Posted: 5 Minute read

Ecommerce Merchandising That Sells

When it comes to ecommerce success, merchandising is key. The right digital merchandising strategy will increase your store’s appeal, drive sales, and boost your average order value (AOV). 

Still, perfecting your approach can be tricky. 

To help, product discovery technology, Klevu shares four strategies that you can use to showcase your brand and products in a way that resonates, excites and converts more customers...

Make product discovery easy

Shoppers aren’t going to waste their time endlessly scrolling through your product pages. Give customers a helping hand by making it easier for them to find the products they’re looking for. For example, you should create product categories and add an instant search bar with search result filters. 

Also, why not make product discovery more enjoyable by creating collections and implementing advanced search filters such as style, fit and reviews?

Product discovery image

Product recommendations 

    More and more customers expect a personalised experience, and data is the driving force behind personalisation. So, be sure to analyse browsing and purchasing behaviour to generate intelligent recommendations. This will help you merchandise products to the right shopper, as well as help you to up-sell and cross-sell products on your product pages. 

    Recommendations merchandisingGreat product descriptions 

      Product descriptions are what make your products shine and give your customers the information they need to convert.  

      Great product descriptions start with your copy. So, make your copy clear, concise and easy to read, whilst detailing how your products work and why it solves a customer’s problem. Then, complement the product copy with high-quality photography. This will allow your customers to imagine the product in front of them.

      Highlight user-generated content (UGC)

        Research shows that UGC is 5x more likely to convert than non-UGC. 

        This is because customers see UGC as a personal recommendation that they trust. Displaying UGC at key touch points across your Shopify Plus store such as product pages and at checkout will help shoppers make confident purchase decisions.

        User generated content image

        How can Klevu help you convert more shoppers online?

        Many merchants face challenges when it comes to the merchandising of Collections. Without any underlying logic to how products are listed on Collection Pages, merchandisers are tasked with what can be a very manual job, especially when dealing with a large number of collections and products. Some ecommerce teams may not even have a merchandiser in-house, meaning lack of resources can amplify this problem further.

        With Smart Category Merchandising, Klevu dynamically ranks ordering of products on category pages and also provides well designed visual merchandising capabilities to tune category pages, with AI still remaining a backbone.

        Key features: 

        • Machine Learning / Dynamic Merchandising
        • Visual Merchandise Hero Products 
        • Seasonal Merchandising Rules 
        • Dynamic Facets with our JS Template

        Klevu learns and tracks shoppers interactions on-site, taking into account search data, category views, clicks and overall conversions. This underlying machine-learning improves efficiency and takes the stress out of merchandising every single collection. Klevu automatically demotes out of stock products to the bottom of collection pages without any manual intervention needed to prevent shoppers from clicking on or even seeing out of stock products.

        “Machine learning can also detect trends much quicker.  How could a new product ever rise to the top against historical best-selling products which would by default always be at the top.” - Chris Edge, Global Head of Customer Success at Klevu

        Shopify Plus isn’t built with the intricacies of merchandising in mind. Klevu fills this gap with our visual merchandiser providing clear feedback as to what products show up where. 

        Ease merchandising with clever rules:

        • Many companies do not have the ability to mass reorder products easily.
        • Demote on-sale products.
        • Promote new items.
        • Promote in-house brands over other brands.
        • Demote low-value items. 
        • Promote around specific occasions: Valentine’s Day / Christmas / Halloween.

        Note: Any attribute a retailer has in their back-end - Klevu can index and they will be able to boost.

        Merchandising campaign

        Merchants often require the flexibility to launch various campaigns ahead of a sale period such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Klevu’s scheduled merchandiser enables merchants to pre-plan these campaigns on an individual store view basis and even select the time zone.

        Our time-bound promotions allow for merchants to boost products leveraging tags (useful for seasonal specific merchandising) and layer visual merchandising on top of this (pin hero products to the top of a collection page for a fixed amount of time).

        Season merchandising page
        Category product page

        Shopify out-of-the-box has limited capabilities around filtering, hence why many merchants turn to Klevu to power facets also. Merchants using Klevu Smart Category Merchandising see marked improvements to dynamic faceting and page load speed. The Klevu template is rendered by JS, meaning the faster load times for shoppers.

        Image of website categories

        Sounds good, right? If you want to hear more about how Klevu can help your ecommerce business thrive, so you never miss a merchandising opportunity again, get in touch with Velstar and we’ll point you in the right direction. 

        Klevu logo

        Klevu helps connect people to products they want to buy. Klevu’s discovery suite includes ecommerce personalisation, AI and NLP-powered on-site Smart Search, Smart Category Merchandising and Smart Recommendations, powered by real-time buyer intent. Klevu discovery technology balances AI automation, and strategic control is quick and easy to install and compatible with all ecommerce platforms.

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