To better understand the operation of merchandising search and category pages, let us consider the case of a brick-and-mortar store that seeks to quickly sell off the inventory. They are likely to discount the products and make them more visible to the visitors.
This process is known as merchandising in the retail industry and merchandising is everywhere around us in the form of vividly displayed retail items.
Merchandising is equally important in the online space
When online malls announce sales, it is associated with refreshed graphics and carousels, besides bigger CTAs. However, the searchability of the specific products that a consumer seeks to find and buy is equally important.
This is where Search Merchandising steps in!
A present-day consumer seeks a natural shopping experience and when your online mall is intuitive, it delivers an edge for your business. Beyond search merchandising, well-defined and optimized category pages with proper information structure will make your products more visible and display even more relevant products to get you more sales. At times, you might be required to make a tradeoff between SEO and UX
Search merchandising has to be such that it does not just share relevant results. Instead, the results should display more buyable products.
Buyable products could be of different types. A product that gives you an 80% margin is more buyable than one that delivers a 40% margin.
Consumer loyalty is earned only when the consumer experience is unbeatable. Irrelevant results do not aid with the matter. It becomes easy to see that search merchandising is in the merchants’ and buyers’ best interest.
Merchants often choose to display seasonal products or trending products via the means of search merchandising. Relevance has to be the most important factor to be kept in mind.
The approach towards search merchandising varies from one online merchant to the other. It frequently depends, on their business plan, their perception of the market, and the inventory in stock.
The best way to go about search merchandising is to work in collaboration with your site search provider. By the criteria that you define, search results can be optimized.
This is ongoing work that needs to be optimized based on analytics findings and the feedback that your visitors share.
Category pages to have on your website
Finalizing the category pages to have on your website needs to be done before you structure and optimize the pages on your online mall. This vastly depends on the niche of business that you are into and how complex is it to segregate the products sold at your webshop.
You may alternately choose to use the tools available online to figure out what your customers search for online. This will help define the category pages. Product lines that are your core focus areas are also one of the most important factors in this regard.
Sound keyword research will help you define category pages. You may want to pay heed to language variation if you cater to multiple markets.
Heed should also be paid to what consumers search for on your website. If red truffle cakes are in high demand, you may choose to make a new, dedicated category or sub-category.
