eCommerce Merchandising: Ultimate Guide With 3 Global Strategies for Success

To answer the question: "What does merchandising mean in e-commerce," let's explore its definition. Also referred to as digital or online merchandising, eCommerce selling encompasses the meticulous selection and display of products in an e-store to boost conversions, improve customer experience, and foster business growth. While some fundamental principles of visual merchandising apply to both offline and internet stores, such as search help, product recommendations, and in-store trading, digital one goes beyond just product presentation.

In eCommerce, merchandising encompasses optimizing the shopping journey to purchase, regardless of how they enter the store or what stage they are at on their journey. The point is strategically showcasing the products you want customers to see and guiding them toward checking out without disrupting their flow.

Linking the relevant product with the right customer can significantly improve the user experience. Customers are more inclined to buy when they can effortlessly locate the items they seek.

By now, you should have gained a comprehensive understanding of the topic at hand and its connection to the purchasing process. Recognizing the interdependence between the two is crucial for successful operations.

eCommerce merchandising and purchasing denote two related aspects of online retail business. While merchandising focuses on the strategies and methodologies employed for effective product display and promotion, purchasing is the process where customers choose and buy products from an online store or marketplace. Let's delve into each of these aspects separately.

eCommerce Merchandising: as mentioned earlier, digital commerce aims to optimize the display and promotion of products in the online retail environment. The goal is to create an interactive and engaging online shopping experience that increases engagement, drives sales, and enhances overall customer satisfaction.

eCommerce Purchasing: internet purchasing refers to the shopping journey. Briefly, the shopping journey focuses specifically on the process of a customer engaging in shopping activities, either in a physical store or online, and significantly affects the customer experience. It primarily revolves around the steps in selecting and buying products or services. The shopping journey often begins with a need to recognize a specific item in mind. It then progresses through stages of product discovery, product evaluation, adding items to the cart, and checkout.

Both digital merchandising and purchasing are crucial for the success of an online retail business. But what about the difference between physical and virtual merchandising? Let's find out.

In today's business landscape, adopting merchandising eCommerce has become a necessity rather than a luxury. While traditional selling relied solely on presenting products in physical stores, the exponential growth of e-shopping has compelled businesses to embrace digital trading.

This shift is driven by the increasing number of people who prefer to shop online. In fact, global eCommerce sales witnessed a remarkable 7.7% increase in 2022, surpassing the significant milestone of $1 trillion. While eCommerce and traditional merchandising share the common objective of effectively displaying products and driving sales, they have notable differences. Let's explore these distinctions in more detail.

• Platform: merchandising eCommerce is carried out on digital mediums such as websites or mobile applications, in contrast to traditional selling, which is typically conducted in physical retail outlets like brick-and-mortar stores.
• Display and Presentation: in traditional merchandising, products are physically showcased and arranged within the store, utilizing various techniques such as window displays, shelf placements, and signage. Online business involves the digital presentation of products, using visuals, product descriptions, and interactive elements to engage customers.
• Physical Interaction: brick-and-mortar selling allows customers to physically interact with products, touch them, try them on, and experience them firsthand. Digital merchandising lacks this tactile experience, relying on detailed product descriptions, high-quality images or videos, and customer reviews to visually understand the product.
• Personalization and Targeting: merchandising on websites provides enhanced opportunities for personalization and targeting, capitalizing on customer information, preferences, and browsing patterns. Online platforms can deliver personalized product suggestions, targeted deals, and bespoke shopping experiences. In the context of physical stores, selling largely depends on broad audience targeting and visual cues to draw in customers.
• Comfort and Availability: eCommerce merchandising allows for the ease of shopping from any place and at any time, while traditional commerce necessitates customers to attend the physical store during its operational hours.
• Data and Analytics: website merchandising allows for extensive data collection and analysis, enabling businesses to gain insights into customer behavior, preferences, and buying patterns. Offline selling may rely on observational data and customer feedback but lacks the depth and granularity of digital statistics.

Both eCommerce and traditional approaches have their unique strengths and considerations. Many businesses with a physical and online presence often employ a combination of these approaches to optimize their merchandising efforts. Now, let's delve into the specific benefits that eCommerce business brings to the table.

To grasp the importance of eCommerce merchandising, consider the anticipated expansion of worldwide e-commerce sales, predicted to rise to $8.1 trillion by 2026, up from $1 trillion in 2022. This remarkable growth, an eightfold surge within merely four years, is a persuasive explanation for why 96% of retailers boosted their eCommerce spending in 2022.

