As an online merchant, increasing your online sales is necessary for generating more revenue and possibly a higher profit. Fortunately, the eCommerce industry is growing.
Many customers who were forced to try out online shopping due to the COVID-19 stay-at-home orders are becoming returning customers. However, rivalry is heating up in the industry.
Today, more companies are beginning to realize the importance of an online store to their competitive strategy, hence the proliferation of eCommerce sites.
To stand out, you need to implement eCommerce merchandising and to improve your online business visibility, you need to deploy search engine (SEO) optimization strategies.
If you are an e-commerce entrepreneur running either a big or small enterprise this article will provide you with the strategies to leverage e-commerce merchandising and SEO to increase your online sales and soar above competitors.
What is eCommerce merchandising?
E-commerce merchandising is an art. It encompasses the strategy employed by a seller to display goods in their online store such that it encourages customers to buy more.
Even though online store offers the convenience of purchasing anything with few clicks on the phone and from the comfort of the home, people still prefer the brick-and-mortar experience.
Here, they can easily physically inspect what they want to purchase and also walk around the store to search for other items they might need.
This means a customer who visits a physical store to buy one thing may end up buying more due to the strategic arrangements of the products.
Such experience and results are some of the things online merchants that deploy Fast Simons ecommerce merchandising intend to achieve.
How to leverage eCommerce merchandising to boost online sales
eCommerce merchandising goes beyond just listing products on your online store. It involves strategically presenting and promoting them to drive sales.
Here is how it can be leveraged to improve sales:
Personal product recommendation
Online shopping is an experience. Unlike your physical store where most buyers only visit when they are ready to make a purchase and can also easily pick other items they are interested in, the case is different for eCommerce.
Personal product recommendation is the use of a customer’s browsing behavior such as products they are clicked on or previously purchased, and items they currently have in their cart to recommend other products they might be interested in buying.
The recommended product might be complementary products for the item they are interested in such as recommending phone covers for a customer who is interested in purchasing a phone.
Use of high-quality product image
Online shoppers cannot physically inspect what they are about to purchase, therefore, the item needs to be presented in a way that they will be able to make a good choice among the available options.
This includes uploading a high-quality product image, adding a detailed description, and grouping them accordingly.
Customer reviews and rating
Some online shoppers are skeptical about patronizing an online merchant. You cannot blame them considering the various media reports of cyber fraud and fear of not getting the exact thing they paid for.
One of the ways to show you are indeed genuine and would deliver what they ordered, is by publishing customers’ reviews and ratings.
According to a 2021 report by PowerReviews, over 99.9% of customers read reviews when they shop online.
Limited-time offers and discounts
Customers are always looking for ways to save on their purchases. 9 in 10 online shoppers think they can find better deals online than in-store.
Offering discounts and limited-time offers can move many customers from the consideration stage to purchase.
What is SEO?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a set of strategies targeted at improving your website visibility on search engines like Google, Yahoo, Microsoft Bing, and others.
Internet users across the world rely on search engines for quick information conducting three to four searches daily.
A survey conducted by Google reports that 49 percent of shoppers use the search engine to discover new products.
eCommerce SEO includes improving your website’s structure, making it mobile-friendly, and also optimizing its content so that its pages can be discovered on search engines by people searching for terms related to the products or services you offer.
How to leverage SEO to boost online sales
SEO can be a powerful tool for boosting online sales. It is also cost-effective and its effect on your sales performance will last longer than paid promotion.
Content optimization
Search engine algorithms are designed to crawl the web to locate web content most relevant to a search query.
To land among the top-ranking sites in search engine results, optimize your eCommerce site content, title tags, and meta descriptions, and also add alternate text to images.
Creating high-quality content that answers search engine users’ questions can improve the authority of your site and boost your brand reputation.
Technical SEO
Make your online store appealing to users. The loading speed should be fast and the user interface should be mobile-friendly as most internet users will be accessing your site using their smartphones.
Local SEO
If you have a physical store or operate in a specific geographic area, it is recommended that you optimize your website for local searches.
This will boost your search appearance whenever people in your area are interested in what you offer.
Combo strategy: eCommerce merchandising and SEO
eCommerce merchandising and SEO are two sides of the same coin when it comes to increasing your online sales.
Deploying this combo strategy will help you attract the right customers and easily convert them into buyers.
It can also help you improve the rate of multiple purchases by individual customers. SEO can help you analyze customers’ browsing behavior and search intent to understand the kind of products or services that interest them.
Merchandising on the other hand can be leveraged to recommend relevant products and discounted offers based on the customer’s search queries and interests.
