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Merchandizing your websites products & categories

Have you ever walked into a big box retailer such as Kohl’s, Bass Pro Shop, Sears, Autozone etc? What is the first thing you notice? Key products conspicuously displayed to catch your eye. Maybe it is close-out items the store wishes to liquidate or perhaps it is the newest seasonal garb or even high volume items. These stores all do this for the simple fact that it helps move those products. The same is true with your website. How, what and when you display items on your home page and subsequent pages will greatly impact your sites conversion rates. If you make no effort to set things up to catch the eye of your target audience you will lose visitors. You should be considering your categories. Arrange them so they make sense to your target customers. Put yourself in their shoes and ask yourself how you would like to search for items. Make it as simple and intuitive as possible. The same goes for arranging and showcasing Featured or Special products on your home page. I am a strong believer that you should only show off products that are readily available or actually in stock. If a customer starts clicking on 3 or 4 products in your “Specials” section only to find that they are all out of stock you will lose them quickly. So assuming your showcased products and categories are inline and in stock take the time to optimize each category page and each of your actual product pages. Another thing to help merchandize is to create graphically enticing banners for say specific brands to catch people’s eyes. Link that banner to those products pages. Do not simply put a picture on your site and have it not go anywhere. Add to the art work “click here or buy know”. Make it abundantly clear to the consumer what they are supposed to do and what will happen when they click. So that’s the basics of merchandizing now get busy or give us a call to help. 1-800-699-0820 ext 1.

Brick and Mortar Tips for Online Stores: Part 1

In this series, we will be examining the ways in which retail stores can help us to better optimize online stores. For those of you who already have a brick and mortar, these tips might seem familiar and will be easily implemented. Those who don’t have a storefront might have some trouble with a few concepts, but will ultimately see the value in applying these processes to online marketplaces.

First, let’s talk about window space in retail. When you are at a shopping center or walking down a main street, looking at the shops, the first thing that you’re going to notice is the shop’s windows. These windows stand as a snippet of what the store has to offer. The color stories, the placement, the signage – all of these things are designed to peak your curiosity and get you to come inside. Some stores might even place signage out on the sidewalk or have a greeter, handing out coupons or fliers outside the front door.

In correlation to your web store, the front shop windows are your homepage or landing page. This is the first thing that a customer sees of your store and you have less than 10 seconds to impress them and get them to stay on your page.

Thinking of a retail space, shops are consistently redoing their windows to keep current and interesting. If you passed a store several times and the windows were the same, you probably wouldn’t go in because there wouldn’t be anything new or noteworthy. The same is true of your front/landing page. These need to be changed constantly to keep customers returning.

To recap, treat your landing page like storefront windows – change it up, keep it current and make it interesting to draw in traffic and keep customers coming back for more.