Visual merchandising is one of the most important elements of your eCommerce store. It offers the opportunity to create an engaged brand community, as well as fostering brand loyalty. When people enter your site, what they see will set up the rest of their experience. So keeping your visual merchandising current is very important. Let’s take a look at why.
What Is Visual Merchandising
Visual merchandising is a strategy that uses visual engagement to encourage shoppers to browse and buy products. This can be achieved through different methods:
- Immersive shopping experiences
- Product collections
- Recommendations
- Promo tiles
- Design and layout
- High quality images or videos
Ecommerce Visual Merchandising
Visual merchandising in a brick-and-mortar store is commonly known. A shop window will give a clear idea of a brand image, and catch the shoppers attention. Your eCommerce store has to provide the same effect. The way your store is arranged should convey the brand image and display the products in a favorable light. This also needs to happen fast, as on average it takes less than 15 seconds to impress customer before they click away.
Why Is It So Important?
Shoppers want to feel seen and understood throughout their visual shopping journey. They also want to be inspired and excited by what they see.If your displays or collections are old, then shoppers may experience “display fatigue” which means they would lose interest in your products and you would lose sales.
Staying Current
Making sure your visual merchandising is up to date and current is very important. There are different reasons to edit your merchandising displays that we will take a look at now.
New Trends
Fashion trends and consumer tastes are constantly changing. Making sure that your displays are on trend is important in ensuring customer satisfaction. If a certain product is in demand, this should be easily findable on your site.
Sales Promotions
Another reason that visual displays should be altered is due to sales promotions. For example, if your business has a sale on a certain line of products, you could display this more prominently. When the sales change, the displays need to change accordingly.
Automations Based On Analytics
Using analytics to understand what your customers are looking for and buying is a great way of making sure that you are offering visual displays that match customers needs. Analytics can also show you which displays create the most sales or engagement. Understanding customers’ needs based on the data can help you create more relevant recommendations moving forward.
Seasonal Products
The products offered on your visual displays should change depending on seasons and holidays. Once it’s beach season, summer products should be out. When it’s winter, warmer items will be featured. If this isn’t achieved, you will give your shoppers a bad impression of the professionality of your brand.
Merchandising Rules
Throughout the seasons, there may be certain merchandising rules that your brand follows. These can be based on business metrics like margins and inventory. Or they can be aesthetically coordinated rules. These can be established by your business, and can be updated either manually or automatically.
Brand Objectives
Since your eCommerce store is as close to a brick-and-mortar store as possible, you want to convey the tone of your brand through what shoppers see. Tone of voice, high quality updated images, current color scheme are all important to stay on top of. If your shoppers see an outdated version of your brand, it will reduce their user experience.
Using A Visual Editor
Being able to make changes according to these factors is very important. Most eCommerce tools require engineering to make changes on eCommerce displays. Using a visual editor is a great way to remain flexible with your online merchandising.