Merchandising and your Theme

Course content (19 lessons)

When you go into a physical store, you’ll see merchandising in action to help present your products to your customers. The same needs to be done on your online store and we’ve translated common in-person tips to suit online shopping!

0:00
[MUSIC PLAYING] Just like a brick and mortar store, your online store needs merchandising. Some elements of your store, like your navigation settings, are best kept consistent once they've been established. However, other elements on your homepage will benefit from periodic updates. You can use your homepage to celebrate store events like a product launch, a seasonal collection, a holiday sale, or any other kind of campaign or promotion.
0:31
Keeping your homepage content fresh encourages customers to return to your store to see what's new. Think of the large banner image or slideshow section at the top of the homepage as a display window of a brick and mortar store. Likewise, a featured collection section or a grid section on the home page could be used in the same way as a sale or new arrivals rack in a brick and mortar store.
0:56
Let's look at some examples from one of our demo stores. To promote a launch of a new product line, we've updated the slider image to draw attention to the collection and entice the viewer to click through to explore it further. The slideshow section offers an engaging introduction to your store when your images, text, and call to action buttons work together. These assets each play a part when you have something exciting to get in front of your customers.
1:24
To call attention to a free shipping promotion, we've updated the copy in the Announcement bar. The Announcement bar is the perfect way to draw attention to any upcoming or ongoing promotions, sales, or important shop notices. If you don't have this enabled on every page, you can enable them so customers are aware of the announcement info throughout their journey rather than just on your homepage.
1:48
Here, we've added a featured product section as well as a testimonial section to create some buzz for a new product launch. The featured product section is designed to draw attention to a particular product on your homepage, which is ideal for a new product launch or any product that you'd like to highlight. Testimonials build confidence with shoppers and can be a great source of endorsement.
2:14
How often you make changes to your homepage will depend on your catalog size, business model, and some other variables. If you have consistent product line, you'll want to highlight things like sales, reviews, and lifestyle shots to keep things interesting for repeat visitors. If your products are updated more often, featured sections on your homepage are a great way to get the word out.
2:38
Just like a brick and mortar store, you need to change the way that your products and collections are displayed to keep your store looking fresh. Download the merchandising calendar and fill in important store events for the next few months. Store events could include promotions, product launches, or any other kind of campaign. Once you've done this, you can start planning how to use your theme to merchandise the store events.
3:05
Mark down what kind of changes you plan to make to your theme. Remember that you can make these changes on unpublished version of your theme and preview them.

Download and fill in our next worksheet: the Merchandising Calendar! Updates to your merchandising should be regularly scheduled and you can plan this ahead of time in batches for efficiency and consistency.

Merchandising and your Theme

Course content (19 lessons)

Overview

01 |Think like a Shopper

02 |First Impressions

03 |Browsing

04 |Sales pitch

05 |Making the Sale

06 |It’s Alive!