With this in mind, investing in online selling is vital to stay ahead of the competition, which will drive your sales growth. Also, if an online business is used effectively, you can enjoy these five key benefits:

1. Enhanced Customer Experience: online selling focuses on creating an exceptional customer shopping experience. Through personalized product recommendations, intuitive search, and engaging visuals, businesses can deliver a seamless and enjoyable journey for shoppers, leading to higher customer experience and loyalty.
2. Increased Conversion Rates: well-implemented merchandising eCommerce strategies can amplify the attractiveness and prominence of products, drawing the focus of prospects and motivating them to complete purchases. This, in turn, can lead to elevated conversion rates and boosted revenue.
3. Improved Customer Engagement: eCommerce merchandising bolsters customer interaction by enticing them with upsell and cross-sell suggestions, engaging attributes, and rich content. By presenting what captivates them, you persuasively encourage visitors to buy your offerings, thereby increasing the possibility of closing sales.
4. Boosted Customer Retention: businesses can cultivate more robust customer relationships through targeted site merchandising efforts. By leveraging customer data, digital selling elevates customer retention rates. Satisfied customers tend to revisit the store for subsequent purchases, promoting recurring business and nurturing brand allegiance.
5. Lowered Bounce Rates: effective eCommerce merchandising features like user-friendly navigation, accurate product grouping, and appealing visuals minimize bounce rates. By ensuring seamless and user-centric browsing experiences, businesses can prompt visitors to delve deeper, decreasing the number of users who exit the website without taking action.

By strategically investing in online business, you can position yourself as a strong contender among online sellers and secure your market share. This proactive approach enables you to compete effectively and lay the foundation for sustainable business growth. Now, let's explore the trends in eCommerce.

Today's eCommerce merchandising landscape is constantly evolving, driven by technological advancements, changing consumer preferences, and industry trends. It has changed over the last few years and will significantly change even more soon.

Just applying traditional selling in the online world doesn't work. Today's shoppers have heightened expectations and demand particular experiences, mobile-friendly interfaces, voice commands, and a presence on social media sites.

Merchants have to adapt to these eCommerce merchandising trends that shape the industry.

Personalization and AI-powered recommendations are at the forefront of digital merchandising trends, enhancing the user experience. Online retailers are capitalizing on artificial intelligence (AI) to delve into customer data and deliver customized product recommendations, personalized offers, and tailored shopping experiences.

The trend brings forth several advantages:

1. It promotes a unique shopping experience, offering customers a sense of value. Consequently, it enhances customer contentment and allegiance, increasing the probability of recurring purchases.
2. It boosts product visibility, enabling customers to locate pertinent items while reducing the time and energy needed for the checkout process.
3. It drives revenue expansion by elevating the average order value and conversion rates, exposing customers to products that resonate with their inclinations and purchasing habits.

Additionally, the gathered data offers abundant insight into customer inclinations, patterns, and market requirements, empowering businesses to make informed choices, refine their product selection, and identify new growth opportunities.

Mobile commerce represents another crucial trend in eCommerce site merchandising. As mobile devices continue to gain prominence in online shopping, retailers are concentrating on refining their selling approaches exclusively for mobile platforms.

Mobile responsiveness is imperative for mobile commerce. As a growing number of customers rely on their smartphones and tablets for online exploration and purchasing, eCommerce stores need a responsive design that effortlessly adjusts to various screen dimensions. This ensures that product presentations, visuals, and navigation components are fine-tuned for mobile devices, offering a seamless and delightful shopping experience.

Mobile-specific eCommerce merchandising techniques are another factor you should consider. Retailers leverage mobile devices' unique features and capabilities to enhance their business efforts. For example, swipeable image galleries, interactive product carousels, and 360-degree product views can engage and captivate mobile shoppers, allowing them to explore products more dynamically and effectively.

Voice commands are a notable trend in eCommerce merchandising. In fact, customers are more frequently employing voice services such as Amazon's Alexa and Google Assistant to find products, submit orders, and complete purchases.

Merchants seize this trend by enhancing their websites and mobile applications for voice searches, creating voice-activated shopping experiences, and incorporating voice assistants into their eCommerce platforms.

Voice commerce offers convenience and hands-free shopping, enabling customers to purchase effortlessly. It presents new opportunities for personalized recommendations and targeted marketing based on voice data analysis.

