If as an e-commerce store owner you want to master the art of visual merchandising, both in-store and online, these here strategies are very handy.
Take Advantage Technology
Worldwide, technology has dramatically changed the way people do business. E-commerce business is a major beneficiary of the advantage of technology in business. The use of smartphones, SMS, POS, computers and business apps are now common place. POS in particular is a great business innovation using cloud-based smart software. This smart software technology provides anytime, anywhere visibility and control on a computer or mobile device with an integrated solution for in-store sales as well online purchases. It is quite convenient to use by both customers and e-commerce business owners and thus an important factor in the merchandising strategy of any business.
Still on technology, a Customer Relationship Manager (CRM) tool helps to collect relevant data about what, when, why and how people shop in-store or on your website. With the advantage of such data, the business owner can decide which products to feature, how products can be better grouped together, and specific product preferences of customers.
Know Your Customers, KYC
If you know your customers well enough, you can better market to them. KYC can therefore help to make the difference between being a successful visual merchandiser and a mediocre one. If you know your customers well enough, you’ll know their buying habits, average spending rates, goods they prefer and so on. That way, you can better design your sales solutions specially to meet these needs. Both in-store and online strategies that can help you to entice more shoppers to come visit your shop and make purchases largely depend on your visual merchandising dexterity. Because visual merchandising is most effective when it’s guided by customer data, you can effectively use a Customer Relationship Manager (CRM) tool to track your customers and collect the relevant data for products grouping purposes and so on.
Create Captivating Window Displays
Ever heard of “window shopping”? Here is where it derives its relevance. The first impression most shoppers have about your business is through window displays. What they see through the window can actually entice them to go into the shop to have a better look and possibly buy from the shop whether in-shop or online. Because store windows are the first things people see when they come across your business, it is smart marketing to create appealing and/or themed exterior design to attract customers through visuals. Such visual merchandising is about the most effective way to drive potential consumers into entering where can spend their money. Even when shopping online, the homepage of your business website is the first window into your brand that a consumer experiences. It helps with the first impression they make about your brand. This is why you cannot be too careful to ensure that your homepage does exactly that. If you position your homepage well enough, you can effectively use it to interest and excite visitors with compelling images promoting your products/services. However, unlike static window displays, you can use personalization visual merchandising techniques to deliver a more captivating point of entry for your website or app visitors.
Group Your Products
When business owners group products in visual merchandising, it is one great way to attract customer attention and spark their imagination with ideas, particularly how the displayed items can help solve their problems. Clothes sellers can for instance dress up mannequins in different attires to tell consumers how they fit. For home decors, you can set up furniture pieces as they will appear in homes and the visuals alone can attract people to buy them for their homes. Each group of products can also be arranged in the store as they complement one another and that helps visual merchandising. Same tactic can easily be applied to e-commerce stores, and if done correctly, can increase average order value.
Make it Easy for Customers to Find Products
The easier it is for customers to locate what they want in your store, the higher the chances that they’ll buy from you. There could be several shades of arrangements in your store depending on the types of products you are selling. Many business owners like to store their most valuable and trending products in a prominent location to enable customers find them easily. Some usually place high-value or recent items at the front of their stores to induce sales. This is a smart approach to visual merchandising because most customers are always drawn to buy what they see first. If you make it easy for such customers to see what they want to buy fairly quickly, it helps to increase your sales. Even for an e-commerce store, same principle is applicable to maximize engagement online. Smart e-commerce business owners always place high-value products on the homepage of their business websites and optimize navigation to maintain the visitors' attention. It also helps to inspire visitors’ action to click through and make purchases.
