Merchandising is the practice of displaying and showcasing your goods in a way which is appealing to your audience and that manages stock levels effectively.
It is a powerful lever that eCommerce businesses can use to their advantage to increase conversion rates and the surge of online shopping expected over Black Friday weekend needs to be matched with an increase in your product merchandising activity.
Ask your team the following 7 merchandising questions to make your Black Friday campaign a success:
1) What are the profit margins on your Black Friday deals?
So you’ve created compelling Black Friday deals and a killer digital marketing strategy to drive existing and new customers to your site, and these customers buy, buy, buy.
But you need to know that the deals are profitable otherwise all the hard-work from your team is going into a loss-leading campaign.
Ask the merchandisers what the profit margins are on the deals early in the planning phase so you can build a great Black Friday campaign that not only drives sales but generates a healthy profit for your business.
2) Are you clearly promoting the Black Friday deals on your landing pages?
Consumers’ minds are wild with excitement at the thought of all of the great offers so immediately capturing their attention is key to success, follow these simple rules to increase your landing page conversion rates:
- Build Black Friday specific landing pages with all the offers immediately visible
- Add clear calls to action to your Black Friday deals on the homepage
- Make the key call to actions visible above the fold across your top devices
During the Black Friday weekend check-in with your analytics and monitor engagement on the page to ensure users are finding your deals as you want.
3) Are you adding Black Friday deals into your navigation?
Your site’s navigation is a powerful tool for the user to easily browse the contents of your store.
It’s likely your customers are looking for Black Friday deals and so adding links to your Black Friday collection pages and deals in your navigation will help to guide users to them quickly and easily.
4) Are you putting our best deals to the top of the product category pages?
Products displayed at the top of your collection pages will nearly always perform better in revenue and units than those tucked away at the bottom of the page and so if you want your Black Friday deals to succeed, position them at the top.
5) How are you managing stock levels across the Black Friday weekend?
Congratulations, you’ve successfully driven the consumer through to your product page and they’re ready to buy!
But wait; the deal has gone out of stock.
Avoid this situation by firstly matching expected sales volumes to actual stock levels to highlight products or deals at risk of going out of stock. Then during the Black Friday weekend, ensure you either have automated active merchandising enabled or there is somebody monitoring stock levels across the site to remove any deals that go out of stock.
Insight; Curry’s have released their traffic levels from previous Black Friday weekends to show the most and least popular times, to allow customers to beat the traffic and grab a bargain! This is also a great way to try and stagger traffic to your site.
6) Have you set up search filters for Black Friday deals?
If your site uses filters on your collection and search results page ensure you add your Black Friday deals as a separate selection so users can quickly narrow down to all your fantastic offers.
7) What results are shown when searching “Black Friday” on your site and in the SERPs?
When a user’s preference is to search “Black Friday deals” on your site you want highly relevant results to be shown or a relevant search redirect to be in place to land them directly on the category page. Check for synonyms and variations that customers may search for on your site.
Additionally, be mindful of what is appearing in the SERPs (search engine results pages) too. If you have keyword tracking tools then it would be worthwhile tracking brand + black friday deals and other variants to review what pages you have ranking. If you don’t have keyword tracking tools then it would be worthwhile manually checking the search results. It may be that an old Black Friday page or deal is ranking that you forgot about!