As voice technology continues to evolve, staying attuned to voice commerce trends and incorporating voice-enabled features into merchandising eCommerce, strategies can give businesses a competitive edge and enhance the overall shopping experience for customers.

Social commerce is a trend in the field of eCommerce merchandising. It revolves around the integration of social networks with online shopping experiences, enabling businesses to sell their products through social media channels. This innovative approach harnesses the immense reach and influence of social networks to drive product discovery, engagement, and ultimately, sales.

A primary catalyst for social commerce is the growing impact of social media on customer behavior. Giants such as Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest have emerged as favored places for users to discover new products, explore trends, and seek recommendations from their peers. By incorporating shopping functionalities directly into these platforms, online store owners can tap into the social media users' interest and buying intent, converting them into customers seamlessly.

Moreover, store owners can broaden their sales channels and access a wider audience via social networks. This approach allows for targeted advertisements and customized suggestions tailored to customer preferences and engagements. Social commerce also produces user-generated content and social proof, which enhances brand trustworthiness.

To effectively implement merchandising eCommerce strategies and achieve your ness goals, it is essential to have a robust online merchandising platform. It refers to a comprehensive selling software solution or a tool that empowers online retailers to manage and optimize their product displays, promotions, and overall merchandising strategies in their online stores.

So, what's the process of creating an eCommerce merchandising platform? You don't need to do it manually, as creating one from the ground up can be an intricate and resource-demanding task. Instead, take advantage of third-party applications with pre-built business functions, thus saving your valuable resources and time.

Now, let's delve into effective eCommerce merchandising best practices and explore apps that can assist you in maximizing their impact.

To increase your sales and enhance the user experience, you need to integrate product search and merchandising into your store seamlessly. The traditional separation between these two aspects is no longer effective. Instead, modern retailers employ a unified approach called searchandising, the first online business strategy you will learn about.

Searchandising, also referred to as searchandizing or search site merchandising, involves promoting products and organizing search results so that they align with key business objectives. These objectives may include increasing conversions, boosting sales, improving engagement, and more.

Several searchandising techniques can be implemented at your store to accomplish your commercial objectives, including search filters, synonyms, personalized search, and others. Let's explore these techniques and unlock the full potential of searchandising for your online business.

Use Filters to Maximize Search Efficiency

Filters enable shoppers to customize their search outcomes based on criteria like size, color, brand, and other relevant attributes. By adding extensive filtering choices, retailers allow shoppers to discover the products that fulfill their needs easily. This not only improves the efficiency of the search process but also saves customers time and increases the chances of finding the desired product.

How to set up filters to boost customer experience?

Searchanise Search & Discovery is a powerful search app that can help optimize searchandising in your digital shopfront.

It offers a comprehensive set of default filters like price, collections, and color, amongst others, for your convenience. Also, you can improve your eCommerce merchandising by setting up tailor-made filters that provide a higher degree of flexibility. These filters can be built on variant options, tag prefixes, and metafields. By integrating both default and customized filters, you build a more remarkable customer experience, potentially resulting in a spike in conversion rates.

Elevate Autocomplete Function

Autocomplete functionality predicts and suggests search queries as users start typing in the search bar. It helps users find products quickly by offering relevant suggestions and correcting spelling mistakes, enhancing the user experience and reducing friction. It can also provide insights into popular search terms and tendencies, enabling you to optimize product assortment and prioritize promotions accordingly.

How to implement the autocomplete function to improve UX?

Searchanise's autocomplete feature generates suggestions based on its built-in dictionary, which includes standard search terms. However, the power is in your hands – create, modify, or remove suggestions within the application. Moreover, based on your clients' search history, you have the option to conceal or deactivate these suggestions.

With the app, you can streamline the search process, saving users time and enabling them to find the items they're looking for effortlessly. By refining search queries and delivering accurate results, you can ensure a seamless shopping experience and boost overall satisfaction.

Enhance Search with Synonyms

Improving search efficiency with synonyms ensures customers find products even when they employ different terms or variations in their search inquiries. For instance, if a customer searches for "sneakers," the search engine may also account for related words such as "sports shoes" or "athletic footwear." By including synonyms, you can broaden search outcomes and minimize the likelihood of customers facing zero or irrelevant search results.

How to organize synonyms to increase conversion rates?

With Searchanise, you can create and manage a customized catalog of synonyms in your store.

You can easily add, edit, or delete synonyms based on your needs and circumstances. To compile a comprehensive list of synonyms, you can leverage the powerful keyword functionality of Google Analytics. By optimizing your search functionality with these synonyms, you empower customers to swiftly find the items they are searching for, thereby boosting the effectiveness of your merchandising eCommerce efforts and increasing conversions.

