Six Steps to Optimize Your Digital Shelf Space at Retailers

For manufacturers, it is a fight to get attention for its products in webshops and on marketplaces. Presenting the correct product information is vital in this process. According to Emerce, there are six important steps to optimize your digital shelf and product content.

Physical stores invest a lot in the positioning of a product or brand. The ultimate goal is to convince the consumer to buy. The design, product description, and position on the shelf are crucial. This is similar in the world of online shopping. Due to the shift from offline to online, the digital shelf is becoming really important. In short, a customer will not buy in case he or she misses product information. Or if a product is not visually attractive enough. Besides, if the product is not clearly visible on the category pages or in the search results, people will overlook it.

But, how do you ensure that the digital shelf is set up so that the product stands out to online visitors? In the purchasing process, consumers are guided by various information sources. Here plays the digital shelf of the retailer an important role. Therefore, it is important for the retailer that all its channels are provided with convincing content, both for online and offline conversion. Online channels offer more options for posting rich content such as videos, product stories, ratings, and reviews. Furthermore, consumers use different search engines for online purchases, like Google Shopping or Kieskeurig. When offering complete product information, the SEO rate will be higher, which will help the product page rank higher.

Optimize your digital shelf ensures strong positioning, a better customer experience, more traffic, and an increase in conversion. But how do you approach the optimization of the digital shelf as a brand?

1. Listing range

Optimization is impossible if a product is not available online. This may seem obvious, but it often turns out that there is no clarity about the offline versus online range in practice. Make sure that all products that a retailer wants to offer online are actually listed online.

2. Content creation

In addition to a complete online range, product information is crucial. The completeness of the content plays a role in this and the tone of voice. Before creating the content, think about the message and target audience and ensure consistency between products. The focus is on product content creation and optimization: title, image, product description, ratings, and reviews. But also rich content like videos, 3D tours, and Product Stories.

3. Organization of the content

It is important to have an overview of all available content. Emerce advises using a central storage point for all content to make it easier for retailers to keep the shelf up-to-date. Besides, you can use a content management system that manages all product information and distributes it across different channels. A so-called PIM. For example, Syndy, can suit your needs to minimize manual work.

4. Contact with retailers

There is often a lack of clarity about who should take care of the contact with the retailers. Designate someone responsible for all contact.

5. Syndication

It is important to be clear at which retailers you want to syndicate the content. Also, check which content you want to share with which retailer. Once it is clear which content needs to be shared, you can look at the type of tooling used for this. The export functionality is important here. Check which tooling can print exports that offer sufficient options to serve all retailers.

6. Tracking

Once all content is distributed, it is good to know whether all retailers actually publish your content. With various tracking toolings, for example, Profitero, you can continuously monitor your products’ performance on the digital shelf at retailers.

Wouter Maatman

Digital Marketing Manager at Icecat N.V.