What Is Digital Merchandising, and How Do You Use It?

Muhammad Saqib

June 06, 2023

What Is Digital Merchandising, and How Do You Use It?

According to eMarketer, by 2023, online sales will account for 22% of all retail sales worldwide. It appears to make sense because internet sales made up 13% of all sales in the third quarter of 2021 in the US alone.

Online shopping is quite popular since it is so practical. And although it benefits the modern customer, the folks who create the brands cannot say the same.

Particularly when contrasted to visual merchandising in actual businesses, the problem of internet merchandising is significant. Potential customers cannot physically touch or feel the products; while having countless distractions while attempting to shop online, it takes a lot of persuasion to turn a visitor into buyers.

To stand out, you need to be innovative and creative. To help you develop your brand, we’ll discuss some essential digital merchandising tactics.

What exactly is digital marketing?

Any actions that involve advertising your products online in digital merchandising, commonly referred to as e-commerce or online merchandising.

Although it has a similar end goal to brick-and-mortar marketing—attracting customers—the approaches and objectives are significantly different because everything is online. It comprises:

  • Display of products
  • Product promotion
  • Image creation and modification
  • Branding

To get customers to click the illusive “purchase” button, all of these components should complement one another. 

Why is digital marketing so crucial?

It only makes sense to increase your digital merchandising efforts and maximize this revenue stream, as 75% of customers buy online at least once a month. The product display has taken on a life of its own and necessitates digital merchandising tactics. It involves much more than just making the website pretty. It’s about designing a compelling experience that makes it difficult for customers to leave their carts unattended.

Digital merchandising may accomplish the following things when done well:

Showcase a variety of products. The more products you offer the buyer, the more probable they will buy anything.

Get customers’ attention. Today, the average human attention span is 8 seconds, down from 12 seconds in 2000. Keep customers engaged in the face of numerous distractions with appealing merchandising strategies.

Turn browsing visitors into buyers. The average percentage of cart abandonment is 69.57%. Persuade these browsers that your items are worthwhile purchases to increase your retail earnings.

How to design a fruitful digital marketing campaign 

You may affect your buyers’ purchasing behavior by utilizing digital merchandising strategies. Here are some suggestions for improving the user experience on your website.

Be unique

Consider promoting your products to someone who doesn’t require them. It sounds a little spammy? That frequently occurs to many people, including yourself, for example, receiving advertisements for video games when you don’t play any and with toy industry marketing efforts, yet you don’t have children. The list goes on.

This sort of cliche strategy is no longer effective. The reasons are this:

  • More than 30% of customers want a more personalized purchasing experience.
  • Personalization has improved customer connections, according to 96% of marketers.
  • Because technology is developing quickly, your business should be able to adapt tailored marketing. If you don’t do this, your customers will have a negative buying experience and may question your legitimacy.

When customers seek items that suit their personalities, you don’t want to give them the impression that their time gets wasted on your website. Offer a wide selection of discounted items.

Be analytically strong

As a digital merchandiser, you need data that helps your decision-making. But, if you don’t know how to understand and use it in your digital merchandising strategry, having too much information might be daunting. Here are some strategies to help you improve your merchandising and raise conversion rates.

Learn about your potential customers’ demands

Social media makes it simple to learn what your customers are interested in. Analyze your success across many platforms and tally the likes, comments, and product shares. From there, it will be simple to decide which products stand out. You can also utilize a POS that provides detailed analytics on your most-selling items that should be re-ordered for more sales.

Keep most-selling items

There are winners, chasers, and losers in your product lineup. You may keep those items in stock or put them on display where your target market can readily see them once you’ve determined which of these things are selling like hotcakes.

Stay one step ahead 

Think about the future as well as the current trends when keeping an eye out for what’s trending. Showing them popular searches or recommended things when they are looking for shopping may help you introduce new products that your customers might appreciate. By letting your visitors know what’s popular right now, you may set the tone for trends on your website.

Go an extra mile

Today, the idiom “content is king” is especially relevant. To be successful, retailers must produce or display content on their websites that are interesting, relevant, and of high quality.

Provide engaging material, such as product reviews and how-to articles, that your audience will find intriguing and valuable. Use your creativity to include information, including infographics, short videos, and photographs, which will:

  • keep users occupied on your website, extending their visit.
  • encourage customers to make impulsive purchases.
  • give your customers peace of mind.
  • produce a satisfying shopping experience.

Make it simple to find and filter products.

On your website, your search engine acts as a sales representative. If your website has a lot of products, it is necessary to create a search box so visitors can start searching instantly instead of going through pages or categories to check the availability of products.

Use simple CTAs

Give out clear and well-placed CTAs (call-to-action buttons) that encourage readers to take action. Consider your CTA as your most effective sales closing. Because most stores believe they can get away with simply saying “Purchase Now,” it is simple to disregard them.

You may increase engagement rates and direct visitors to other parts of your website by positioning CTAs above the fold or in strategic locations.

Final remarks

As you can now see, it takes much more than just creating a pretty website and dumping all your products on digital aisles / pages for them to be picked up by visitors in their digital carts and make a purchase. You need to continuously work on creating amazing experiences and appropriately market your products, website, and brands as well to finally stand out and be successful online.

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