Imagine two brick-and-mortar stores. In presenting an item (let's say a cardigan), the merchant in our first store displays all the colors on the selling floor. In our second store, lacking space to display every color, sale associates must inform customers of the additional color options. In the store where all colors are displayed, the merchant is less likely to miss a sale and customers can help themselves to the entire color selection. This merchant can also play with the colors, distorting or de-emphasizing the hottest selling color, a new color, a liquidation color, a seasonal color, a promoted color and so on. However, when only a sample of colors is displayed, sales can be lost when customers are not attended to and the information about the additional colors is not communicated.
Our first store is using active merchandising to drive conversion, a strategy that's equally effective for the online merchant as well.
Online, within a category or a collection page, many merchants are still selling at the style and not at the style-color level.
As fashion shoppers, we tend to shop at the style-color level and not at the style level.
If we were shopping for a cardigan, we would like to quickly browse the whole color selection. To enable this existing shopping preference is an online merchandising opportunity for many retailers, one that enhances the shopping experience while helping drive conversion rates.
There are about 5 different methods used in merchandising at the category and collection page level. Let's look into each of the method and consider their pros and cons.
Method 1
Product is merchandised at the style level with a callout of more colors available. Retailers merchandising with this method include J Crew, BEBE, and Forever 21. The advantage of this merchandising method is a shorter and cleaner category or collection page that is easier to shop. However, there is one major downside to this method - it misses the opportunity to actively inform customers of additional colors available at the category and collection level, thereby, foregoing the chance to sell a product unless if the customer takes the additional step (and expends the additional effort) of drilling all the way down to the product page to see a full display of color choices.
Method 2
The second method also merchandise at the style level. However, the difference is that the number of color options is called out. For example, available in 3 colors. With this method, a customer still doesn't know what the color options actually are. American Eagle Outfitters is an example of online merchant using this method.
Method 3
By far the most common method today is to show color at the category or collection level. By clicking on a color swatch, the selling images will be updated with the selected color. The only downside to this approach is that it flattens out the relative importance of any given color, leaving merchants unable to distort or de-emphasize certain colors to drive online merchandising objectives, Retailers using this approach include Tommy Hilfiger, Chicos, Lands' End, Antropologie and Ann Taylor.
Method 4
This method shows every single style-color available. Every color is photographed or color-swapped to be presented separately. This allows the merchant complete control in merchandising for each color. However, it is expensive shooting for every style-color and this expanded display could create a very long category or collection page, one that is potentially harder to shop. Top Shop and Banana Republic are among the retailers using this method.
Method 5
Method 5 is a hybrid of the Method 3 and 4. With this approach, a product is merchandised at the style or style-color level as necessary. This gives the merchant complete control over the assortment within a category as well as allowing the ability to distort or emphasize key items and best-sellers by selling them at the style-color level. For example, the Cotton Cashmere Wrap Sweater comes in 10 colors. However, only the key colors are photographed and shown separately. Notice, too, this method also allows the merchant to sequence each color independently.
So - for your brand- which method has the greatest potential to drive conversion rates? The cataloguers just seem to be better at managing products at the style-color level. Other retailers, too often let the merchandising and e-commerce system dictate the execution. The real answer will depend on the set-up of your enterprise merchandising system and the e-commerce merchandising system, your creative requirements and your customer's preference.
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