Product promotion and merchandising - YouTube

Hi there.

As you build out your online shop

promoting your full inventory of products can be challenging.

Here, we'll examine the best ways to promote products and special offers.

We'll show you how to predict which products your customers might like,

and help you showcase products your visitors might not normally see.

The first step is to set up your online shop.

That way it's easy for your visitors to browse all of your products.

You’ll want to create the right hierarchy of categories and subcategories,

which will help a customer navigate your site and the products for sale.

Promoting products in an online shop

isn’t too different from a High Street shop.

Think about the last time you visited a furniture shop.

You probably didn't just walk in

and see a map of the shop's aisles

pointing to where the products could be found.

More likely, you walked in and saw a really comfy sofa near the door,

that you could sink right into.

Think about a bricks and mortar shop.

Online shops also display very specific featured products.

If it's the end of summer and students are going off to university,

the furniture shop might have desks or bookcases

on display and on sale.

This is an example of product merchandising.

You can do the same thing online

starting by promoting certain products

right on your homepage.

Your promotion might be to help shift old inventory

or feature a best-selling item you want more customers to see.

Using part of your home page to showcase products,

or even running online advertising campaigns

with dedicated landing pages,

can be a great way to merchandise online.

And that’s just the beginning.

Imagine if you walked into an offline furniture store,

and the front door display magically transformed,

based on your interests.

And as you browsed,

all of the promotions you encountered were customized

to what you had previously looked at.

That’s exactly what online shops can do.

As visitors browse the pages of your site,

you’re collecting data about what interests them.

Now you can use this data

to predict what they’re likely to be interested in next.

Think of the last time you were shopping online.

You might have been shown recommended products

after viewing certain items, or putting them in your cart.

For example, if you were on a custom furniture website,

and you were looking at kitchen tables,

you might have seen a promotion for chairs or window shutters,

to match the room.

Many shopping cart providers such as Magento, Volusion, Pretoshop and Shopify

offer these product recommendation engines.

Next up, in product promotion and merchandising,

is finding ways to showcase products

that your visitors may not have otherwise been looking for.

This can be a really effective way to cross-sell.

So, how does this work?

Well, let's imagine an office manager

is looking for a new executive desk for the big boss.

Something grand and ornate.

But he might not have been thinking about matching book cases

or custom doors.

Now is the perfect time to remind him.

Promoting related products can lead to increased sales.

The world of e-commerce offers you plenty of great ways

to make sure customers see

and interact with relevant products on your site.

You can create a virtual display as they enter your site,

or use data to suggest what they might buy next.

So, get out there and start selling!