Ecommerce Merchandising: What it is and How to Improve it in 2024

With effective ecommerce merchandising strategies, you can increase sales while leaving a long-lasting impression that will encourage customer loyalty. 

👋 In this guide, we’ll walk you through what ecommerce merchandising is and 5 strategies on how to improve it. Whether you’re a seasoned ecommerce merchant or just starting out, you’ll find this guide very useful. 

Here’s what we’ll cover:

• What ecommerce merchandising is.
• Why an ecommerce merchandising strategy is important.
• 5 strategies to improve your ecommerce merchandising.

We’ll start by looking at ecommerce merchandising and why it is important.

What is ecommerce merchandising?

Ecommerce merchandising is the practice of strategically displaying and promoting products in an online store to maximize sales.

It involves presenting your products in an easily noticeable and appealing way to grab customers’ attention and get them to buy these products. 

Merchandising is an effective selling technique that physical stores utilize constantly. Clothing stores like Nike and Adidas put their products on mannequins and do window or in-store displays for them. This form of merchandising aims to capture the attention of potential customers walking across the street. 

When you walk into these stores, you’ll find related products, for example, workout gear like leggings, gym bags, headbands, etc., displayed together and clearly labeled. This works to help customers easily discover products that they might like. 

Merchandising can also work similarly in ecommerce stores to attract customers and enable them to discover products that they might like easily. But the difference here is that you will be strategically placing and promoting products on your ecommerce website.

Ecommerce merchandising is quite different from merchandising in a physical store. We’ll see how to do this later in this guide. 

But first, let’s understand why ecommerce merchandising is important.

Why an ecommerce merchandising strategy is important

As an online retailer owner, it is crucial for you to have a merchandising strategy and implement it well.

A well-implemented merchandising strategy will make a lot of positive contributions to your store, including: 

Increased conversion rates

A good digital merchandising strategy appeals to customers. It aims to visibly display products so customers can easily discover and explore them.

📈 This improves their shopping experience. According to research, 73% of shoppers consider customer experience a decisive factor when making purchase decisions.  

Given that user experience holds a lot of weight in purchase decisions, good ecommerce merchandising will help more online shoppers to make a purchase decision quickly. This boosts your store’s conversion rate. 

It is important to note that not all customers consider shopping fun – some do it purely out of necessity. Merchandising can help to cater to these customers by taking away the hassle of shopping. 

Higher average order value(AOV), revenue, and profitability

Ecommerce merchandising involves displaying related products together and recommending other products once a customer adds a certain product to their cart.

This presents cross-selling and upselling opportunities. When customers add cross-sells or upsells to their initial orders, it increases the amount they’re spending per order, thereby increasing your store’s AOV. 

📈 McKinsey reports that cross-selling can increase a business’s revenue by 20% and profitability by 30%. This shows that cross-selling and upselling work to improve your business’s profitability by increasing its revenue without needing you to spend on marketing campaigns. 

Improved customer engagement and retention

Great ecommerce merchandising engages customers throughout their shopping journey. With effective merchandising techniques such as engaging product presentations, interactive elements, and personalized content, you can capture customers’ attention and keep it. 

Customer engagement contributes to a good customer experience, encouraging repeat purchases, customer retention, and loyalty.

📈 Forbes recently conducted a customer insights survey where 87% of the participants said they would likely purchase from a brand after a positive experience.

This proves that customers value a good experience and gives them a good reason to keep returning to your business. 

Since the ecommerce market is highly competitive and crowded, effective merchandising strategies can give your business a competitive edge, helping it to stand out. It allows you to be up-to-date with current marketing trends and adjust your online store to suit your customers’ preferences. 

All of the above work to grow your business’s revenue and improve its profitability. So if you want to grow your business through ecommerce merchandising, here are 5 actionable strategies to try out.

5 strategies to improve your ecommerce merchandising

A good ecommerce merchandising strategy and an increased volume of sales go hand in hand. Every strategy we discuss here will be centered around this principle to provide a seamless customer experience that will encourage more purchases. 

1. Include high-quality product images and videos

Product displays and presentations are a huge part of merchandising. Physical retail stores employ visually appealing product displays to attract customers’ attention and pique their interest. These products are usually placed in well-lit areas of the store where customers can have a 360-degree view of them. 

This display allows customers to assess the details of the color and the material of the product to assess its quality. They can then make a decision whether to buy it or not. 

In online merchandising, product presentation completely relies on product images and videos. Which is why you should include high-quality product images and videos from all angles to showcase your products in detail. High-quality product images and videos help to represent your products and get customers interested in them accurately. 

📈 They play a critical role in purchase decisions, as 75% of customers rely on these detailed visuals to make a purchase decision.

You can also reduce return rates with high-quality product images and videos since customers will know exactly what to expect when they receive their orders. 

To make your high-quality visuals work for you, you’ll need to assemble them neatly in a comprehensive and engaging product gallery. WooThumbs for WooCommerce can help you to do this on your WooCommerce store. 

Create a captivating product gallery with WooThumbs for WooCommerce

WooCommerce has a product gallery by default for showcasing product images when a user clicks on the product page. WooThumbs for WooCommerce works to upgrade this product gallery by including features that will get your customers excited about your products and improve your conversions. 

