Month in Online Merchandising : September

Seasalt Bowline Jacket £140, Des Petites Hauts Bibli Cardigan €159, Clarks Orla Andie Boots £180, Sambonet Terra Cotto Saucepot £52 at Heals, Wild & Wolf Enamel Bowls £27.50 at Baltic Shop, John Lewis Nordic Carafe £12 and Tumblers £4 each

It's September and already all-go with us. Here are my 'undo-able' to-dos for the month:

As we start to build up to the month of December, I've a long list of pages to optimise. I'm starting with really key pages now: pages of products that are integral to customers festive activities. Depending on what industry you're in that could be gifts, items for entertaining, decorations, party-wear... Then, I'll do some more tangential pages and return to core areas in a month or so, to make them fresh and even more relevant, and to look after any new products.
This year, I already have the end of December at the back of my mind as well - how pages can be adapted to meet the very different demands of the Winter sales period.

I haven't managed to make much progress on my compendium of great merchandising ideas - I think I need to set aside an hour or two each week for recording anything I've spotted, browsing for more examples etc...

We are wanting to review our 'review processes' soon too: take a look at what it is we currently esteem to be a success and how we measure degrees of success. Merchandising can achieve lots and lots of different things - improving sales, improving product views (and I say improving not increasing because sometimes you might not be going after volumes), increasing profit, creating a particular aesthetic-impression (one consistent with bricks-and-mortar stores, for example)... And you can measure in lots of different ways - you can consider individual products, you can consider pages as a whole, you can consider areas of pages (e.g. the effect generated by the first three rows, or the top right-hand product).
The processes we have in place now are good, but it's important consider other options or improvements.

Well, have a lovely week. I'm hoping to write some more about the first of my to-dos - to give a bit of an insight into how I'm thinking when I'm merchandising at the moment - so hopefully, it won't be too long before I post again.


Mari x

Month in Online Merchandising : August

(Clockwise from top left) Ilcsi Apricot Gel Mask (from cultbeauty.co.uk) £30, Mango Textured Cotton Blend Dress £59.99, Ilcsi Sour Cherry and Blackthorn Gel Mask (from cultbeauty.co.uk) £30, bohemiadesign.co.uk Embossed Enamel Bowls from £8.95, A Lot on Her Plate recipe book £25

August is a slightly strange month. The run up to Christmas is extremely busy in retail, so you feel you should be taking some holiday now - it's sunny, it's the last time when you're really completely free to take time off, and you need to build up a reserve of energy for the months of September, October, November and December. And yet, a lot of people seem to take multiple, short breaks, maybe because, though comparatively it's less busy than September, it's not quiet - there are always meetings to attend, projects to work on, etc. August feels as if it's a month of coming and going.

In the midst of this transience, here's what I have planned:

- Some forecasting for seasonal offers/promotions - Halloween, Christmas, New Year...
- Making sure my pages chime with the tones of late summer - with the desire to picnic, or to dine al fresco, to cook with summer fruit and veg, and buy fresh flowers, to camp (at festivals, or somewhere more remote), to daytrip, to do implausible things like attend outdoor, nighttime film showings!
I'll be prioritising products that are practical for these sorts of activities, materials that are colourful, airy and light or hard and cooling.
- At the same time, trying to make certain pages more autumnal, with a focus on more muted colours, shades towards russets and plums, denser, cosier fabrics and so on. Items that are useful if you are lounging at home - reading, watching something, cooking - or if you are outdoors in slightly cooler, crisper weather, will be given more attention.
- Some competitive shopping and making a compendium of any interesting range presentation ideas I find.
- Throwing a launch party for a strategy I'm involved in communicating to my colleagues.

Hopefully, I'll manage to snatch enough time!

Well, have a great week!

Fabrics - Web Merchandising Case Studies and Examples

Scion Kamili, Shoji and Meiko fabrics, Medwinds EV dress £99 (from £150), Kusmi Genmaicha and Sencha Fukuyu tea £15.40 each, Muji Hakuji Porcelain Teapot and Cup £9.95 and £2.95

Like everyone, I suppose, I sometimes feel my job is pretty tricky.
To put things in perspective, I decided to have a look at some sites selling products that seemed inherently particularly hard to merchandise. I've always thought that fabric would be difficult to work with - colour and pattern pulling you in different directions (would colour be my main concern if I were buying fabric for some new curtains? or would it be pattern? it's very difficult to say), the risk of it becoming monotonous if you use only detail-shot thumbnails in your galleries, the high chance of not properly showing texture, or smaller, more delicate patterns, of you don't use close-ups...

I found several sites merchandising fabrics really well however, among them Scion.

