With new E-commerce brands appearing in the digital landscape, businesses need solid strategies and tools to gain a competitive edge.
E-commerce businesses frequently use advanced technology such as customer relationship management (CRM) systems and analytics software to draw in and keep customers and streamline their processes. For example, in B2B e-commerce, enterprises typically utilize tools like quote to cash software to automate the process of turning quotes and estimates into actual billable transactions while keeping customers engaged throughout the buying journey.
For B2C E-commerce, a whole gamut of technologies is making waves in the E-commerce sector. They primarily leverage tools for payment processing like Stripe, Paypal, etc. But, the major focus in B2C E-commerce is on merchandising to create a seamless and enjoyable shopping experience for customers and drive sales through enhanced visibility.
Despite deploying these tools, businesses need help to receive the expected number of orders. That’s when E-commerce merchandising can help. An effective merchandising strategy enables customers to find the products they seek.
In this blog, we’ll explore a few merchandising strategies that E-commerce businesses can use.
#1: Create a Responsive Website
Responsive websites help customers to easily access and use a website on any device, including mobile phones and tablets. This increases the chances of customers purchasing since they can easily view and navigate an E-commerce store.
Mobile devices have become more important in recent years —
- Recent research indicates that mobile devices account for 60.66% of all website visits.
- Over the last six months, at least 79% of smartphone owners have shopped online using their mobile devices.
Prioritizing the responsive website for your E-commerce store may lead to creating mobile-friendly landing pages that drive conversion.
Source: Checking website responsiveness across all possible devices
For starters, use any responsive web design testing tool to determine whether your online store’s website is optimized.
#2. Build an Appealing Homepage
A successful E-commerce merchandising strategy begins with a compelling homepage that reflects your brand, showcases the best of your products, and makes browsing easy.
You can adopt the two methods to create an appealing homepage.
Product personalization
Use personalization to showcase products based on customers’ previous purchases or recently reviewed products. For example, Amazon uses personalization on the homepage based on the user’s onsite search and browsing behavior.
Source: Amazon homepage that is full of personalization navigation.
Amazon enhances sales and persuades you to spend more by recommending things users previously looked at (or forgotten about).
Create an engaging storytelling
Start with employing the fundamentals of storytelling to structure the content on your site that displays a narrative. Begin with highlighting the most compelling details — both verbally and graphically.
Use this to establish your brand’s identity, convey the nature of your products, and gradually funnel down to more specialized categories, deals, or product-specific discounts.
#3: Organize Related Products
Group all the related products under different criteria and sell them as a bundle. This merchandising technique, called product bundling, can help drive sales.
Here are some of the key techniques:
Bundle the related products: Packages include several related or complementary products by creating a bundle from the same brand or category.
Source: Example of product bundling
Provide your customers with options to save money as they buy multiple products at once and associate a sense of value in buying.
Clubbing special deals: Dynamic pricing with CPQ integrations can be applied by B2B eCommerce businesses to better manage product offerings, pricing structures, and sales processes. Sales teams create pricing models for clubbing special deals by considering customer history, market conditions, and competitor pricing. And then intelligently club products that add the most value to the buyer. This enables B2B sales teams to offer special deals that are competitive and profitable while still meeting customers’ needs.
Source: Deals bundled that promote savings
This helps drive sales by providing value for money to customers looking to purchase at a discounted rate.
Cross-Selling: Cross-selling strategy is useful in exposing customers to additional products that may interest them.
Source: Cross-selling
For example, suggest accessories like laptop cases or extra memory cards to customers purchasing a laptop.
Upselling: Upselling offers an upgraded version of the product that the customer is already interested in purchasing.
Source: Upselling through comparison
For instance, suggesting (through comparison or recommendation) a more expensive model with more features and benefits if a customer is looking at an entry-level product.
#4. Add Engaging Visual Elements
Visual media is key to successful E-commerce since it draws users’ attention, ensures engagement, and keeps them coming for more.
Consider the following to enhance visual appeal—
Adding dynamic images: Dynamic images are those that move like a carousel of products or images that zoom in on a product. This helps to draw the customer’s eye to the items they’re looking for, making the browsing experience more intuitive.
High-quality images: Invest in engaging visual elements that include product shots. It gives customers a clear view of the products they’re looking at.
Try videos: 73% of customers show a higher likelihood of buying a video after watching the video. Leverage videos that demonstrate product usage, including customer product reviews or tutorials on using certain products.
#5. Provide Personalized Recommendations
Personalized recommendations involve collecting customer data and using predictive analytics that help target customers better.
Here are some of the methods to provide personalized recommendations on E-Commerce website.
Collaborative filtering: This provides customers with recommended items based on the preferences of other customers with similar interests.
Content-based filtering: A filtering method which provides recommendations to customers based on the content of their profile. This is done by analyzing user data like gender, location, etc., to identify their interests, likes, and dislikes.
Hybrid filtering: In this method of E-commerce personalization, customers are recommended items based on a combination of collaborative and content-based filtering to create a more personalized experience.
Rating-based recommendations: Customers talk about their positive or negative experiences with a product which can greatly influence other (prospective) customers’ decisions. Therefore, word-of-mouth is a powerful marketing tool that helps win over new customers by showing the reliability of your business and the quality of your products.
Wrapping up
The aforementioned merchandising strategies are essential for E-commerce businesses looking to drive sales. Create a well-rounded strategy by adopting product selection, pricing, promotions, and customer engagement. Such an approach can lead to enhancing conversion and drive overall profitability.