WooThumbs for WooCommerce lets you create a completely customizable product gallery. You can select a preferred layout, customize the gallery thumbnail position, image sizes, transitions, image sizes, and so on, to meet your store’s needs. 

If you’ve prepared videos of your products, WooThumbs allows you to add them to your product gallery. You can import your videos from a variety of sources such as:

• YouTube. 
• Vimeo.
• Or upload it directly. 

Using iframe, you can also add other media to your gallery, for instance, from Soundcloud, Wistia, etc. When customers visit your product page, they can play these media files and get excited about your product. 

To give customers more information on product variations, WooThumbs allows you to add multiple images for each variation. Customers will only need to select a dropdown for the product image to be updated, making this process seamless. 

2. Effective product descriptions

Effective product descriptions are important because they serve customers with information on your products. Despite being a non-visual merchandising strategy, it is necessary because customers won’t buy products they know nothing about. 

When merchandising offline, brick-and-mortar stores use signage, labels, and tags to inform customers about a product and the advantages of buying it.

For watches, you might see things like:

• Water-resistant.
• Scratch-proof glass.
• Certified quartz movement so that it doesn’t lose seconds. 
• PVD coating and stainless steel material for durability. 

These descriptions are usually placed next to the item where the customer can have a quick look at them. 

When merchandising onsite, you must include detailed descriptions of your products. These should contain information about the product’s features, specifications, materials, and other relevant details. 

Effective product descriptions should use an engaging and persuasive tone to capture the customer’s interest. They should highlight the product’s unique selling points and benefits to emphasize its value to your customers. 

Why are effective product descriptions important?

By disclosing a product’s details effectively, product descriptions make customers knowledgeable about your product. Any questions or concerns they may have about your product, for instance, compatibility, warranty information, etc., will be answered here. 

This works the same way as high-quality images and videos to help customers make a purchase decision. Apart from assisting customers to make a buying decision, effective product descriptions also improve your site’s search engine optimization (SEO). 

3. Provide upselling and cross-selling opportunities

Product recommendations can form a crucial part of your ecommerce merchandising strategy. After a customer adds a product to their cart, promote complementary products through cross-selling or higher-value items through upselling based on their selection.

Upsells and cross-sells are also used when merchandising in brick-and-mortar stores. For upsells, traditional retailers tend to have sales associates recommending more expensive products with added value compared to what customers are interested in. 

While for cross-sells, these stores will strategically display products to encourage customers to consider additional items that go well with what customers have set out to buy. For example, placing complementary items near the checkout counter. 

Upselling and cross-selling are effective ecommerce merchandising strategies because the recommended products provide additional value to the customers. 

• Upsells – customers will get a better product than they initially wanted. For instance, a mobile phone with more storage or memory allows them to store more content. 
• Cross-sells – customers will get an additional product that compliments the one they’ve set out to buy. For example, a phone screen protector or case that will protect the phone from damage.

Customers adding these to their purchases increase your store’s AOV. 

By default, WooCommerce has a related products section where you can display your cross-sells and upsells. But these lack the real power of ecommerce merchandising without being present at every stage of the customer’s journey.

Thankfully, you can unlock the full potential of cross-selling using Iconic Sales Booster for WooCommerce.  

Maximize cross-sells with Iconic Sales Booster for WooCommerce

Iconic Sales Booster is a WooCommerce cross-sells plugin that boosts sales by cross-selling at different stages of your customers’ ecommerce journey. This includes: 

On the product page

You can show customers other products that are frequently bought together with the one they’re originally interested in. Sales Booster allows you to display this near the ‘Add to Cart’ button. Customers can easily add them to their orders by simply checking a box. To make the cross-sells appealing, you can add generous discounts to them. 

Once a customer clicks ‘Add to Cart’

Here, you’ll be able to recommend what other customers also bought in a popup. Sales Booster allows you to make each recommendation unique by customizing it per product. 

This is a form of social proof marketing where customers wouldn’t want to miss out on what other customers bought. As a result, they will likely add it to their purchase. Sales Booster ensures a smooth experience by enabling customers to add this cross-sell to their purchase directly from the popup. 

On the checkout page

Add an order bump at checkout which customers can add to their orders without returning to the product or shop pages. This uninterrupted experience increases the likelihood of a sale. 

You can make this offer irresistible by giving it a generous discount to tempt customers into an impulse purchase. Like the others, this offer can be based on what customers already have in their carts. 

After checkout

Sales Booster allows you to utilize a high-converting technique of displaying heavily discounted one-time offers in a popup after a customer has completed the checkout. Customers can add these offers directly to their purchase in just one click without re-entering their billing details. 

This feature works with any payment gateway to provide convenience to the customer. 

For each of these, Iconic Sales Booster allows you to change the sales text, customize its position and style to make the offer more appealing to customers. This also ensures that the popups fit seamlessly with the rest of your store. 

This plugin also provides useful customer data on conversion rates. You can use this data to determine which cross-sell techniques are working for you and focus your efforts on them. 