If, from the arrestingly, engagingly designed homepage (as you scroll, the page pans down for you in a really enticing way), you navigate to the fabric department, you're met with an overview and room-setting image links to sixteen collections. The collections are listed alphabetically and clicking opens up a description of the inspiration and intention, and a thumbnail of each pattern. The arrangement of these thumbnails is alphabetical and the colours seem to have been chosen to be aesthetically pleasing - you have two earthy, natural dye tones next to one another, two faded grey shades together, etc.

The collection pages start with the description again and more beautifully-styled room-setting shots, each with bubbles you can click to reveal the names of the fabrics. Wallpapers in the same collection are also quite prominently linked.

After this you see the pattern thumbnails as above. Or you can click on 'colourways' to reveal the patterns, interestingly not arranged alphabetically this time, in every available colour. Here again, I think attention had been paid to the flow of the colours, particularly where one pattern ran into the next - an inky block print was next to a repeating, blue and red patch design, etc.
Alternatively, you could click on a thumbnail to view product details, an image in a room setting, alternative colourways and some complementary products.

From the fabric department page, you had a second option of viewing thumbnails of all fabrics (all patterns in all colours) at once. Here you could sort alphabetically, by recency, or by colour. The default ordering was definitely not alphabetical and I felt there might have been less deference to aesthetic-effect (more of an emphasis on best-sellers perhaps). Clicking a thumbnail revealed the same product details as before.

Overcoming the difficulties of merchandising fabrics, this was a really nice website, displaying really beautiful materials. I've incorporated my favourites from the Wabi Sabi collection into the collage above.

Have a great weekend!

Month in Online Merchandising : July

Here are a couple of crisp shirts and chic sunnies, to keep and look cool this summer:

Uniqlo Premium Linen 3/4 Sleeve Shirt £19.90, Chinti and Parker x Net Broderie Anglaise Shirt £150, Alexander Wang Cropped Short Sleeve Poplin Shirt £109 down from £182, Jigsaw Alex Sunglasses £60, Anna-Karin Karlsson Rose Rouge Glasses €495, Eleven Paris Lusilver Glasses £79

And here's what is top of my to do list this month:

- Having done sale, it now has to be undone. Any layouts that were changed will revert back to their initial state, or be reworked completely.

- I am continuing to think about what's coming after summer. The transition from holiday back into the workplace, school or university will be at the top of many retailers' agendas - from fashion, to beauty, to food.
I would like to look at sales this time last year and build layouts around best sellers/better sellers (by this I mean products that sold much better than in earlier summer or later autumn). If there have been range changes, I will have to look at comparable products, of course. And if there are any opportunities for relevant content, I will work with colleagues to produce it. 
I am also preparing a promotion - helping to decide where and how it will be communicated, and forecasting accordingly.

- We have an issue with the delivery dates offered for a handful of our products at the moment. I am having to take on a detective role to ascertain why and to ensure our customers receive an accurate date, as close as possible to the day they order, no matter what they order.

- A lot of products will be added to the range at a certain point over the next couple of months. There are various reasons for possible delays, so I am trying to confirm that particular, key products are visible/purchasable promptly.

- We are working up to the launch of a new strategy that will guide the country for an extended period. I am lucky enough to be partly responsible for some local implementation, so I am trying to ensure that the most relevant product galleries/department pages are strategically aligned. I am also organising events and activities to communicate the strategy to the other members of our team, whether or not they will be working with it directly.

That's been quite enough to be getting on with for the last few weeks - it might keep me busy into August even!

Hope you've had a great month so far!

Lisbon - Web Merchandising Case Studies and Examples

Sennes Esperer por Coat €255, Madara Soap and Facial Masks at Organii, Encosta-te a Mim Cushions, Caulino Wall Balloon €130

I have been meaning to mention a couple of Portuguese brands. We were lucky enough to spend a week in Lisbon recently, you see. I think they're worth taking a look at online, and it would definitely be a shame to miss them if you're ever in the area.

First of all, Embaixada and Entre Tanto in Principe Real. Both are old palaces (Entre Tanto dates from the 17th century, while Embaixada is 19th-century, neo-Arabian fantasy!) in which each airy room is occupied by an exciting small brand.
Some of the ones to look out for are -
Urze - selling branded wool (including burel) and linen items from Manteigas, in the Serra d Estrela mountains. One brand, Sennes, has a minimal, but highly inspiring site, promoting and selling their outerwear and bags.
Organii - which sells organic cosmetics and baby products, from brands including Latvian Madara, Australian Nvey Eco and Irish Voya. They have a friendly, commercial site. 
Mimolab - a children's event organiser, also selling some toys and textiles. Browsing their true-to-brand website is lovely experience.
Antiflop - an artful scarf and shirt shop.
Encosta-te a Mim - producing cushions in the loveliest of colours.

Both Embaixada and Entre Tanto have clear websites, with comprehensive lists of their brands, and glossy images.


