In this article, we’re going to provide you with everything you need to know about e-merchandising, as well as some strategies that you can start implementing in your business right now.
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E-merchandising is a marketing strategy that utilizes some techniques that are usually called “leverage”. Through these techniques, the e-merchandising strategy aims at attracting the user’s attention focusing on their emotional engagement. This is the final goal of e-merchandising, but how can you achieve it? What are the leverages, or techniques, that you should use for this strategy?
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E-merchandising utilizes different techniques. You can find the main and most important ones down below in the article so that you can start implementing them in your business right now!
The most basic e-merchandising technique is the one that focuses on how your products are displayed on your website. Just like you’d do for your shop windows, for your e-commerce you don’t have to simply show your items, you need to attract attention to them, make the user curious, showing them off.
This means that, based on a market survey and your goals, you need to decide how to organize your items in categories, which products are you going to show first, which one are you going to prioritize… Furthermore, in this phase, you also want to pay close attention to your website layout, and to the pictures, you’re choosing on your items’ descriptions.
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Ergonomy is a term we use to define the attention you must give to the performances of your website, always remembering that the user’s experience must be central. What does it mean?
The user that browses through your e-commerce must have a pleasant experience. Browsing through the different items, comparing one product to another, picking what they like, and buying it must be easy. Pages must load quickly and, even more importantly, the same must happen for your products’ images.
During the payment stage, ergonomy becomes even more important. If your website has issues during the payment process, or if the procedures are too complex, a big percentage of your potential clients would drop off the purchase. Your payment process must be easy (ask as little data as you need to process a secure payment, sum up the order and ask the buyer to confirm for it, avoid asking the same information more than once) and reliable.
When you sell online, you don’t have to focus merely on your products, but also the service you're providing. E-merchandising pays attention to how you can make your service excellent: become a good communicator, answer your clients’ needs, prevent the problems instead of fixing them…
E-merchandising also includes strategies like offering the possibility of leaving reviews for the purchased items. Also, the communication that happens outside your e-commerce must be taken care of: your social media or email interactions become part of the quality of the service you want to offer.
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Because e-merchandising is related to the web and the digital world, some may wonder whether it is also suitable for more traditional types of business, like retail shops, for example. Well, the truth is that no business whatsoever should underestimate the importance of e-merchandising, just like they shouldn’t underestimate the importance of digital marketing.
Because the Internet and the use of technology have become so redundant in our lives (we use our smartphone for almost anything!) businesses of any kind have to exploit digital techniques to engage their clients. To think that, because your business has nothing to do with the Internet, you don’t need a website, or e-merchandising techniques, would just be a great mistake! So, make sure you learn what e-merchandising is and how to use these strategies if you want to make your business successful.
Content like this is very helpful to spark the light over what you need to succeed: as you can see, the strategies aren’t complex: you only need to be aware of what they are and why they are so important to start implementing them!
E-merchandising is very heterogeneous, and according to the type of business it is used for and the aim it pursues, we can speak about:
- character merchandising: when the merchandising is based on an “identity” of a character. In this case, to use the characters’ name and image you need a license from its creators: with Cerdà, you have an original license to use every character in our catalogs.
- personality merchandising: it’s based on the identity of the business owner.
- event merchandising: when the techniques are used for sports or cultural events.
- brand merchandising: it is aimed at promoting a particular brand. In this regard, it’s important that you consider your own business as a brand. Other than promoting your items, you should also pay attention to building an identity for your business so that you can use e-merchandising to promote your business’ identity as well. When a business has a strong identity, it stays in the clients’ minds so that, after their first purchase, they are keen to come back to your store and recommend it to their friends.
To help you start implementing e-merchandising techniques quickly, we thought of sharing some examples that you can follow easily.
One of the most utilized e-merchandising techniques, especially from e-commerce stores, is using product recommendation on the online store’s web pages. In particular, you can use a small section of your website to show recommended products according to the item that the user is visualizing or adding into their chart.
This element should be dynamically generated: it should show a different item every time, depending on what preferences the user is showing with their choices. There is no need of programming this section yourself: you can use one of the many pre-built and ready-to-use plug-in that any CSM can offer.
This is another technique that is commonly used on e-commerces. You could offer (and recommend) bundle deals on items that serve the same purpose or belong to the same category.
Speaking of clothing for children, for example, when a user is browsing to t-shirts, for example, you could offer bundle deals for coordinated t-shirts and shorts, or accessories, or coordinated items for other family members. The bundle deal should, of course, come at a lower price than the total amount that would result if the customer bought every item singularly. Again, you can use plug-ins to implement this strategy.
For left hand navigation we mean the presence of a left side vertical bar that allows the user to refine their search as they browse through products. The Cerdà website, for example, has a left bar that allows you to filter products by category, character, type of product, and so on…
As you can experience from that, the navigation through the website becomes easier, the experience of the user is nicer and smoother and it’s easier to find what they are searching for. With Cerdá, you can bring your business to another level: Licensed products, trends, updates, and strategies... We want you to succeed!
Digital marketing isn’t just a trend of the moment: it’s the present and future of business. Many aspects of our everyday life are becoming digital, and shopping is one of them. Furthermore, since communication, today is predominantly digital (with emails, live chats, messaging, social media), digital communication today is key for every business.
Starting from the communication that goes through your social platforms, which is the easiest one from a technical point of view. Then, one step at a time, make your e-commerce more user-friendly, and your transactions more secure. Also, when you update your e-commerce, let your customers know through the communication channels you use to interact with them. This is all part of your e-merchandising strategy.
With Cerdá, you can bring your business to another level: Licensed products, trends, updates, and strategies... We want you to succeed!
At Cerdá we are manufacturers and wholesalers specialized in licensing products and children's characters for more than 40 years. Our products help create unique moments of happiness and that is our greatest motivation. In Cerdá we strive every day to make the dreams of our children and clients a reality. Join the Cerdá family!
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