If an online store has a great window display, have you considered taking a second look at it? How about the visual styling related to the dresses and blocking of the mannequins? Have you ever wondered why an online store stands out among the rest of its competitors? All of these questions are pretty relevant in the world of eCommerce today. When we shop in a store, we look for the best shops to roam so we can get to our desired merchandise. To address this requirement, the online stores have implemented a strategy called merchandising.
If you want to know what is visual merchandising, you must ensure that you have a successful eCommerce store at your disposal. Through this strategy, customers come to your store and enjoy the experience of your offered product and services. The more time they spend in your store, the higher chance they will consider your selling products.
What is Visual Merchandising?
If you have just opened an online store or run a successful online store, you must know what visual merchandising is. It is defined as the art of extreme space utilization to achieve higher revenue for your business. A visual merchandiser will likely provide you with tidy and curated product displays when you walk into a retail store. These products aren’t arranged randomly. The store owner uses the best practices to ensure that the products sell themselves.
Your retail space must be your most effective salesperson for the best interests, and merchandising creates the art of optimizing your retail store. By optimizing your retail store, you will have the chance of generating maximum revenue. However, you must note that merchandising contains a lot of distinctive retail topics. If you own the best practices, you will create the best window displays that catch the eyes of your customers right away.
Impact of Visual Merchandising
1. Higher Sales
As we have previously described, one of the elements of visual merchandising is that it results in high online sales. If you have gone through the tutorial on what is visual merchandising, you have likely gone through its impact on online sales. According to an eCommerce statistic, an average customer makes three unplanned purchases out of four in every ten stores they visit. They simply cannot make these random purchases without getting excited.
Image taken from Strikingly
By guiding your customers about your products and services, it is likely that you will see a rise in your online sales. Many shopkeepers worldwide believe that merchandising reflects your brand personality and helps you attract the right customers. To increase your online sales, you must rely on an effective website builder, such as Strikingly. Strikingly enables you to create an online store without any investment. All you need is to select a website template and customize it to your ability.
2. More Time Spent by Customers
Once you understand what is visual merchandising, you will also be able to understand the importance of having customers by your side. If executed well, retailers can determine the number of time customers spends in the store and the buying decisions they make. In-store experiences come up with unique moments when customers interact with the merchandise.
Image taken from Strikingly User’s Website.
Recently in the United States, we have seen many retail stores opening content studios in their shops. The retailers invite the customers to share their best work online. If you give reasons to your customers to stay in your store for longer, they likely leave positive feedback on your online store. Strikingly enables you to incorporate positive customer feedback in your online store. By including them in your online store, you will not just attract new customers but also convert your current customers into repeat customers.
3. Improve Brand Identity
If you want to create a brand identity in your online store, you must know what is visual merchandising. When you own an online store, you must build a brand image that is strong enough for merchandising purposes. A brand image adds value to your landing page and is remembered by those customers who would be looking forward to visiting you again and again. If your reputation is strong, you will attract new customers to your online store.
Image taken from Strikingly User’s Website
Even if you have consistent sales and frequent promotional offers going on, all of them will be wasted if the public doesn’t trust your brand. Branding tactics are one of the key factors that differentiate your products from the rest of your competitors. An ideal brand image makes your hard-earned cash look even more valuable. Nice Cream on Strikingly is one of the brilliant examples related to a brand image. It possesses a wonderful website logo with an ideal background image. Even if the customers forget the website URL, the logo and the landing page will bring them back to this website.
Strategies to Incorporate Visual Merchandising
1. Understand Your Brand
By understanding what is visual merchandising, you will have a better understanding of your brand. Understanding your brand is critical to perfecting the overall look and feel of your online store. Regardless of whether they are accompanied by innovative trends to gain customers, your branding tactics should speak for themselves. Without an effective plan related to branding tactics, it will be difficult for you to accomplish business-related goals.
Image taken from Strikingly User’s Website
Without a clear roadmap related to branding tactics, you will be driven by a few trends that stay for a week or two. Even if you achieve short-term success with those strategies, you will only be doomed to fail in the long run. Therefore, you must have a five to ten-year plan related to your brand’s heart. Your brand image is one of the pivotal reasons for the merchandise venture, so when you have a strong foundation, it will generate positive results for your online store.
2. Appropriate Color Scheme
It is impossible that you know what is visual merchandising, and you don’t know the influence of an appropriate color scheme related to it. Colors have a huge impact in many different ways in a person’s life. It can affect your emotions, make you feel relaxed, create passion and desire, or calm your spirit. Many studies have shown that colors impact the behavior and decision-making of a person. In eCommerce, it can become a source of attraction for your visitors.
Image taken from Strikingly User’s Website
The fashion industry is probably the best example of visual styling. If you go with the strong colors, it may create urgency or vibrancy within your eCommerce store. The light colors can bring a calming influence to your store. Most importantly, colors also influence the reviews of your potential customers.
3. Study Target Market
When you understand what is visual merchandising, you will realize how important it is to study a target market for generating high sales. You must be aware of your customers' likes and dislikes and the daily trends on social media. By having this approach, you will be able to attract customers and generate substantial profit in the long run. When your customers feel attached to your store, you have a chance of communicating with them in a better way.
4. Strategize Elements
If you want to learn about the importance of branding elements, you must know what is visual merchandising. An effective merchandise display isn’t a walk in the park for you, as you have to value the space that your eCommerce products are taking in your store. It is important to note that you must also value the negative space caused by their placement. The use of appropriate space gets regarded by the customers.
The public appreciates the shop’s attributes and principles, starting from the product’s accessibility, the flow of merchandise, the navigation system, etc. These factors have a huge role in determining whether a customer purchases a product from your retail store or not. You can also include other elements, such as music when the customer walks into your store, to add to your brand value. Such elements may enable the entire store to value every incoming customer.
Conclusion
By understanding what is visual merchandising, you can take your online store to the next level. By knowing that your customer will come inside and outside frequently, you will be able to create effective merchandising and product displays. When we talk about merchandising, it doesn’t mean that you should just look into the customers’ demographic data. You should dig a little deeper into their psychographics and behavior.
Strikingly is one of those website builders that supports merchandising to improve online sales. We provide our users with an effective order management system, which enables them to keep updated with all the transactions in their retail store. We also provide our customers with relevant product information to finalize their decision before buying from an online store. So, rely on Strikingly, build the best online store through our platform and start implementing the visual merchandising tips.
