Today’s consumer heavily depends on the digital space to explore products and make purchases. Although brick-and-mortar establishments are still alive, eCommerce makes up a big part of sales revenue. As the popularity of online shopping continues to grow rapidly, digital merchandising is an essential strategy for reaching new and old customers alike.
In 2021, there were 2.14 billion digital buyers globally–a massive 27.6% of the world’s population. In other words, more than one out of every four people you see around you is an online shopper.
Despite the importance of eCommerce merchandising, not all businesses are getting it right. For example, some organizations still do manual product management, which can be particularly challenging. With the appropriate tools, it doesn’t have to be a slog for sales teams to organize, standardize, and display products in such a way that appeals to customers and increases sales.
eCommerce merchandising is a science; you can get the most out of it with an effective digital merchandising tool. In addition to streamlining the operation of your online store, digital merchandising software improves the customer experience in various other ways. This includes assistance with running promotions, providing tactics to optimize search results, and even analytics to better understand what makes your customers tick.
Here are seven tell-tale signs you need to invest in a good digital merchandising platform.
1. You Have Hundreds of Products (Or More) on Your Site
Manual product listing, organization, categorization, and inventory are doable if you have a limited number of products in your eCommerce store. However, with hundreds of products–or possibly thousands–keeping track of them is a near-impossible feat.
Your brand’s success in the eCommerce sphere hinges on how well your products are managed. Monitoring and controlling stocks to provide a smooth online shopping experience is non-negotiable. Particularly if you’re aiming for a significant increase in sales.
In addition to tracking all your product offerings, a digital merchandising tool helps to position and display products in an intuitive manner. Furthermore, the software can boost SEO efforts and ensure your products are more easily found online. This is a vital feature, considering the complexity of digital product management and the requirement for better coordination and organization.
2. You Have a High Cart Abandonment Rate
Cart abandonment happens in all eCommerce stores. For instance, customers may get distracted by other sites or pop-ups while shopping. As such, an abandoned cart doesn’t necessarily mean a lack of intent to purchase.
Even if a prospective buyer actively considers purchasing an item, there might not be any particular urgency. Your cart abandonment rate shouldn’t be too high, which directly translates to missed sales opportunities. You’ll need to address this issue to reach your company's sales targets.
The average cart abandonment rate at eCommerce checkouts stands at 70%. A lot of the time, an overly complicated checkout process is to blame. Ideally, your customer wants to click on the purchase button and immediately get sent to the shipping and payment page.
However, if the checkout process is too tedious and time-consuming–or if the customer doesn’t find a payment method that suits them–they won’t complete the purchase. What’s worse, they may even opt to purchase from your competition, provided they’re offered a more straightforward checkout process.
How do you fix the problem of cart abandonment? For a start, ensure your website is optimized for mobile and desktop devices, has an easily navigable digital storefront, and provides a variety of payment methods. You could also try:
- Offering attractive, time-bound deals and promotions that can only be obtained once a customer checks out
- Sending personalized email check-ins to customers who have abandoned their cart
- Offering free shipping and package protection measures to reassure customers of your shipping methods’ safety and legitimacy
Ultimately, empowering your online sales platforms with a digital merchandising tool such as Smart Merchandiser is the best way to encourage customers to buy.
3. Your Users Keep Finding Out-Of-Stock Items
If a customer looks for a particular item in your store and finds it’s out of stock, they’ll likely head straight for a competitor brand and purchase from them instead. The same is true in the digital space.
Running out of stock can occur at any given point in the supply chain, but it’s particularly disastrous when you’re about to close a sale. Moreover, it’s especially frustrating to customers who want your products but cannot purchase them.
A digital merchandising tool offers more accurate reporting, making it easier to check that all items are in stock. For example, you can monitor stock levels and see which items need replenishment. Furthermore, you’ll obtain insights into fast-moving items. This feature lets you see which products will likely be bought first, so you can plan a restock in advance.
This way, effective merchandising software helps you get to grips with the FIFO (first in, first out) method. This ensures that older inventory is sold before newer products hit your virtual shelves. After all, the longer you sit with stock, the more it’s likely to become stale–and we’re not just talking perishable goods here!
Smart Merchandiser gives real-time updates on your online store’s inventory. Furthermore, you can set alerts to inform you when stocks dip below a certain level. This type of stock management system is fundamental to effective inventory monitoring. Moreover, it ensures that customers can find the products they want from you whenever they need to.
