A precise and accurate merchandising strategy plan provides a frictionless journey for ecommerce shoppers, maintaining a constant balance between three types of relevance: textual, business and contextual.

Users are navigating the products on the website in two ways: 

1. Searching: entering their queries directly into the search bar (See How to increase online sales with Search merchandising for more details on Search Merchandising)
2. Browsing: navigating to various site pages and categories, clicking on banners, main navigation drop-down menu items and filtering the category page results by selecting different facets.

To ensure a uniform shopping experience for eCommerce users, retailers apply both search and category page merchandising.

Category Merchandising workflow enables eCommerce companies to apply business logic to the category pages. This way, every time a shopper is browsing the website and different product categories, the results will appear in a specific order that can be easily adjusted according to the current promotional business needs.

• Pin, hide, boost, and bury categories
• Add content carousels to category landing pages
• Add dynamic landing pages

Pin, hide, boost, and bury categories

Pin Results on Category Page: Nuts.com

On the Nuts.com website, based on the particular category page, product-listing pages prominently display pinned products at a specific position within the product list for a chosen grocery category. For example, in the “Cashews” category, the first three products at the top of the list are pinned to their respective positions.

 

 

 

Add content carousels to category landing pages

Product Content Carousels — Popular Collections for Marketplace: ManoMano

ManoMano gets shoppers’ attention with a clickable Sale banner. They arrive on a special landing page that utilizes content carousels to showcase monthly deals, with bargain items organized in a grid format by product category.

Success indicators:

• 20% conversion rate increase in multiple markets in only two weeks

 

 

 

Add dynamic landing pages

Dynamic Landing Page for Sports & Goods Retailer: Culture Kings

Streetwear fashion retailer Culture King uses dynamic category landing pages to promote their products. When users click on the “Old Golfer” promotional banner, they can check featured new Old Golfer headwear on a landing page.

 

 

 

Dynamic Landing Page for Fashion Retailer: Shoebacca

Online shoe retailer Shoebacca uses linked category landing pages to highlight product categories. For example, when users click on the “Spring Fashion is Here!” promotional banner, they see a landing page with the new spring collection.

 

 

 

Conclusion

The merchandising strategy accuracy and precision is vital for any eCommerce business, helping retailers to stay competitive and transform into leaders of their industry. Optimizing the customer journey by ensuring a unified shopping experience across the website provides a competitive advantage to retailers, promotes brand loyalty, increases sales and conversion rates, and decreases bounce rate.