Boost Products and Collections

Highlight best-selling or featured products, showcase new arrivals, or curate collections based on themes, trends, or customer preferences on the first page of search results. Promoting products and collections helps drive customer attention, increase visibility for specific items, and influence purchase decisions.

How to put in place search merchandising to maximize sales?

Searchanise provides the capability to promote specific products or collections by implementing rules. You can add, modify, or delete these rules to highlight promoted items in your store effectively. By showcasing these products prominently at the top of the search results list, you guide customers toward the checkout process, optimizing conversion rates, streamlining their overall shopping journey, and skyrocketing sales.

Utilize Weighted Search Fields

Weighted search fields offer an effective way to enhance the relevance of search results. By assigning higher weights to specific fields or attributes of your products, you can prioritize their influence on the search algorithm. For example, if you set a higher weight to the product titles, the search outcome will prioritize products with matching keywords in their titles. It helps customers easily find their desired products, leading to a better user experience and higher conversion rates.

How to configure weighted search fields to enhance product visibility?

Searchanise allows you to allocate priority levels from 1 to 10 to distinctive search areas, like the name, description, SKU, and other relevant fields. By tweaking the priority of these areas, you effectively manage their importance and prominence within the search outcomes. This allows you to tailor the sequence in which search results are presented, ensuring that the most critical products acquire the necessary degree of focus and exposure.

Get to Know Your Customers with Analytics

Understand your customers and optimize your eCommerce merchandising strategy with the powerful analytical dashboard. The dashboard will help you obtain critical information about customer behavior, preferences, and purchasing patterns. Armed with this data, you can significantly enhance your eCommerce metrics, including UX and conversions.

How to use analytics to improve search relevance?

Searchanise analytics provides you with the tools to delve into customer search queries, the items they opt for, and their buying behavior to comprehend them more profoundly. Utilizing this data allows you to base your decisions on solid numbers to refine your online merchandising eCommerce approach and boost search relevance in your store. As a result, you'll be enhancing the search relevance for your customers and consequently increasing business revenues.

Optimize "No Results" Pages

When customers encounter no search results, it is crucial to provide them with alternative options and keep them engaged on your website. Otherwise, it can lead to disappointment, leaving the store, and losing sales.

How to configure the “No Results” page to increase engagement?

Use the Searchanise app to display recommended products on a blank page that matches the buyer's search intent. This will help hold their interest and lead to a successful purchase. In addition, take advantage of Searchanise Analytics to determine which specific search queries result in no matches and stock up on relevant products to prevent future missing results.

Personalize Search With AI

Improve your customers' shopping journey with AI-powered personalized search suggestions that adjust to their preferences. These recommendations are influenced by their browsing history, interactions with the shopping cart, and previous purchases, ensuring the search results align with their interests. By integrating these tailored recommendations, you can enrich your customers' shopping experience and enhance their probability of finding relevant products.

How to set up AI-driven search to boost your customer’s purchases?

By utilizing Searchanise, you can tailor search results to align with individual user preferences and remove irrelevant content from view.

The flexibility to adjust the priority of customer actions within AI Personalization, ranging from low to very high, allows you to fine-tune the search experience. Additionally, you have the freedom to select specific elements to be considered in the search, such as category, brand, and product type. With the powerful AI search function, you can deliver exceptional search results that elevate the shopping journey and drive substantial sales growth for your online store.

Now, let's delve into another crucial aspect of eCommerce merchandising – product recommendations.

The second eCommerce merchandising strategy involves the use of product recommendations, often implemented as upsell and cross-sell widgets. They are integral in enhancing the presentation and promotion of products within an online store. Complementing these recommendations are product badges, another efficient tool for gaining attention and putting a spotlight on recommended products. By incorporating product badges and recommendations, you can heighten the user experience, amplify conversion rates, and ultimately augment sales. Let's dive into a more detailed exploration of these components.

Upsell & Cross-Sell

Product suggestions are effective eCommerce merchandising tools designed to increase profits. In brief, merchants capitalize on upselling to introduce expensive items and leverage cross-selling to propose complimentary products to items being viewed by the customer.

Look at the example to get a better understanding. So, if a customer is about to buy a low specs laptop and you suggest upgrading to a better laptop with a higher price – this is upselling. Or, you offer complementary products like a mouse pad or headset with the laptop – this is cross-selling.