4. You’re Looking for a Way to Mass Edit Listings
If you have hundreds of product listings to edit, it’s way too demanding and time-intensive to accomplish manually. Further, it heightens the chance of introducing human errors into the equation and ending up with unreliable data. When this happens, your customers may receive inaccurate information that will damage their trust in your brand. As a result, they’re liable to purchase from a competitor instead.
With a digital merchandising tool, you can leverage the power of its bulk editing feature, facilitating the accurate editing of multiple listings. Smart Merchandiser allows you to view all the products you currently have on hand and edit listing inputs on a single dashboard. This gives your brand a huge advantage–perhaps most importantly by optimizing the product management process, which means there’s more time available to focus on growing your business.
5. You Need Easy Access to Analytics
Data is key to determining your performance in the digital space. This is where eCommerce analytics can provide you with actionable insights for your online store. eCommerce analytics is defined as the collection of all data that’s relevant to your customers and the performance of your digital store. This makes it a powerful tool for reaching your business goals.
The right software to access analytics should be crucial to your company’s eCommerce marketing strategy. Once this data is readily available–and you can utilize it effectively–you’ll have what you need to gain the edge over your competition. Further, these tools also help address other challenges you may face with your digital storefront.
A digital merchandising tool like Smart Merchandiser supplies you with all the necessary product-related analytics. Scroll over the product you want to examine to unlock an overlay with page views, conversion rates, revenue, and cart abandonment stats. One of the main advantages here is the at-a-glance insights on your products. As an added bonus, there’s less of a need for you to switch to a dashboard.
6. You‘re Looking for a Better Catalog Management System
Catalog management is critical for a successful eCommerce store because it keeps your product database well-organized and current. Further, this information needs to instantly update across all your sales channels to provide customers with a better virtual shopping experience. And when customers can find the products they’re looking for more quickly and easily, you’ll see a correlated increase in sales.
For businesses, catalog management assists with categorizing and managing products according to type. This is valuable for determining sales logistics and tracking inventory across all your online sales channels.
Smart Merchandiser brings the dedicated features of a digital merchandising tool to help you realize these benefits; for instance, its Drag and Drop and Quick Move tools. In addition, customers can view side-by-side product comparisons to help them select the most suitable items.
Also, remember that when it comes to their shopping experience–in-store or online–customers prize convenience above almost anything else. Improving your site’s digital merchandising functionality renders the buying process as frictionless as possible. And when product information is accurate and up-to-date, it’s much simpler for customers to make informed purchasing decisions.
7. You Need a Multilingual Interface
Providing services and support in more than one language is among the fastest and most efficient ways to boost your store’s reach. This is particularly important if you’re aiming to go global.
A multilingual interface equips your website to switch to a user’s preferred language. Although English may be the universal language, you’ll be able to connect more effectively with customers by using the language they’re most comfortable with.
In addition to providing a multilingual interface, your eCommerce store will also benefit from being able to accept multiple currencies. This means that customers all over the globe can enjoy a hassle-free buying experience without having to worry about conversion fees. An added benefit for global consumers is seeing prices in their own currency, which makes their purchasing decision much easier.
Smart Merchandiser has a digital merchandising platform capable of providing customers with a multilingual interface. The tool provides easy, accurate translations, helping your products to reach an international market. Furthermore, features such as Cross Country Replication allow you to replicate merchandising strategies and efforts for different countries.
Kickstart Your Merchandising Strategy With Smart Merchandiser
There’s no one-size-fits-all solution for digital merchandising. You must develop a plan that fits your brand and overall business goals. The right strategy makes reaching new buyers much easier, fostering relationships with existing customers and boosting your sales. This requires an intuitive digital merchandising tool that leverages automation to help you manage your digital storefront.
Smart Merchandiser is an eCommerce tool that helps connect customers with the products they need. Moreover, it provides buyers with a smooth and seamless online shopping experience–regardless of where they’re shopping. With Smart Merchandiser, you can elevate your digital merchandising strategy with features designed for catalog management, multilingual support, analytics, product management, and customer care.
Take your eCommerce strategy to the next level with Smart Merchandiser! Reach out today for a demo, and let us help you get the best return from your online stores.