What is the secret of success in e-commerce? There seems to be no single answer, but a commitment to overall quality comes very close to defining success. Numerous factors should be taken into consideration, including market demands, latest innovations, dynamic pricing, easy billing, shipping, tracking via customer support, marketing, site user experience, and customer psychology among a host of other vital factors.
Assortment planning is a comprehensive strategy employed by pro-marketers to enable selective availability of products according to their tentative demand. Essentially based on consumer analytics and competitor review, the manager arranges product visibility and set upsell incentives accordingly. Find vital tips in below sections for experienced retailing of assorted products in your inventory.
Works in a loop
One should be able to identify the looping nature of product cycles. For example, the store must be able to maintain a running cycle of order processing and inventory filling so that there is no gap between demand and supply. Next, you should be able to identify key social trends, as they tend to affect customer psychology greatly. The manager should be able to maintain a close, deductive oversight of social trends according to major political and economic changes. Intelligent product assortment planning must involve the application of common sense. If the price of desktop computers is going down due to a market policy, should you plan to upsell computers or focus on alternate computing devices such as tablets, advanced smartphones, and notepads?
Detail interpretations
The demands also vary by unique factors affecting different marketing niches. An e-commerce site owner should be keen in identifying such niche-specific fluctuations. After all, a shop selling clothing items would have a different user experience over another that is selling digital products. Furthermore, sub-niches come into consideration. A typical e-commerce website has at least ten different sections, and each of these segments consists of products with individual acceptability rates in current market conditions. As you see, the outlook should be very fractional, focusing on the details, and studying real-time analytics to set a suitable assortment strategy.
Facilitating availability
Once you can set an assortment of saleable products according to their tentative priority, the next job is to promote your plan carefully to make them acceptable. Here are some of the typical strategies employed:
- Free offers and discounts with strategic planning
- Ensuring responsive website marketing (customers should be able to access your site from any given device)
- Encouraging loyal customers to invite others by offering incentives for referrals
- Constantly innovating the digital aisles with creativity (use of catchy ad texts, attractive visuals, user testimonials, and more)
- Maintaining adequate flexibility to comply with market demand factors as you gradually understand them
Peer review is a vital aspect of developing good product assortment planning. What are your competitors selling well? Once you identify the demand curve that curves bypassing you to your competitor, it should be easy to get your stuff to sell as well. Remember seasonal variations as a determinant aspect as well. Many items are more popular in winter than in summer and vice versa. Benefit by consulting a successful professional service on assorting your store to enjoy the growth in revenues.
