How can you increase your business sales figures?
There are many ways to do this. The most obvious thing is that you have to have a good marketing strategy. A good marketing strategy can help you target the right people and turn them into customers for your business. The ease of surfing the internet, like social media, can help you do your marketing from multiple channels. Another thing you can do is hold a promo. People are happy with low prices. You can hold special promos, for example, on weekend sales or sales on other special days.
However, your sales figures may return to normal when the promotion is over. Some people may stop buying an item when the price of the item returns to its normal price. The excitement of your marketing will end and the customer will move on to your competitors that are holding another promotion.
Of course in a business, this is a natural thing. You must continue to innovate to continue to attract customers and cultivate loyal customers. However, both can not only be done with marketing activities. You can also increase your sales figures and attract customers by how you organize your products: Cross merchandising.
Cross Merchandising can help you increase and maintain sales figures on a regular basis. Cross Merchandising works by making use of the logical relationship between one item and another. Because of this nature, cross merchandising can also help your customers find the products they need. Cross merchandising is a strategy that benefits your business and your customers.
So, what does cross merchandising mean? Let's take a look at what cross merchandising is and why you need cross merchandising to increase your sales figures.
What is Cross Merchandising in Retail?
Simply put, cross merchandising is a product placement in your store, whether physical or online, by paying attention to the logical relationship between your products. This logical relationship falls into several types. The first logical relationship is a complementary relationship where one product can complement another, for example, bread often requires jam or butter. The second relationship comes from your customer habits, for example, you observe that many of your customers buy detergent and shampoo at the same time. The last relationship is a substitution relationship where there are two or more products that are the same but packaged in different ways, for example, you place a whole watermelon next to a watermelon that has been cut into small pieces.
In essence, cross merchandising is a conscious product placement by your business to sell more products by placing closely related products.
Why Your Business Needs to Do Cross Merchandising
The essence of cross merchandising is to increase the satisfaction of customers who shop at your store. If your customers feel that their needs can be fulfilled properly in your store, then of course this will have a good impact on your business brand.
Apart from that, there are many important reasons why you should do cross merchandising. Those reasons are:
- Help You Promote New Items
New items can be a new source of income for your business. However, before you can profit from your new product, you must be able to sell the new product and this is easier said than done.
You can do promotions or marketing to inform your customers that you have a new product. You can also cut the price of the item at the start.
Or, you can put the new item next to a complimentary item that many people buy. Placing these new items near items that people buy can help those new items to be seen by people which means people will have awareness about the item. The new item may not sell out in large numbers right away, but at least people will know it's in your store.
- Help Your Customers Be Aware of Their Needs
You may have experienced it as a customer. You just arrived home after a long shopping session when you realized you needed another item or two. You may forget to buy jam for your bread or you may forget to buy cheese for your special dinner menu. Cross merchandising can help your customers remember their needs by putting related products close to each other.
- Help Your Customers Save Time
Okay, maybe your customers are aware of their needs and they always buy everything they need in one shopping session. You can help your customers save time by putting related items in one location. If the customer has more time, the customer will likely browse for another product which could end up on another purchase.
- Create a Strong Customer Base
Needless to say, loyal customers are the most important thing in your business. Loyal customers will be one of your most valuable sources of income. In addition, loyal customers can spread your business brand voluntarily just because they are genuinely satisfied with your business and want people to feel the same way.
You can get loyal customers if people feel happy shopping at your place; they can find all their needs, and they can do it easily. Cross merchandising can help you meet these two customer needs.
- Help Your Customers Find New Ideas
Again, you may have experienced it as a customer. You're browsing through the items, and you then come up with a new idea for dinner that day after noticing what's in the meat section of a shop. Cross Merchandising emphasizes the logical relationship between one item and another, and this can help customers to come up with their own ideas.
How To Do Cross Merchandising at Online Stores
Cross merchandising is generally a strategy that is practiced in physical retail stores. This is because cross merchandising is generally associated with good product placement with respect to the design of a physical store.
