The 4 Key Components of Ecommerce Merchandising (2024)

In ecommerce, your website and your digital content are your shop windows.

With a thoughtful ecommerce merchandising strategy in place, online stores can grab the attention of shoppers and leave a lasting impression—just as if that person had walked by a beautifully curated window display.

Ahead, you’ll learn how to create an ecommerce merchandising strategy that turns more browsers into buyers, with tips and examples from the best brands.

What is ecommerce merchandising?

Ecommerce merchandising is a strategic approach to present and promote products on an online store to drive sales. It involves product categorization, visual display, personalized recommendations, and promotional tactics. The goal is to enhance the shopping experience, influence purchasing decisions, and increase overall customer satisfaction.

The above, from athleisure brand Outdoor Voices, is a good example of ecommerce merchandising in action. The photos for each specific product are clear—showing how the cloth falls and fits on the body—and each product has a name, a brief description, and the different colorways.

The design of the page is clean, with plenty of white space, making the products stand out and the site’s navigation and search bar prominent and easy to find. Each of these elements is a part of the brand’s overall ecommerce merchandising strategy.

4 components of an ecommerce merchandising strategy

An effective merchandising strategy makes it easy for customers to find the specific products they’re looking for. To do so, ecommerce sites should incorporate four key elements: brand identity, layout, product grouping, and recommendations.

1. Brand identity

A good merchandising strategy will consider your ecommerce site’s brand identity—that is, the visual representation of your brand.

Brand identity includes elements like your logo, your style, and your color palette. Ideally, these elements come together to create a unique experience—one that your customers can easily associate with your brand—without distracting from the products you offer.

This brand identity should remain consistent so that your ecommerce site is recognizable and familiar to repeat customers—they know what they’re getting when they come to your site, both in terms of experience and in terms of product.

Allbirds is a great example of this. The brand positions itself as environmentally conscious, with products made from merino wool and eucalyptus tree fiber. The imagery on its website reflects this commitment, using natural backdrops to present products and connect with customers who share similar ideals.

2. UX/UI design

User experience (UX) and user interface (UI) describe two different facets of your ecommerce site’s design. UX design is the overall experience of a person visiting your online store. UI design, meanwhile, is the aesthetic, look, and feel of your online store.

Together, these two elements make up the visual organization and identity of your homepages, landing pages, and product pages, and should be executed in an intuitive, user-friendly way.

Gymshark’s website is a great example of clean UI and simple UX. Right from the homepage, you can easily search for clothes based on your gender, browse new releases, or find specific products via the search bar.

Considering UX/UI design in the context of ecommerce merchandising includes factors such as:

Attention-grabbing imagery: To make sure customers stay on your ecommerce site, include images and other media that encourage them to explore your products and offers.
An effective and easy-to-use search bar: A big part of ecommerce merchandising is helping customers find what they want. That means including a search bar that is easy to find and offers predictive search results.
Intuitive navigation: Some online shoppers aren’t sure what they want when they come to your online store. For these customers, your goal is to help them browse and find something that appeals to them. In practice, this means making your site’s navigation as intuitive as possible and putting product and category pages where your customers expect to find them.

3. Curation

Online merchandising also includes curation, the practice of grouping specific products with common attributes.

You can curate products on your online store by grouping products with similar attributes—i.e., material, collection, or function—so that customers feel inspired when they browse and empowered to make a decision that aligns with their needs.

As an example, think about a category page for an ecommerce site that sells home furniture. There likely will be a category page for furniture, and a subcategory page for living room furniture, where couches, chairs, and more are grouped, similar to how Dazzling Spaces groups its collections.

Curation would take this a step further, for example, by grouping all midcentury modern furniture together, in order to offer your customer a bit of a creative spark. Curation can also mean linking together trending products and offers. Use a prominent space on your landing page to recommend your highest-rated products plus any current discounts, sales, or promos (like free shipping).

4. Personalized recommendations

Lastly, a good merchandising strategy will utilize personalized product recommendations, personalizing the products that are recommended to specific customers based on their unique search and purchase history.

Personalized product recommendations are generated by an algorithm, using one or many of an online shopper’s data points: browsing or purchase history, location, or even information they’ve included in their personal profile.

In practice, online shoppers could see these product recommendations on a product page where they are currently browsing, in a pop-up as they navigate to checkout, or even in an email reminding them to return to your site after they’ve abandoned their cart.

