Back to E-commerce Dictionary

Product Merchandising

Operations1/5/2026Intermediate Level

Product merchandising is the process of presenting products to customers to maximize sales, involving product placement, promotions, and visual display strategies.

What is Product Merchandising? (Definition)

Product merchandising is the practice of displaying and promoting items to encourage customers to buy. It involves how you organize, price, and present products across different sales channels. In e-commerce, this includes optimizing product pages, search results, and promotional banners. These tactics help shoppers find products more easily and improve the overall shopping experience. Effective merchandising uses sales trends and customer behavior to guide creative choices. This process makes items more attractive and directly increases sales. Systems like WISEPIM support this by ensuring product information stays consistent and high quality across every platform.

Why Product Merchandising is Important for E-commerce

Product merchandising is the way a webshop organizes and displays items to help customers make a purchase. It guides shoppers through the store and makes products look more appealing. When a store is well-merchandised, customers can find relevant items quickly and see all the details they need to buy. A PIM system provides the organized data and images required for this process. It keeps all product information in one central spot. This allows teams to create better product displays and suggest related items to shoppers. WISEPIM makes it easier to tailor these presentations for different websites or customer groups.

Examples of Product Merchandising

  • 1A clothing brand uses lifestyle photos and 'shop the look' features to show customers how to style an entire outfit.
  • 2An electronics store lists matching accessories on a laptop page to suggest useful bundles to the shopper.
  • 3A hardware shop puts its most popular tools on the homepage and category banners to help customers find top-rated products.
  • 4An online grocery store shows 'frequently bought together' items at checkout to help shoppers add missing essentials to their cart.

How WISEPIM Helps

  • WISEPIM keeps all product details and images in one central spot. This ensures your team uses the same accurate information for every sales campaign.
  • You can change product descriptions and photos for different webshops directly in WISEPIM. This makes it easy to customize your content for each platform.
  • WISEPIM makes it easier for customers to find what they need. High-quality data ensures that your website filters and search tools work perfectly.
  • You can update seasonal content and promotions across all your stores at the same time. WISEPIM acts as a single control point for these quick changes.

Common Mistakes with Product Merchandising

  • Ignoring data analysis: Making choices based on gut feelings instead of sales numbers. This leads to promoting the wrong items.
  • Inconsistent product data: Providing wrong or missing information. WISEPIM helps by organizing the data used for your search and filters.
  • Ignoring mobile users: Not making the shop easy to use on a phone. A bad mobile experience causes shoppers to leave.
  • Static merchandising: Forgetting to update displays and categories. Regular updates keep your store fresh and show off new stock.
  • Poor search and filtering: Using search bars that do not work or confusing filters. This stops customers from buying.

Tips for Product Merchandising

  • Track sales and customer behavior regularly. This data shows which products sell best and where you need to fix your store layout.
  • Use high-quality images and clear descriptions for every product. Accurate details help shoppers find items and feel confident about buying them.
  • Create simple categories and useful filters. Let customers narrow down their choices by size, color, or price to find what they need faster.
  • Offer personalized recommendations based on what customers like. Tailor your search results and promotions to match the shopping habits of each visitor.
  • Test different layouts and banners to see what works best. Comparing two versions of a page helps you discover which designs lead to more sales.

Trends Surrounding Product Merchandising

  • AI-driven personalization: Utilizing AI and machine learning algorithms to provide highly personalized product recommendations, search results, and promotional offers based on individual customer behavior and preferences.
  • Automated merchandising rules: Implementing intelligent automation to dynamically adjust product sorting, visibility, and promotional placement based on real-time performance, inventory levels, and business goals.
  • Headless commerce flexibility: Leveraging headless architectures to enable seamless and consistent merchandising experiences across diverse channels and touchpoints (e.g., web, mobile apps, voice commerce, in-store kiosks).
  • Sustainability merchandising: Highlighting eco-friendly, ethically sourced, or sustainable products through specific filters, badges, dedicated landing pages, and curated collections to meet growing consumer demand.
  • Augmented Reality (AR) product visualization: Integrating AR to allow customers to virtually 'try on' or place products in their environment, enhancing product understanding and reducing returns.

Tools for Product Merchandising

  • WISEPIM: Centralizes, enriches, and syndicates product information, ensuring consistent, high-quality data for effective merchandising across all sales channels.
  • Shopify/Magento: E-commerce platforms that offer robust built-in features for product organization, collection management, promotional campaigns, and visual merchandising.
  • Akeneo/Salsify: Dedicated PIM systems that provide advanced capabilities for managing complex product data, digital assets, and localizing content, which is crucial for sophisticated merchandising.
  • Algolia/Klevu: Advanced search and discovery platforms that enhance product findability through intelligent search, filtering, and the ability to implement specific merchandising rules for search results.
  • Dynamic Yield/Optimizely: Personalization and A/B testing platforms that enable dynamic content delivery, personalized recommendations, and continuous optimization of merchandising strategies.

Related Terms

product detail page pdpe commerce channelproduct contentdigital shelfmarketing attributesproduct catalog

Also Known As

e-commerce merchandisingproduct display strategyvisual merchandising