The Ultimate Merchandising Guide for 2022

Every customer knows that a store's retail environment or website is carefully curated to drive sales. Per research conducted by San Diego State University, despite the best efforts by retailers, disorganized shelves and displays negatively influence customers' buying decisions. It shows how crucial merchandising is to a solid retail execution strategy.

Read on to learn how to harness the power of both online and in-store merchandising with tips and techniques to optimize your strategy in 2022.

Importance of Merchandising?

In the modern competitive market, having a brilliant product is not enough to stand out in a crowd. You must up your merchandising game regardless of where you sell—in-store or online.

Merchandising focuses on knowing your customer well and promoting your goods to the target market. It starts with understanding who your customers are, what they want, and what drives buying decisions. It gives them an incredible and satisfying shopping experience tailored to them, thus converting them into regular customers.

However, your merchandising strategy must be more than just making everything appear great. A beautifully aesthetic store or website is attractive, but does it necessarily drive sales? If your current strategies are not driving sales, you need to level up your merchandising strategy to make it work for you.

But first, why is merchandising important? Effective merchandising can:

1. Attract buyers
2. Help your establishment offer a wide variety of products
3. Increase traffic
4. Increase sales with special offers
5. Convert casual browsers into customers

Online Merchandising Strategies for 2022

Carefully Crafted Homepage

When looking for your brand, the first thing every visitor of your website sees is the homepage. So, this is where you begin your online merchandising efforts.

Make your products pop and stand out on the homepage using eye-catching and unique imagery, clever layouts, and brand colors. Maximize the potential of this high-traffic page to entice customers and increase conversion rates, and increase your ratings by effectively showcasing your products.

Pay Close Attention to Visuals

Online merchandising is entirely reliant on images that make your products pop. Use high-quality images, zoomable product images, videos showing demos, 360-degree images, and other lifestyle images to make your products stand out.

Link your social media images on your web pages to give customers a taste of your brand.

Tip: Add graphic designing elements to highlight trending products and those that are either low in stock or are on special offers.

Personalized Customer Experience

Want to excel and stand out in the current competitive marketplace of 2022? It is time to implement a hyper-personalized strategy.

By using customer-specific data and analytics, you can automate the shopping experience for each customer, making it more personalized. The idea is to put into action industry-specific customer insights. It is done by communicating highly customized messages to individual customers at the right time and through the most effective channel.

Hyper-personalized marketing is like a breath of fresh air in the increasingly crowded and competitive world of digital marketing. Making customers feel seen and heard is a solid foundation for improving customer satisfaction and customer relationship.

While hyper-personalization is one of the best merchandising strategies, it is also an ongoing process. Customers' needs and preferences are ever-evolving, given the rate at which trends keep changing. Thus, personalization will also have to be adjusted to keep them engaged.

Remember, a hyper-personalized experience can be integrated into every step of the customer journey—personalized landing pages, real-time assistance, and even after-sales services.

In-Store Merchandising Strategies for 2022

Use POP (Point-of-Purchase) Displays to Highlight Products

Usually, POP displays used to draw attention to or advertise your products are of two types - physical or temporary digital. Both of these must be used to promote features of the product and great deals effectively and to draw attention to any new exciting product by breaking through the clutter. POP displays can be considered one-dimensional employees who are expert salespeople for the given product. Thus, they help you sell faster.

As per research, the average attention span of a human is only 8 seconds. Humans are visual beings. Research also suggests that their information retention capacity shoots up to 65% when the information is paired with images or visuals.

So, when deciding on the most effective POP displays for your brand, first identify the products you wish to push. It could be anything from the bestsellers to trending favorites and even slow sellers you want to push. The variations of POP display merchandising are endless. But remember that it must draw attention and new customers and convey your brand voice.

Use Merchandising to Convey a Story

In the modern competitive market of 2022, stories sell. Customers crave a narrative—who you are, what you stand for, and what can be expected from you. So, this is where storytelling comes into the picture, to help customers assign meaning to your brand.

Your brand or business story should be such that it reflects how your customer would recollect the story to share with their friend. So, for instance, you own a gardening store. You would want your customer to feel like they walked out of a quaint countryside, or even better, a luxurious chateau. Your merchandising strategies would differ based on what story you want to share with the customer.

Highlight Sustainability Measures and Efforts

Research shows that a majority of almost 51% of millennials prefer shopping with companies that are transparent in their measures to provide sustainable products.

Sustainability measures and efforts include:

1. Product labels mention that it is sustainably produced
2. Use of environment-friendly packaging material
3. Trained staff that can offer information regarding sustainability in your store

Conscious customers make a note of and remember brands and businesses that follow sustainable practices in their commitment to making the world better. Given the crises faced by the world and the depletion of natural resources, the markets have gotten competitive. The one merchandising strategy that can truly set you apart in 2022 is sustainability efforts.

Wrapping Up

All of your brand's customer-facing elements are impacted by merchandise. You need these tactics to give your customers an experience, from visual merchandising to your distinctive brand voice and customer experience.

There is always room to improve your merchandising strategy, no matter your store, brand, product, or clientele. Your strategy for merchandising will, however, be strongly influenced by your product and target market. One approach is to continuously experiment with A/B testing, data analysis, etc.

What is the evidence that your marketing plan is working? Increased page views, sales growth, and order values. Make careful you monitor each KPI.

Whatever method you use, start by concentrating on the experience of the consumer. Making your customers feel comfortable, both online and in-store will be the most important aspect of merchandising in 2022.

Do you want to venture into sustainable clothing and make that conscious effort? Check out Fashinza to help you navigate through making more sustainable choices.