4 Tips to Perfect Your BFCM Merchandising Strategy

Are you ready to turn the busiest shopping days of the year into the most profitable ones for your business?

As Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM) approach, retailers must refine their merchandising strategies to maximize online store performance. Effective merchandising goes beyond simply showcasing products; it involves implementing strategic rules that guide how items are displayed and categorized. By utilizing techniques such as dynamic product tagging and personalized recommendations, retailers can ensure that customers easily find what they are looking for, leading to increased engagement and conversions. Additionally, establishing clear merchandising rules can help prioritize featured products, create urgency through limited-time offers, and ensure a seamless shopping experience. Let's explore these tips to elevate your BFCM strategy and unlock your store's full potential this holiday season.

Tips for Setting BFCM Merchandising Strategies

Tip 1: Understand Your Audience

• Analyze Customer Data: Analyze past purchase data and customer behavior to identify trends and preferences. Use this information to create personalized recommendations that resonate with your audience, increasing the likelihood of conversions during BFCM.
• Segment Your Audience: Divide your customer base into distinct segments based on demographics, purchase history, and browsing behavior. Tailor your BFCM merchandising strategies to each segment, offering personalized deals and product recommendations that cater to their specific interests and needs.

Tip 2: Optimize Product Recommendations

Setting rules and conditions helps you optimize product recommendations. Conditions are triggers based on which a certain action will set off. You can set up Cart and Product conditions based on which selected action will be taken.

Cart conditions refer to the criteria that evaluate the contents of a customer's shopping cart.

Product conditions pertain to specific attributes or characteristics of individual products.

Recommendation Actions

• Frequently bought together: Product suggestions that are often bought together to fulfill a joint demand
• Complements: Complementary items purchased at the same time by a large number of previous customers
• Same product upsell: Similar products, cheaper or more expensive than the ones the shopper has bought
• Similar products: Carousel or list of products that have similar attributes to the primary product, like color, price, size, etc
• Bestsellers: The products from the store that have been sold the most
• New arrivals: The products that have just been added to the store for sale
• Manual selection: Manually choose the products from your catalog to be displayed as recommendations

Tip 3: Enhance User Experience

• Personalize the Shopping Journey: Ensure that the recommendations are personalized for each user. This can increase engagement and conversion rates.
• Utilize Visual Merchandising: Use appealing visuals and layouts for product displays. Eye-catching designs can draw customers' attention and encourage them to explore more.
• Incorporate Social Proof: Use customer reviews, ratings, and testimonials to build trust and encourage purchases. Display these elements prominently alongside product recommendations to reassure customers of the quality and popularity of the items.

Tip 4: A/B Testing

• Data-Driven Decisions: A/B testing provides empirical data that helps you make informed decisions about your merchandising strategy, reducing guesswork and assumptions.
• Improved Conversion Rates: By implementing A/B testing, you can experiment with various elements such as product placements, promotional banners, and pricing strategies to see what resonates best with your audience. Coupling this with strategic merchandising rules ensures that your product displays are not only visually appealing but also optimized for performance. For instance, you can test different product arrangements on your homepage or category pages, applying rules that prioritize bestsellers or items with higher margins.
• Enhanced Customer Experience: Understanding customer preferences through A/B testing allows you to tailor the shopping experience, making it more engaging and satisfying.
• Cost-Effectiveness: Instead of overhauling your entire strategy, A/B testing lets you make incremental changes, which can be more cost-effective and less risky.

Using Merchandising Strategy to Optimize Product Discovery

Understanding Product Discovery

Product discoverability refers to the ease with which customers can find and explore products on a website. In the context of merchandising, it is significant because it ensures that the products offered resonate with consumer demands, ultimately driving sales and enhancing customer satisfaction. By focusing on what customers truly want, businesses can avoid wasted resources on irrelevant products and instead prioritize those that meet market needs.

Optimize Product Presentation

Visual Merchandising

Creating visually appealing product displays is crucial for attracting customer attention. This involves using high-quality images, engaging product descriptions, recommendations, and strategic placement through merchandising rules on your website to enhance the shopping experience. Effective visual merchandising highlights the features and benefits of products, enhances visual appeal, and drives emotional connection.

Best Seller Promotion

Highlighting best-selling products prominently on your homepage and category pages is an effective strategy to boost conversions. Products that appear first in search results or category listings tend to attract more clicks and sales. By showcasing popular items, you leverage social proof, reassuring potential buyers that they are making a wise choice by purchasing items that others have already validated.

Dynamic Product Listings

Utilizing dynamic merchandising techniques allows product visibility adjustment based on various factors such as seasonal trends, promotions, and inventory levels. This ensures that the most relevant products are always showcased to customers, optimizing product visibility for conversions. By continuously updating product listings, businesses can respond to changing consumer interests and maximize the effectiveness of their merchandising strategies.

Tools for Refining Merchandising Strategy

Here are some key tools for refining your eCommerce merchandising strategy, with a focus on personalization SaaS for businesses:

AfterShip Personalization

This AI-powered product discovery platform hyper-personalizes the eCommerce shopping experience by providing tailored product recommendations, enhancing visual discovery, and boosting customer engagement. It leverages extensive transaction data to generate intent-rich tags, enabling personalized search and recommendations that can significantly increase average order value (AOV) and conversion rates.

Nosto

An AI-powered personalization platform that delivers tailored product recommendations, content, and experiences across channels to boost engagement and conversions.

Bloomreach

Provides AI-driven search, merchandising, and personalization capabilities to create relevant and engaging customer experiences.

OptiMonk

This personalization tool enables businesses to create targeted campaigns and customize website content based on user behavior. It offers features like personalized pop-ups, landing pages, and segmentation strategies to enhance user engagement and drive conversions.

DynamicYield

This platform specializes in delivering personalized experiences through real-time data analysis. It allows businesses to customize product recommendations, content, and promotions based on customer insights, helping to create a more tailored shopping experience.

Rebuy

Rebuy offers a customer-centric merchandising solution that leverages data to create intelligent shopping experiences. It helps increase average order value (AOV) and return on investment (ROI) through personalized product recommendations and upsell opportunities.