However, cross merchandising can also be done at online stores. The essence of cross merchandising in online stores remains the same as cross merchandising which is carried out in physical stores; to sell more products and help customers to get the products they need.
Let's take a look at how you can do cross merchandising at an online store:
- Showcase the Use of Your Product
One of the advantages of online stores is that you can use strong visuals to make your products more attractive. Photographs of clothing or clothing are one of the best examples.
Online clothing stores, for example, can create clothing collections with a theme that can make customers easily browse the available clothes.
Apart from photos of your product, you can also illustrate the use of your product. For example, if you sell health products, then you can use photos of people looking healthy and fit to illustrate the effects of your health products.
- Include Related Products
When shopping online, you may get recommendations in the form of 'People who buy this product often buy the following products too' or 'You may also like'. This is the same as you can do in your physical shop.
The steps you have to take are more or less the same: you must first study the spending habits of your customers and make recommendations from the results of your research.
- Create a Bundle
Bundling your products is one of the best ways to create cross merchandise. You can combine several products and sell them at a relatively cheaper price than when the customer buys each item individually.
This method can also help you sell your products that are currently having a bad sales record. Just bundle those products with your products that are currently in demand by customers and create cross merchandise ready to be sold.
- Learn From Other Online Stores
Whether you're doing cross merchandising at a physical store or online, you still need to learn from other stores when you get stuck. Learn how other stores do their cross-merchandising; What themes were used or what categories were available in their shop? How do they price their cross merchandise? Apart from getting new ideas, you can also find out about the latest trends in your niche market by learning from others.
Some Merchandising Examples
On Strikingly, you can easily find websites that have been created by other Strikingly users. This can help you if you need inspiration on how to do cross merchandising at your online store. Here are merchandising examples that can inspire you:
- Dr Chai Tea
Image taken from Strikingly user’s website
Dr. Chai Tea is an online shop that sells teas made from natural ingredients. This shop sells tea in various packages and variants. Not only that, but this shop also sells equipment for brewing the tea that you have purchased, such as a tea maker and a teapot. This is a good example of cross merchandise with complementary relationships
- Typewriter Company
Image taken from Strikingly user’s website
Typewriter Company is an online shop that sells typewriters of the highest quality. Not only that, you can find various brands of typewriters in this shop that you can choose from. Apart from typewriters, the Typewriter Company also sells necessities that come from owning a typewriter. Do you need a cover for a typewriter that you just bought? Typewriter Company got you covered. They also sell other related items such as bags and ribbons for typewriters.
- Nice Cream
Image taken from Strikingly user’s website
Nice Cream offers an unforgettable ice cream eating experience. If you visit one of their physical stores, you can see the entire process of making the ice cream you ordered while you wait for your order to finish. You can also enjoy their premium ice creams by placing an order at their online shop. If you are unsure what ice cream you want to try, you can order an ice cream bundle from Nice Cream and get several different ice cream variants. Nice Cream also provides good cross merchandise with their monthly ice cream bundle which will be sent to your address at the beginning of each month.
That's everything you should know about cross merchandising.
So, what is cross merchandising?
Simply put, cross merchandising is product placement that is done to attract customers to buy products that are related to one another by placing the products together. Cross merchandising can help you sell more items and your customers by saving their shopping time.
Although cross merchandising is a strategy in physical retail stores, you can also apply the same strategy in your online store. You can use illustrations or visuals to make your products more attractive, recommend related products, and bundle your products.
Image taken from Strikingly product
Strikingly can help you to create an attractive online store. You can easily create your online shop using our ready-to-use templates. Strikingly also offers features for your online store such as ease of payment, delivery, and guaranteed security. Not only that, but you can also find other Strikingly user-created online stores and learn how they package their cross merchandise.
Are you ready to open your online shop? Build your website now with Strikingly!
