For many Magento online store owners, the quest to amplify sales is an ongoing challenge. And though the internet is brimming with valuable insights, more than merely ideas is required. Hence, we’ve chosen to delve deeper into a real-life project we undertook and share our experiences with you.
However, before we unveil the secrets behind the scenes, let’s establish a common understanding by revisiting some fundamental principles.
Main Online Catalog Challenges
Numerous factors impact sales and eCommerce conversion, including website design and customer service quality. But in our opinion, backed by experience, the primary focus should be on the online catalog.
Unfortunately, many neglect visual merchandising techniques when working with their online catalogs. This oversight is unfortunate as it directly affects customers’ time on a website.
Let’s discuss the problem in more detail.
- Product Finding Speed. The speed at which customers can find products is crucial for online shopping. To ensure a seamless experience, create a well-structured catalog that allows customers to see what they need easily and quickly.
- Undecided Shoppers. Attract hesitant customers by offering unique and in-demand products. Utilize visual merchandising techniques, such as exciting product displays and eye-catching catalog arrangements, to tempt website visitors to purchase. By following these simple tips, a Magento store can significantly increase sales.
- Catalog Pages for Landing and Branding. There is always room for improvement regarding landing pages and product- or brand-specific sales. Unfortunately, these crucial sections often lack proper structure and organization despite being heavily promoted. The item display could be better, and the online catalog is filled randomly without logic. Unsurprisingly, sales on Magento or other platforms stay the same even after ad campaigns.
Now let’s move on to the most interesting, namely, our actual experience in improving the client’s catalog, which led to a steep increase in online store sales.
Our Experience With Increasing Sales for a Client’s Online Store
Our client is a US company that operates a fashion online store powered by Magento. They have struggled to compete with major players like Farfetch, which poorly affected their conversions and sales. Seeking a solution, they reached out to our team for assistance.
Our first move was an in-depth analysis of the client’s catalog. As a result, we discovered product display issues and identified main areas for improvement. The catalog was not functioning optimally and failed to meet user needs as expected, and we wanted to rectify this situation.
Our Solution
To help the client achieve their goal in the most cost-effective way, we decided to highlight the advantages of their product range and improve the management of their online catalog with Sortler.
Sortler is a unique SaaS cloud-based tool with easy implementation and efficient operation. It revolutionizes catalog management, providing a convenient solution for clients seeking to enhance their eCommerce visual merchandising.
Sortler is a highly manageable ecosystem accessible through sortler.com. This special virtual catalog allows you to automate processes, visually organize categories, and seamlessly sync with your real catalog to track conversion rates and monitor sales growth.
Now let’s see how we used Sortler to approach our client’s request.
Problem #1. Insufficient Product Range Variety
Initially, it became evident that product display could be better. Users had to apply filters or browse through multiple pages to discover the full range of items available in the catalog.
For instance:
- Dior products were featured 11 times on the first page, whereas Givenchy products were only displayed thrice.
- Dresses were included 25 times, whereas skirts appeared only seven times.
What did we offer to solve the problem?
We focused on prioritizing and diversifying the catalog, aiming to increase the likelihood of customer purchases
We asked Sortler to do the following:
- Arrange products on the catalog page in such a way as not to exceed the specified maximum number of identical groups of elements
- Hide less relevant products and make popular ones more visible on catalog pages.
- Follow the set percentage of items of each brand when placing products on the page
Thus, we made the catalog more diverse and avoided the dominance of one brand or group of products over others.
Problem #2. Poor Product Combinations
A good idea for improving sales is to have products that match each other in style and color next to each other in the catalog. This encourages customers to purchase multiple items at once.
Unfortunately, the client catalog didn’t offer such an option, which we fixed with Sortler. Specifically, we created a rule determining how to combine items on the catalog page.
Results were impressive: category pages now feature similar, matching in style or color products close to each other, and the number of these combinations never exceeds the percentage we set.
Problem #3. Running Out Products
The client’s catalog pages often showed products that were out of stock, which became a real problem that interfered with regular sales. That’s understandable: in the end, customers don’t like to find that an item is unavailable only after it has been added to the cart.
To solve the problem, we identified a percentage of low-stock items to list in the catalog and set up hiding out-of-stock products. All of this was done using the rules assigned to Sortler,
Problem #4. Low-Selling Products
Finally, we helped the client deal with under-selling items by making them more visible on the catalog page. The thing is, in some cases, the poor display of specific items is why they perform poorly. With the help of Sortler, we corrected the situation.
Sortler has many other cool features that take catalog management to a whole new level, leading to better conversions and sales. Follow the link to learn more about what Sortler offers.