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Created by onecallapp Aug 13, 2020

Companies grow when they employ the right Ecommerce merchandising strategies. Let’s look at the top seven tactics you can use to take your company up a gear.

1. Mobile responsive and optimized.
The days of a single ecommerce website are gone; the time of omnichannel marketing has come. Consumers expect a seamless ecommerce experience across a range of devices. They want to place items in carts on regular websites and check out using their smartphones later on.

Ecommerce companies with apps have an edge in the omnichannel world. If your business doesn’t have an app, make sure that your site is responsive and optimized for smartphones and tablets as well as desktop computers and laptops.

Here’s Burrow’s homepage again — only this time, you’re looking at the smartphone version.

Burrow mobile 

2. Product discovery should be easy.
To buy the right products, shoppers have to be able to find them. You can use the search function on your site to help them do this. To make items easy to find, ensure that they carry appropriate tags: mens leather shoes, blue wallet, pink shag carpet. If your search tool has a visual merchandising option, use it to display thumbnails rather than a list of products.

Consumers also need to be able to find the newest products on your site. To help them, change the photographs in your hero slider frequently and feature new items at the top of category pages.

Here’s the cheese section at Di Bruno Bros. Notice the helpful filters at the top of the page, which make it much easier to find your favorite savory snack.

Di Bruno Bros

3. Get personal with recommendations.
Personalized recommendations increase AOV, boost impulse sales, and help customers find what they need. Data is the driving force behind personalization. You can examine information about your site, including pathway trends and conversions, using Google Analytics. You’ll gain more insight into existing customers when you analyze their accounts. You can also use targeted ads on Google and Facebook to drive particular consumers toward specific areas of your site.

Session recording apps and heatmap plugins track visitor engagement on your site, making it easier to identify popular areas and roadblocks. You can use feedback from these apps to create personalized product recommendations and put segmented merchandising campaigns in optimal places.

Want an example? Scroll down The Mountain’s homepage and you come to a section of recommended T-shirts.

The mountain example

4. Make your product descriptions great.
Great product descriptions are vital. Visitors click on product thumbnails to find out more about those items. Put yourself in a potential customer’s shoes: what would you want to know? Begin with a compelling one-sentence introduction to the product and then go into detail about its main features. Bullets help highlight perks.

Accuracy builds trust, so correct spelling and grammar are vital. Shorter paragraphs work better than longer, wordier paragraphs because they’re easier to read. Stay away from passive voice (“the coffee is made with the coffee maker” becomes “make coffee with this coffee maker”). If in doubt, use a Flesch reading ease or Flesch-Kincaid grade level analysis tool to explore your text. Aim for a Flesch reading ease score of 60 to 70, or a Flesch-Kincaid score of 8 to 10.

Lastly, upload bright, clear photographs and product diagrams, and use them to illustrate each product page. Words are important, but people respond to pictures in a visceral way. They need to be able to imagine the product in front of them.

Need inspiration? Take a look at Larq. Notice the purity and simplicity of this product description — a bit like the water in the bottle itself.

Larq example

5. Keep it simple.
When people go shopping, they want to have fun. They don’t want to be bored, and they want to find products quickly and easily. To make them happy, use analytics data to pinpoint popular products and display them prominently on your site. Carousel sliders under product descriptions add interest and encourage add-on sales.

Sometimes it’s just easier to talk to someone. Live chat boxes answer questions quickly and help visitors find their desired products. Many advanced live chat plugins actually approach visitors first and base their initial messages on user action analyses. Clever, huh?

Solo Stove has a floating help button on the bottom right of every page. Tap on it and you get a simple web form, like this.

Live Chat Solo Stove 

6. Focus on telling a story.
Remember branding? Well, that branding story has to continue through every part of your site. The voice you use to describe your business must permeate through each product description you write. Consistency creates authenticity; trustworthy companies acquire new customers and retain existing consumers.

Remember the last time you read a great story? The last time you felt as if you were really there — really part of the dialog? That’s what you need to aim for here. You want your brand story to become entwined with your customer’s personal account. Consumers create tapestries with threads they find in their daily lives: help them make your brand part of that woven reality.

Bon Bon Bon is a fun, tasty brand. Here’s an example of its trademark tongue-in-cheek style: lighthearted imagery and playful text on the company’s Swag page.

Bon Bon Bon Swag Example

7. Highlight user-generated content.
According to a recent study by the Nielsen Consumer Trust Index, consumers trust each other more than they trust ecommerce merchants. If 92% of visitors look at reviews before buying, then it makes sense to leverage user-generated content to raise brand awareness, promote social proof, and establish credibility.

You can establish user engagement with platforms like Facebook, TrustPilot, and Instagram. Plugins stream social media and review platform content to your site, enhancing your SEO in the process. You sell high-quality products and offer excellent customer service: user-generated content can help you raise brand awareness and build trust for free.

Hyphen puts user-generated content on its homepage. Glowing reviews make each product more credible.
Readmore: What is Modern Ecommerce Merchandising?