Ecommerce merchandising is an ecommerce strategy that uses strategic web design that guides customers toward product pages.
In this post, we discuss what ecommerce merchandising is as well as strategies you can use to implement it.
What is ecommerce merchandising?
Ecommerce merchandising refers to the way in which products are displayed on ecommerce sites.
It’s called “visual marketing” in traditional commerce. In a physical store, products are arranged in a way that not only gets customers in the door, but also gets them to buy.
Retail stores often place their best products in shop windows to get pedestrians to step foot inside the door. They’ll then place their best products or products they want to move in large displays customers can’t miss.
They’ll even place small yet popular products near the register to encourage customers to add last-minute items to their carts.
Ecommerce stores can use these same tactics to get online shoppers to buy and buy more.
A good ecommerce merchandising strategy can boost conversions, increase average order value rates and improve the customer experience.
Important components of ecommerce merchandising
This aspect of designing an ecommerce site has several components that make regular appearances:
- Product categories
- Product curation
- Personalized recommendations
- Promotions
- UI/UX design
Product categories
Your ecommerce platform should have a way for you to categorize your products. It should also have ways for you to display product categories.
This is an important component of online merchandising for online stores as it makes it easy to add specific types of products to your store’s pages.
How these products appear will depend on the theme/template you choose for your platform.
Product curation
Some products just go together. When they do, you can create product curations on key pages across your site.
For example, if you’re an online store that sells blush, you probably also sell brushes customers can use to apply it.
So, whenever you market one or the other on your site, market the other as well.
Personalized recommendations
Personalized recommendations are one of the most reliable ways to boost conversions from customers who have already made purchases from your shop.
The way personalized recommendations work is simple: your customer will see product collections on your site that are filled with products they’ve purchased in the past or are similar to products they’ve purchased in the past.
Your site’s design will never be the same for all logged-in customers as they’ll each have their own collection of product recommendations to browse.
Promotions
Your ecommerce store will always have products you want to sell more than others. This could be for inventory management purposes, because you want to make a profit on an expensive product or because you’ve partnered with a company and agreed to sell their products in your store.
Whatever the reason might be, a successful ecommerce merchandising strategy always makes room for promotional products.
UI/UX design
Ecommerce merchandising has the ability to boost sales and conversions for your store, but only if it’s done in a way that improves your site’s user interface design and overall user experience.
Proper UI/UX design will help you improve the way customers find new products in your store. After all, online shopping is only effective when customers are actually able to find products they’re interested in buying.
10 ecommerce merchandising strategies to boost conversions
1. Hero section for promotions
The best way to ensure customers see what products you’re promoting is by making those products the focal point of your homepage and any page potential customers might visit during the customer journey.
To do this, use a hero section that contains your product image, headline to promote or introduce your product, and a call to action button that leads to the product’s buy page.
This simple strategy will improve marketing campaigns you run for your store.
2. Mobile-optimized design
A lot of online shopping occurs on mobile devices these days. Online retailers need to ensure they optimize their sites for mobile devices because of this.
This mostly means creating two versions of each element you create for your site: one for desktop and one for mobile users.
For example, you can use landscape product images on the desktop version of your site and portrait images on the mobile version.
The portrait dimensions will look better on mobile devices.
3. Advanced product search
Some customers won’t even look at your page when they land on your site. They’ll head straight for your search bar instead.
When this happens, your customer knows exactly what they’re searching for, and so they open your site’s search box to find it.
An advanced product search element should have autocomplete at the very least. This feature will suggest search queries as customers type in your search bar. It’ll cut down on the amount of text they need to enter.
The bar should also have personalized results, such as queries your customer has searched before.
Finally, it should have trending products that appear as search suggestions before your customer even types anything or the most popular products available for each starting letter your customer types.
4. Main product categories on homepage
Hopefully, you’ve organized your category structure well enough to have a small number of parent categories, ideally between two and five.
For example, fashion stores often have two primary categories: Men’s and Women’s.
In this case, this store should have a section on their homepage that advertises these categories side by side.
If you have more than two primary categories to advertise on your homepage, use a grid layout to do so.
The idea here is to help your customer find what they’re looking for by guiding them in the right direction.
5. Curated products on relevant pages
Again, if you have products or product categories that go together, you need to advertise them together.
Create sections that advertise both by including a headline and columns or a grid layout where each column or grid field is another product or product category.
For example, if bass fishing is in season, create a section called “Bass Fishing Essentials” where each column or grid field features a product category related to bass fishing.
You can also curate related products on product pages. This will increase average order values by encouraging customers to add additional items to their carts.
6. Personalized recommendations on key pages
The great thing about using a content management system (CMS) for ecommerce is that it makes it easy to collect customer data. This data then makes it easy to implement personalization on your site.
One use for personalization that benefits ecommerce merchandising is personalized recommendations. These are dynamic product recommendations that change based on a customer’s purchase or browsing history.
Place these recommendations on your homepage, at the very least. You can also place them on category pages.
Placing them on exit-intent popups works great as well, or making them appear as popups when customers click the “Checkout” button.
7. Optimized flow in homepage design
Your homepage will be one of the most visited pages on your website. It’s important that you optimize its design for conversions because of this.
Try this design flow:
- Hero section – To promote your best products, new products, sponsored products and products you need to get rid of
- Main product categories – Help your customers find what they’re looking for faster by inserting calls to action to your site’s biggest product categories toward the top of your homepage
- Personalized products – Insert a section for personalized products for logged-in users next. You can create two sets of personalized products: recommendations based on past purchase history and a “buy again” section filled with products your customer has purchased in the past
- Curated products – Insert a section for products that go together next, such as products that are frequently bought together or products that fall under a specific theme in your niche
8. Use product images that emphasize your brand identity
Building an identity for your brand is an effective way to grow your customer base for it. It’ll help you decide what types of products to sell and will help you craft marketing messages that resonate with your customer base.
You can have your product images complement this brand identity.
Take a look at product images from Green Llama as an example. The brand sells eco-friendly cleaning products, and so naturally, their product images have green backgrounds:
9. Optimized product category pages
You can optimize product category pages as well. Instead of having each category page simply list your products in a classic Shop layout, design an optimized layout instead.
You can use the same design flow we suggested using for your homepage: hero section → CTAs for child categories → personalized products → curated products.
Your store already has a Shop section where customers can filter products by category, so you may as well find creative ways to use ecommerce merchandising on some of your site’s most visited pages.
10. Product videos and galleries on key pages
Product videos and product galleries are simple ways to implement ecommerce merchandising on your site.
You can insert these elements on information pages to guide customers toward product pages. Information pages include your About page, blog post pages and non-shop pages on your site, such as a fact sheet for your niche.
