazon, Alibaba make the best use of recommendation algorithms in order to prominently serve the customer needs. About 38% of Amazon.com’s revenue is generated by recommendation tools only.
These recommendation tools act as a data filtering tool which helps the buyers in choosing not only trusted products but also the related ones.
Upselling & cross-selling are easily possible by suggesting products to the customers based on those which they have already added to their cart & those which they are browsing on the site.
3) Display Your Products Social Viability
It is a genuine truth that people usually prefer those products which have gained a positive response from other users. More than 85% of consumers check out reviews & ratings of a particular product online before making its purchase.
Put such requests on your product pages urging the satisfied customers to share that product among their social networks by underlying social media buttons on your pages like Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest.
For instance, see the image below:
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Another tactic to grow your eCommerce community-scale & sales is to involve the reviews of celebrities who have an identity of socialism too.
4) Stimulate Buying Instinct With Digital Stickers
Digital stickers are special visual features applied in singular search results to bring the particular product feature into the limelight. These stickers show variability in use like for remarking the product as a best-seller or top-rated, remarking the free shipping on any product for special occasions, etc.
Digital stickers also referred to as ribbon overlays, emphasize the availability of recent product videos whenever they are made available. This facilitates the customers to test the tangibility of the product. It enhances your conversion rates which in turn increase the revenue of your eCommerce business.
You can see the below example of digital stickers.
5) Incur Data To Make An Optimal Merchandising Decision
Your website analytics tools & software collects vital information about your customers that when they are coming to your website & deep penetration of what actually they are doing on your site. More than half of the retailers use data to design a superior merchandising plan for their eCommerce business.
Here are also some of the tools which you can deploy into your eCommerce site to examine each & every action of your customers.
i) Hotjar
It is a tool which mainly tracks the behavior of the customers as to when they visit your site. This helps you in understanding your buyer’s buying patterns & accordingly makes you ready for future plans. This comprises :
- A complete video recording of your customer activities. On which part of your page he is clicking more? or where he stood for a more time?
- Another thing is the Heatmap. They are the perfect tool to track your customer’s engagement on your website as well. Ranging from every click, scroll, tap to mouse movements, you can examine each & every move of your customer in real-time. Despite charts & tables, they visually present data through colors.
- Polls & surveys are the intrinsic part of the marketing campaign of any eCommerce website. They ask your customers to give their valuable feedback about the products & services. It also gives you an opportunity to experience greater interaction with them.
ii) A/B Testing
A/B testing or split testing is the most viable tool for your eCommerce website to enhance your sales metrics. It is a method of ascertaining which layout, design, or content is more thriving with your site visitors.
It helps to test the optimality of any page which may affect your customer’s buying behavior. Examine two different layouts for the same web pages to ensure which layout generates more sales.
6) Inculcate A Live Chat Feature To Support The Customers
Engross your customer’s interest in your eCommerce website by infusing a Live Chat support feature.
As per a recent survey, around 75% of customers said that they preferred live chat over email, social media & phone.
So, what can be the reason behind it after all emails, social media are also playing a major role in customer involvement?
This is because of the time factor which these mediums forever lack. Sometimes it happens that when a customer doesn’t find their desired product, they find it better to switch to another website rather than writing an email or seeing social reviews.
However, live chat support is the best alternative. You might have seen on many sites popups like “Chat with us or Chat now”. This all for removing the customer’s queries & doubts. Whenever any customer clicks on the chat window, Live chat agents track which site he is browsing & give him instant answers. These agents can handle multiple customers at a single time.
HubSpot Launches Conversations: How Live Chat Is Transforming Sales?
7) Enhance Your Search Function
About 10 to 20% of customers directly move to search bars for getting their most specific product. There are many customers who don’t like to switch pages, therefore, they use search bars for this.
Hence, pick up this nerve of your customers & align your search bars to include top-selling products. This will surely bring a massive increase in eCommerce conversion rates.
CONCLUSION
You have the products, the online store and now you need a way to direct your customers to the right items. Is it your first time dealing with shopping cart software or are you just looking for more ecommerce merchandising tools? And do you want to know what these intangibles are in building an online store that will attract customers?
Merchandising is the art of enchanting customers and offering items in such a way that the customer is compelled to purchase. All retail businesses make use of merchandising techniques to draw in their potential customers–that’s how advertising works, after all. But in eCommerce, merchandising plays an important role beyond just achieving a sales goal. Ecommerce merchandising tools are used to help your products be seen by your buyers and turn your shoppers into buyers.