3. Five basics
Availability on-site:
In-stock page views – report conversion, evaluate, benchmark then improve.
Price on-site:
Ensure within 1% or 5p of key competitor(s), but not normally below key
competitor (does not apply to own-brand).
Ascertain if high-level quartiles are close enough to key competitors.
Avoid negative margin except where written-down/clearance.
Traffic:
Understand and plan all major traffic points/levers (on and off-site exposure) to
support category sales plans and objectives, and optimised user journey.
Remove high-maintenance activities that don’t deliver proportionate traffic
levels.
Product content:
Identify content impact on conversion and take action to ensure images and all
other key elements are present on product pages. Innovate product content.
…All underpinned by good staff/team and technical capabilities.
4. Objectives – conversion &
engagement
Availability:
>90% in-stock page views across all categories
>95% available for store collection page views across all categories
Price:
Within 5-10% WPDI range of key competitor(s) in each product quartile in each
category. Within 5% in top quartile. Reduce and sell-through on end of line.
Planning:
Understanding and planning merchandising and product >=3 months in
advance for all major (~90% of) digital channels
Product content:
95% coverage of extensive imagery and other benchmarks tbc for other content
elements such as descriptions and
High-quality site experience supported by analytical rigour, continuous testing
and benchmarking program.
…Not intended to be black and white but common sense…
5. Top-priority promotional points
Main homepage (banners, products)
Category & sub-category homepages (banners,
products)
Super-dropdowns (browse)
Site search results pages (boost, banners, promotional
search results – search tags)
Landing pages (bespoke or existing, dynamic, pages)
All can use matrix for promotion plans: single point of
reference for all on-site and marketing channels.
6. Other/Dynamic promotional points
Recommendations & cross-sell – ensure components
increase ABV and Conversion ideally via MVT.
Sub-category list views – don’t need to be maintained
but can be used to promote specific product.
Site search results (unmanipulated) – explore all
“errors” (e.g. no results) and benchmark synonyms,
spelling and punctuation variations. Develop more
conversion-efficient rules.
7. Efficiency
Stress at manual or creative points in the
merchandising process – needs to be minimised.
Maximise effective exposure with minimum
intervention: plan promotions effectively as far ahead
as possible, know your levers and enjoy good
teamwork/communication with all departments.
Cut out broken links and technical issues like slow-
loading preventing conversion, and test as much as
possible – one small change (e.g. copy tweak) can be
very valuable and/or last for years.
8. Creativity
Take good risks; try out new promotional mechanisms
and learn from poor promotions
Ensure high-quality creative executions and strong,
on-brand calls to action
Continuously identify potential improvements to user
experience and ways of improving online buying and
other goal funnel experiences.
Look for range gaps and new promotional
opportunities, backed up with data/analytics.
9. Other objectives
Visit conversion (and reducing bounce) – main factors of
which are price, availability and traffic.
Increased basket value, e.g. via recommendations cross-sell
and migrating low-margin category shoppers into high-
margin categories.
Demonstrate and surface range – long-tail awareness.
Right balance on shared areas, between exposure of growth
categories, cash cows and other merchandised and
multichannel-supporting initiatives (e.g. non-core
commitments).
Strong, well-prepared planning with buy-in from product
directors/buyers and marketing.
10. Enablers/dependencies
Everyone understands what is technically or creatively possible in the
environment and in what timeframes – fundamental last-minute
demands/changes and continual focus on small levers should be
unnecessary. This principle should guide immediate priorities but not
affect getting all details basically right.
Good data and reports and being “data-driven”. This will also help get
the basics of price, availability, product content and browse and site
search pages at maximum achievable.
Good technical systems, e.g. MVT, analytics, merchandising
capabilities.
Admitting when a mistake was made or a promotion or initiative is
failing. Learning from it.
Good, open communication, asking the question and trusting/helping
team-mates.
Resources in terms of price changes, product content, technical
changes/improvements and ecommerce system developments.
11. Data, analysis & reporting
Deserves special mention because digital is especially data-
heavy.
Trading/Merchandising analysis reports should:
Demonstrate whether price and availability targets are being
met
Demonstrate potential site traffic levers and their relative
value
Indicate contribution to total from promotions and other site
merchandising activity, and ideally benchmark it
Enable easy identification of incremental sales or conversion
opportunities for collation and discussion, including via MVT
Indicate strategic areas of growth/contraction such as long-
term category traffic trends
12. Thank you and Q & A
Some further questions & talking points:
What is the marketing funding model/process, if any?
How established are the team and how do they like to work?
What are the merchandising systems used, are they being used to the full and
what needs to be done to get more from them?
How many SKUs are live on the website, and which categories have most SKUs?
