Merchandisers are the most important in the back-office team of any digital channel as they are responsible for the performance of the site in terms of revenue. And yet, they are usually given the challenge without the tools to do their job. They are expected to do magic with information scattered everywhere, data from many sources and in many cases, they have to use cumbersome tools that are not user-friendly, time-consuming and tedious.
For sure, the marketing team comes up with clever campaigns and promotions but they rely on the merchandisers for the strategic placement of the products to attract shoppers the very instant they landed on the site.
Here are a few of the challenges that merchandisers need to deal with on a daily basis.
For a promotion campaign, should the promoted products be featured in a specific category for the campaign or should they be highlighted as special products in a regular category? Merchandisers need to do this in a very simple way without the help of IT.
Do I have enough inventory to support this promotion? Oh wait, I need to know inventory by color and by size… Where do I go for this information? Should I check my ERP system for this information? Let me think… my ERP system only has DC (Distribution Center) information and not the stores information so Ughh…
Merchandisers understand how important real estate is on the website more than anyone.
They will position the products to avoid scrolling as much as possible and put the most important products on the first page.
Analytics are important, so they need to be aware of the sentiments around their products.Analytics can tell them how many people viewed the product, actually added them to the shopping cart and checkout, or abandoned the cart.
They need to understand the cause of cart abandonment. Is it due to poor ratings and reviews, shortage on inventory, size or color? Without the data, they are playing the guessing game.
If this is your business and this affects your revenue, give your merchandisers a tool that would help them. A tool that provides visual data on each product would be a great start. In addition, wouldn’t it be nice to have business rules that would let them prioritize price, inventory, brand, etc. and sequence products automatically for each campaign?
Even with automated sequencing in place, merchandisers may want the capability of pinning products at certain spots on the page. They know that there are products that always perform no matter what season, time of the year and regardless of promotion. These classic performers need to be featured in prominent spots so it’s easy for shoppers to find. So of course, they would enjoy the capability of pinning products.
Visual Heat Map
Finally, an overview of the products in a heatmap would be most wonderful so merchandisers can have a sense of orientation where the best performing products are on the website. Are they scattered here and there? Are they properly situated for the best yield?
Time Savings Boosts Efficiency
There are many challenges for merchandisers but because they are in the back office, their voices are not often heard and they spend many hours pouring over spreadsheets, and struggling with multiple tools. Would they like to be 80% more productive and get back 7 hours in their daily routine? Would they like to contribute 20% more revenue by effectively merchandising the website and never let a customer leave without buying? Sure they would.
Get in touch with us at contactus@zobristinc.com and we will show you how to honor your merchandisers.