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Brick and mortar businesses use a myriad of tactics to help their products fly off the shelves at certain times of the year, e.g., displaying seasonal items at the entrance of the store, featuring sales or discounts, sorting products by popularity and price, etc.

With new technologies hitting the online retail industry, such as site search advancements, ecommerce vendors are now able to develop robust strategies that allow customers to search specifically for what they’re looking for right on the store’s website and view recommendations and similar items. Enhanced site navigation features have also made the online shopping experience more complete, convenient, and effortless than ever before, which has helped vendors improve the usability of their ecommerce platforms.

The term “searchandising” became popular a few years ago, and has become an integral component of a fully developed ecommerce store more recently. A robust search and find function complete with recommendations is now integral to every online retailers’ success.

If you plan to upgrade your ecommerce website, here are a few tips to keep in mind so that you can increase your sales and improve the customer experience on your website:

Plan a Strategy for Sorting Products and Offering Recommendations

The process of sorting and providing recommendations should always be in flux, as there is no right or wrong way to recommend products or services. It is best to sort your products by new arrivals, price, best sellers, and products with high customer ratings so that your customers can quickly browse through the items that they will be most interested in purchasing. You may also want to be prepared to change this system as new products are added to the store or customer feedback indicates that there may be a better way to satisfy their needs.

Include Powerful Text and Images in Your Optimized Descriptions

Great images and powerful descriptions will help you communicate the value of your products or services to your customers in a very important way. The visual presentation of the products can have an immediate and lasting impact on whether or not your customers end up purchasing from you or your competitors. The descriptions should be well written, optimized for the search engines, and creatively informative to attract and inspire your audience to make a purchase.

Track Your Metrics

Since the online retail-sphere is a rapidly evolving segment of the market, always be prepared to change your tactics if they do not appear to be working as well as you would like. Your web analytics can help you make key adjustments so that you are always on the cutting edge and are able to provide a great customer experience. When you are tracking the success of your online store, make sure to pay attention to more than just gross sales. The page views, conversion rates, revenues, units, time on page, orders, and time on site can all help you make the adjustments necessary to create a more robust online presence.

Always Continuing Testing and Measuring Your Results

Understanding your metrics is the first step in the process, but you will also need to make sure to have a good measurement system for tracking your results. You may want to consider trying different variations of your sorting system or other key features on your website to see if minor modifications can improve your results.

Invite Customers to Give You Feedback

“Searchandising” also gives vendors the ability to connect directly with their customers, which is the perfect opportunity to get valuable feedback. Make sure that you have a quick and simple feedback system in place where your customers can provide you with insights on your store so that you can evaluate how your customers interpret their customer experience. You can also ask for feedback on Facebook or another social networking site so that you can internally evaluate how well your website is perceived by your customers.

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