Increase Sales with the 5 Elements of Effective eCommerce Merchandising
People ask me all the time if you could do one thing to maximize your sales with eCommerce retailers, what would you do?
Staying in stock on the items that drive 80% of sales is the most important thing you can do to reach your full sales potential. If you are out of stock on an item for more than 90 days, you lose your search history and it takes that much longer for the item to build up again.
The second thing I would focus on is making sure that my merchandising is optimized with great imagery, in-depth copy, and content with SEO search terms.
Merchandising and inventory are two things that we can control that are very important for success.
88% of all shopper’s rank product content as their #1 purchasing factor. Followed by reviews and price. A good photo with a title will not work and copy and price alone is not enough to convert into a sale. You must have both to be the most effective.
Basic elements of eCommerce merchandising:
Product Title
Product Romance Description
Bullet point selling features & benefits
Product Specifications
Imagery
An effective Product Title combines SEO search terms along with a unique name. A good title will elevate your items in the search pages and quickly educate the customer. Once you grab the customer's attention you want to build their interest with a compelling romance description.
Product Romance Descriptions and Bullet Point Selling Features need to be specific and describe the product in a way that the customer can imagine the product in their home or using it. The key is of course to include features but, more importantly, how the product is going to improve, enlighten, simplify their lives and make them happy. They care more about the how the product will benefit them versus the features. Use more verbs than adjectives in your copy and content.
Your copy must sell, create an emotional engagement with benefits, and have a call to action. Your content must tell a story and create a connection by specificially speaking to your buyer with facts, features and ideas. It is here where you generate interest with authentic and credible information. Of course, you need to incorporate the SEO search terms that are going to convert.
Where do I begin?
An excellent place to begin is Wayfair’s Extranet. Wayfair provides a tool on Extranet called Shop Your Catalog. It gives you the ability to review all your items one at a time and see how they will appear on the site. This way you can easily assess your imagery, copy, and content in one place.
By using this tool, you can create your Product Assortment Scrub. The Product Assortment Scrub is essentially a checklist to evaluate how effective your copy and content are. Below is an example of a starting point checklist for your self-assessment.
Product Assortment Scrub Checklist Example:
Develop a road map and a formula of what you want to achieve with your product copy and content system.
Identify the current product titles, descriptions and selling features that need to be updated.
Implement a timing and action plan to complete the project. This includes the actual changes and implementing those changes with each account.
Start with the items that do 80% of your business and then complete the rest of your assortment.
Taking these steps will make a big difference in your results.
Many companies today want great merchandising, but lack the resources to get it done, leading to stagnating sales.
RSG Sales has specialized in selling to eCommerce retailers over the last 12 years. We provide strategic account representation, and project-based solutions including business assessment, account training, and SEO copy and content optimization.
We work with companies of all sizes to update or completely re-do their copy and content. This is a very important investment where you can see an immediate ROI.