With these cross-selling techniques, discounts, and customization options, Iconic Sales Booster for WooCommerce helps you to build an effective ecommerce merchandising strategy rooted in cross-sells. 

4. Bundle Products Together

Bundling products refers to offering multiple products as a package deal and selling them as a single unit. It’s a way to sell related products to offer customers added value and convenience.

Bundled products usually have discounts, so customers would spend less buying them than buying the items in the bundle individually. 

As an ecommerce merchandising strategy, bundled products have the following benefits. 

Increases your AOV

Bundled products allow you to get more revenue per transaction. This is a better alternative to making multiple transactions to get the same amount, as each transaction has its own costs, for instance, packaging. 

Product bundles help you to move inventory faster

With product bundles, you’ll be able to move more product units per sale which boosts your sales.

📈 A Harvard Business study revealed that Nintendo sells 100,000 more units per campaign as a result of bundling their Nintendo Switch console with popular games.

This shows how effective product bundles can be. 

Product cross-promotion

Product bundling exposes customers to other products you offer on your ecommerce site. This can give popularity to specific products that are often overlooked and drive their sales.

In the Nintendo Switch example, this product bundle contains the gaming console, popular games, and a Micro SD card. As an individual product, the Micro SD card might often be overlooked. But bundling it with the console and popular games gives it more visibility. 

Bundled products work so well because they provide more value to the customer. They help customers to save on the cost, time, and effort of buying these products individually. 

Bundled products can be part of an effective ecommerce merchandising strategy, and if you want to add them to your WooCommerce store, you can do it with the help of WooCommerce Bundled Products. 

Create irresistible product bundles with WooCommerce Bundled Products

The WooCommerce Bundled Products plugin allows you to bundle products on a single product page. You can create different types of simple and complex product bundles to create lookbooks, hampers, and so on. Customers can add the whole bundle to their shopping carts in just one click. 

With this plugin, you can add any product to your product bundle, including:

• Simple products.
• Variable products.
• Virtual/downloadable products.

Customers can get specific with variable products and select their preferred attributes to cater to their preferences. 

WooCommerce Bundled Products enables you to create mixed product bundles where customers have the option to add each individual product to their cart. This is especially important for cross-promoting individual products. 

Discounts are an important selling point for product bundles. You can include them when the products are bought as a unit. WooCommerce Bundled Products also allows you to display a combined price, price range, or custom pricing for your product bundles. To help to seal the deal for you, customers will see how much they’ll save on the ‘Add to Cart’ button. 

When customers buy these bundles, you’ll increase your sales, AOV, and profitability. 

5. Showcase more on the category/shop page

Although the product page is our primary focus for ecommerce merchandising, you shouldn’t ignore other areas of your shop. One of the areas that you should pay attention to is the shop and category pages. 

These pages enable customers to browse your store and discover products they might need. But they can do so much more than that when you improve them. 

You can do this by showcasing more of your product from different angles to give customers the information they need to make a purchase decision without leaving the product page. 

This technique works well for physical retail stores that utilize comprehensive and detailed window displays with most of the information a customer will need to decide to buy.

For instance, a clothing store that sells suits will dress up a mannequin in the full three-piece suit and display information on the size, material, and price. 

Customers walking on the street can make a buying decision before entering the store. 

In ecommerce merchandising, you can achieve this by adding multiple images showing the different viewpoints of your products on the shop/category page. Then when a customer hovers over the product, they’ll view a slideshow of the images and see the product from different angles. This can help them to make a buying decision quickly without leaving the shop/category page. 

To add this feature to your WooCommerce store, you’ll need Image Swap for WooCommerce. 

Add image swap effects on the shop/category page using Image Swap for WooCommerce

Image Swap for WooCommerce enables you to showcase more of your product on the shop/category page to influence faster buying decisions from your customers. This can help customers to buy your products quickly with a few clicks. 

It provides you with 9 different transition effects, such as fade, slide, thumbnails, and more, which you can choose and apply. The best part is that each effect is highly customizable, and you can edit them to suit your preference. 

You can add these effects to any product listing without worrying about compatibility issues, as Image Swap works well with any WordPress theme and page builder like Elementor.

With these effects, you can provide your customers with an enriched shopping experience and also allow them to make buying decisions without leaving the shop or category pages. 

Prioritize ecommerce merchandising in your ecommerce store today

Ecommerce merchandising is crucial to the success of your online store. By implementing strategic merchandising techniques, you can create a user-friendly and engaging shopping experience for your customers. These will drive customer engagement and conversions and ultimately increase your revenue.  

Get ready to transform your ecommerce business with effective merchandising techniques using the plugins mentioned in this guide:

• WooThumbs for WooCommerce – create captivating, customizable product galleries that get customers excited about your products. 
• Iconic Sales Booster for WooCommerce – cross-sell from the product page all the way to post-checkout with irresistible offers. 
• WooCommerce Bundled Products – sell product bundles as single units to drive sales and increase your AOV. 
• Image Swap for WooCommerce – add image swap effects on the shop/category pages to showcase more of your products. 

You can get these plugins one after the other above, or join our All Access Club and get them and many more in a single purchase.