Pura Vida, for example, places personalized recommendations right on its homepage for browsers to explore. This can influence customers’ purchasing decisions and increase average order value and conversion rates.

How is ecommerce merchandising different from traditional visual merchandising?

Both ecommerce merchandising and traditional visual merchandising are all about how products are displayed to customers to influence their purchasing decisions. But given that one happens online and one happens in real life, they rely on different strategies.

Visual merchandising

In person, shoppers rely on sensory information—what they can see, touch, hear, and even smell. (Remember that distinct fragrance wafting out of Abercrombie & Fitch stores?)

Brick-and-mortar merchandisers bring their brand to life inside a store’s four walls. Customers can be inspired by beautiful visual displays and have a tactile experience with the products. Most importantly, shoppers can rely on the experience of store employees.

Visual merchandising uses some of the same elements as online merchandising to tailor the way products are presented. Establishing a brand identity helps traditional retailers become more recognizable to shoppers. And product groupings help shoppers navigate a brick-and-mortar store, whether they’ve been there before or not. But key elements like personalization via data-based product recommendations just aren’t possible with physical stores.

Ecommerce merchandising

Ecommerce merchandising, by contrast, hinges on personalization: McKinsey found that more than 70% of consumers expect personalization and are frustrated when companies don’t deliver it. Online retailers that do offer personalization earn 40% more revenue than those activities than competitors.

Thanks to the amount of customer data available to ecommerce stores, you can track customer movements around your website and leverage those insights to create a shopping experience that is customized to individual shoppers.

3 strategies for effective ecommerce merchandising

Building an effective ecommerce merchandising strategy isn’t as simple as replicating what shoppers experience in-store. Instead, ecommerce sites need to make the most of their medium with the following tools:

1. Mobile optimization

One-third of internet users in the US buy something online with their mobile phones every week. So having a mobile-optimized online store—or better yet, a dedicated ecommerce app—is crucial.

Make good use of your category pages to ensure that your site is well organized and easy to navigate. Keep an eye on your site speed, too: Even a one-second site speed improvement can increase mobile conversions.

2. Optimize search results with autocomplete

Autocomplete search—sometimes called predictive search—automatically suggests a relevant recommendation to online shoppers as they’re typing in the search box. Meaning if you started to type in “toner” at a site like Sephora, the search results would autocomplete the word, suggest additional terms like “toners” and “toner spray,” and even list some of the most popular toners in stock.

With the right predictive search tool in place, ecommerce sites can guide online shoppers, offer product recommendations, and even correct misspellings and omitted characters. This translates into boosted conversion rates and higher customer satisfaction.

3. Make it personal

As noted above, personalization plays a significant role in ecommerce merchandising. Use product recommendations to help guide online shoppers on their customer journey. Utilize an algorithm that groups similar products. That way, if shoppers are interested in a specific piece of clothing, you can automatically suggest one or more complementary items. Or utilize retargeting, a paid ad strategy that lets you show ads on different platforms and sites to people who have visited your website.

Create a better customer experience with merchandising

At its core, ecommerce merchandising makes shopping online easy for customers. And by making good use of shoppers’ data with personalized product recommendations, it can encourage online shoppers to keep coming back, too.

A well-defined merchandising strategy enables online stores to guide shoppers through their customer journey, improve marketing campaigns, boost sales, and establish a loyal customer base. All in all, ecommerce merchandising is an essential consideration for any ecommerce site.

Ecommerce merchandising FAQ

What does an ecommerce merchandiser do?

Merchandisers make sure your products look good online so you sell more products. To make sure customers have a convenient and visually appealing online shopping experience, they analyze market trends, keep an eye on inventory levels, and help with product positioning in your ecommerce store.

What is the salary of ecommerce merchandiser?

Ecommerce merchandiser salaries vary depending on factors like location, experience, and company size. Generally, they can earn from $50,000 for entry-level jobs to $90,000 for more experienced roles.

What is the role of ecommerce merchandising operations?

As part of ecommerce merchandising operations, you’re responsible for overseeing everything from product selection and pricing to visual presentation and inventory management. The goal is to guarantee that the company’s online store is appealing, user-friendly, and aligned with its sales and marketing strategy.

What is the difference between ecommerce merchandising and retail merchandising?

A major difference between ecommerce and retail merchandising is the platform each is based on. A retail merchandising strategy focuses on the physical store, including product placement, in-store displays, and customer interaction. Meanwhile, ecommerce merchandising deals with the digital realm, optimizing online product displays and digital marketing strategies.