5 Tips for E-Commerce Merchandising to Outshine Your Competitors

Ali Shah - Writer for Tolstoy
By Ali Shah
Nevena Radulović - Tolstoy Editor
Edited by Nevena Radulović

Published June 20, 2023.

Two e-commerce business women in front of a laptop with boxes of items next to it

Standing out from the crowd is critical for the success of your online business in today's highly competitive e-commerce market. With so many alternatives accessible to customers in just a few clicks, you need good e-commerce merchandising tactics to draw attention to your store.

Developing a solid e-merchandising strategy can help you attract more consumers and increase your business' income in the long run.

Making your site search more effective is critical for enhancing the user experience in your store, increasing the exposure of your relevant items, and ultimately boosting sales. When optimizing site search for your e-commerce business, consider the following:

  • Make the search bar more prominent
  • Implement auto-suggest and autocomplete capabilities
  • Provide filters and refinements
  • Deliver only relevant search results
  • Analyze search data

Implementing these recommended practices can improve the efficacy of your site search, allowing you to distinguish yourself from your rivals and achieve more e-commerce success.

2. Rely on Personalization

Personalization is a highly effective e-commerce merchandising technique because it can make potential buyers feel cherished and more involved with your brand. However, you first need to understand your target audience's demographics, preferences, and behaviors to properly integrate personalization.

Try using cookies to track individual consumer interactions and build personalized experiences based on your customers' browsing and purchase history. You can use this data to send personalized emails with tailored offers and make customized product recommendations. This level of personalization can help you improve consumer experience, establish brand loyalty, and ultimately outperform your competition in the e-commerce industry.

» Boost customer trust and sales with these e-commerce personalization tips

3. Create an Immersive Experience

Offering an immersive experience to potential buyers can help your business leave a lasting impression on them, effectively distinguishing your business from others. E-commerce visual merchandising is an effective method to offer your customers an engaging experience, and the use of interactive videos is an excellent example.

Interactive videos let your customers actively participate by clicking on various sections of the video, following visual cues, examining product features, answering polls through responsive buttons, and more.

Creating engaging product videos can help keep your customers' attention and make the purchasing experience more enjoyable than that of your competitors, giving you a competitive edge in the e-commerce arena.

» Here's how interactive videos can help increase sales

4. Leverage Product Recommendations

Using different tactics to deliver relevant product suggestions can help you outperform your competition by making potential consumers feel that your business has more to offer. For example, you can send your customers recommendation emails with personalized product ideas, unique bargains, or collections curated to their preferences.

Upselling and cross-selling are effective methods for recommending higher-priced or complementary items based on consumer preferences and purchase history.

To achieve the best results with product recommendations, try sticking to these practices:

  • Analyze customer data to understand their needs
  • Use machine learning algorithms to get accurate recommendations
  • Display the best products according to your customer's preferences
  • Ensure the suggestions are highly relevant to the customer's browsing context

5. Simplify the Shopping Process

Making the purchasing process in your store easy to navigate is critical for creating a great consumer experience that lets your business stand out from the competition. You can boost client satisfaction and loyalty by making the transition from browsing to purchasing as smooth as possible.

An excellent technique to facilitate the purchasing experience is using shoppable videos, which let your customers immediately engage with the items they see and make purchases while viewing the content. This eliminates the need to browse multiple pages or search for specific items, streamlining the shopping process as a whole.

You can combine shoppable video technology with optimizing your website's user design, developing a user-friendly checkout procedure, and providing different payment choices to create a completely hassle-free buying journey for your visitors.

» Find out how shoppable videos can improve customer experience

Triumph Over Competitors With E-Commerce Merchandising

Well-planned e-commerce merchandising strategies can significantly influence the success of your e-commerce business by making your brand more memorable, boosting customer engagement, and driving sales.

Adopting effective personalization, optimizing site search, providing immersive experiences, using product suggestions, and streamlining the purchase process can help your e-commerce store stand out from the crowd, giving your potential customers an overall positive impression.