Merchandising is the complicated art and science of presenting products in a way that makes people want to buy them. Matterform provides the research-based tools to help take the guesswork out of ecommerce sales and keep your buyers on the same page.
We recently crunched some numbers from the website of one of our major clients and identified challenges unique to a large product line. If you sell hundreds or thousands of products, make sure your online shop isn’t making any of these three merchandising mistakes.
Don’t make customers click to a detail page
When given the option, two-thirds of customers will make purchases from a list page. A buyer’s very first view of a product has to feature a prominent “Buy” button, plus enough information to enable a decision. If your buyer has to click from a list page to a detail page before they can buy, you run the risk of losing them.
Don’t skimp on the search tool
Our research shows that 26 percent of buy clicks come directly from the search results page. Don’t try to get by with a third-party search solution; your large product line needs a custom search tool tailored to your site. And the search results page, like every other list page, needs to offer a buy button and relevant purchasing information.
Don’t fall victim to the Next-Page Fadeout
If you have long lists of products, you probably break them up across multiple pages. You give customers a “Next 20 products” button, but they’re not clicking it. Here’s a scary metric: Once a product falls off the first page in a list, it becomes 10 times less likely to be purchased. The chart below comes from one of our clients’ websites and shows a dramatic drop in clicks after page one.