Let's proceed to various upsell and cross-sell tactics applicable to your store. These strategies encompass global, contextual, and personalized recommendations, each featuring its collection of product widgets. We'll delve into each product recommendation approach in greater depth.

Global Recommendation Strategy

These recommendations focus on showcasing popular and featured products that appeal to a broad audience and prospects during their first visit. With the help of Searchanise Upsell & Marketing, you can utilize powerful product widgets to welcome your customers and enhance their user experience, ultimately boosting your conversion rates and profits. Here are some of these widgets:

• New Products: Grab customer attention and instill confidence in your store's dynamism by displaying recently added items and consistently updated products. Showcase them on the homepage and collection pages.
• Most Popular Products: Establish social proof and credibility by displaying top-selling products. Place them on the homepage to offer visitors a starting point for engagement, promoting a more profound connection.
• Featured Products: Elevate your profits by presenting a carefully chosen collection of items that meet your criteria. Prime locations for these products are the main homepage and specific product pages. Furthermore, featuring them on both the collection and cart pages can serve as an additional motivator for shoppers to finalize their purchases.

Contextual Recommendation Strategy

Context-based suggestions utilize various data aspects, such as product attributes and the occurrence of items bought alongside others. This approach aims to deliver more tailored product suggestions to customers. Take a closer look at these cross-sell widgets offered by Searchanise Upsell & Marketing to support your eCommerce merchandising strategy and increase average order value:

• Similar Products: Help your customers by automatically introducing items similar to those currently viewed. Highlight them on the product page.
• Products by Attribute: Boost sales by offering product suggestions tailored to the customer's preferences, focusing on particular attributes like product size, vendor, or color. Display these recommendations on the product page.
• Customers Who Bought Also Bought: This approach effectively showcases products frequently bought in tandem. It can be exhibited on both individual product and shopping cart pages.

Personalized Recommendation Strategy

Personalized product suggestions consider both the product context and user behavior to display tailored products to each customer. Employing Searchanise Upsell & Marketing enables you to establish highly personalized and bespoke product recommendations within your storefront. This approach ensures that every customer sees relevant items, boosting conversion rates and enhancing the overall customer experience.

• Recently Viewed: Remind customers about products they've seen before and motivate them to purchase them. Ideally positioned on the product and collection pages.

At this point, you should have an understanding of diverse product recommendations. But there's more to it, like showcasing badges on items in your store. Let's dive into the different badges you can have.

Product Badges

Product badges are visual indicators presented on product images or summaries in a digital store. These eye-catching components capture customers' interest and deliver concise product information like "Sold Out," "Sale," "Limited Stock," or anything else, conveying a special message or incentive to the shopper. They can amplify product visibility and attractiveness, shaping customer impressions and encouraging them to complete a purchase.

How to use product badges to grab attention?

With Searchanise Upsell & Marketing, you can easily enhance your store with various badges to attract customers' attention. Take advantage of the sale badges to promote products with reduced prices, utilize sold-out badges to highlight temporarily unavailable items, and display in-stock badges to showcase products ready for purchase. Additionally, custom badges allow you to create unique labels tailored to your specific needs. Whether it's conveying messages like "Free Shipping" or "Made in the USA," the possibilities are endless, empowering you to align your store with your imagination and business goals.

eCommerce merchandising plays a vital role in the success of online businesses. By implementing strategies like searchandising optimization and product recommendations, you can continuously improve your online store by leveraging valuable data and customer insights. This iterative process allows you to enhance performance, increase sales, improve user experience, and foster customer loyalty.

One powerful app to enhance your online merchandising is Searchanise. This app empowers you to fine-tune search functions using features such as filters, synonyms, analytics, and others. By utilizing Searchanise, you can drive conversion rates, enhance customer experience, and deliver relevant search results.

Another useful app for digital merchandising is Searchanise Upsell & Marketing. Display badges and personalized product recommendations across your entire online shop. Leveraging Searchanise Upsell & Marketing enables you to increase average order value, boost conversions, and drive sales.

Operating an online enterprise is a perpetual endeavor that demands constant adjustment and improvement. It's vital to remain attentive to your clientele's changing demands and tastes. By employing online merchandising eCommerce, you can establish a store that surpasses, rather than meets, customer anticipations. This forward-thinking method allows you to provide outstanding shopping experiences and promote lasting long-term expansion for your venture.

Get your hands on Searchanise today for free and witness a remarkable improvement in your user experience tomorrow!