Second, Baixa-based Caulino. This is a studio creating and displaying striking, sometimes challenging, ceramics, as well as offering workshops and holidays to the neophyte and the more experienced. Again, their site is clean, with rich images, and a simple, well-merchandised shop.


Lastly Cork & Co, in Bairro Alto, with its cork collection ranging from handbags and jewellery, to design pieces like lighting, tableware and furniture, and Vista Alegre, a historic, yet modern, Portuguese luxury brand.


Lisbon is a beautiful, pastel-painted, tile-covered city. The food (pregos, bacalhau and chickpea salads, chourico, natas...), the wine (the Duoro, Alentejo, Vinho Verdo, the Port) is all so flavoursome! It's near the sea, near the mountains, and its slightly slower, mediterranean pace allows you to really unwind. I'd recommend it to absolutely everyone!

Month in Online Merchandising : June

KitchenAid Artisan Stand Mixer Green Apple £429 (from House of Fraser), Cuisinart Ice Cream Deluxe £67.50 (from John Lewis), Magimix Le Glacier Ice Cream Maker Chrome £79.97 (from Selfridges), Zoku Classic Ice Lolly Mold £13.50 (from John Lewis), Antillasse Ice Cream Dish £7 (from the Conran Shop), Rice Melamine Cups and Spoons £14 and £8.25 (from nettlegreen.co.uk), Zak Ice Cream Bowl £7 (from Selfridges), Mechanical Ice Cream Scoop £10 (from John Lewis)

Here is what I expect to get up to over the next few weeks:

- Tending to galleries - Some with high turnover need to be reviewed, as do some that are suffering through poor availability. Then there are a couple that are strategically important right now and a couple that I haven't had time to merchandise in a while.

- Last pieces of preparation for summer sale - We don't do sale in a big way, but I will certainly check the presentation, position, status and so on for all discounted products.

- Work on three meaty projects - On one, we are completing some testing before making some final decisions and knuckling down. For another, I am not so deeply involved at the moment, but am still needing to chase some emails and extent further offers to support. For the last, I have done what I can, so now I hope to motivate my colleagues.

- Training and archiving activities - I am studying materials and starting to compile.

- Looking forward to some post-summer promotions - Initially, I want to check what needs to be done and when.

- A last long-term job is conducting research into how merchandising might work first of all if we, at some point in the future, require a responsive website, and second if we, at some point in the future, acquire some tools to automate merchandising a little more.

Enjoy the start of summer!

Malmo - Web Merchandising Case Studies and Examples

Liebling Clogs 549Kr and Bric-a-Brac Cardigan 1099kr; Bolia Casoli chair from €199 and Quadro shelf from €399; Lindex Sunglasses £6.99 and Short Sleeve Dress £34.99; Bolia Angie pillow €49, Twiiitter table lamp €179 andGrandpa clock €65

A couple of weeks after going to Berlin, we went to Malmö (not been abroad in yonks and then we end up taking two trips in a month - strange, huh?)

I really liked Malmö - different to, but equally enjoyable as Copenhagen (I visited and wrote a post about the Danish capital a year or so ago).

Though I wanted to do a little shopping, I failed to find any interesting stores until closing time on Saturday. So I have since done some virtual retail tourism and looked up the websites of the shops I missed. I found some interesting and really attractive pages:

I spotted several outlets of a large retailer called Lindex. When I searched for them online, I found that they had opened their first British store last week.

At the top of their homepage was a large carousel displaying a message about the new store, a link to a charitable collection (there was more about this immediately below) and finally a link to the children's department. The first and second images were the same, which seemed maybe a little bit of a waste.
Simple carousels were used to good effect midway down and towards the bottom of the homepage too. In general, the CTAs were clear, directing you to product galleries, offering you the option of signing up to newsletters, etc. Clickable product names and prices and a + symbol allowed you to view products in a small pop-up.

Messages about delivery times, returns, and an offer for free delivery when you bought from a particular collection appeared in several places on the homepage. Delving deeper into the site however, there was some confusion over whether standard orders would be despatched or delivered within 4-6 days. We were told that the longer waiting times were due to their warehouse being located in Sweden, which was nice and transparent. A free click and collect service was offered, though not communicated on the homepage. The checkout was streamlined and it was possible to proceed to purchase without creating an account.

Their top navigation bar linked to three product categories, a page of new products, a lookbook (shoppable, glossy images of recent collections), and a magazine (which contained substantial fashion content and was also shoppable).

From the category pages, you could reach various subcategories, new products, future products, sustainable products and best sellers. Once you reached the products, they were logically grouped and you were able to filter by colour, size, style and brand, as well as sort by price. This area of the site was very strong.

One small thing I would say is that their Google snippet details how customers have 30 days' right to withdraw from purchase. It would be good if eventually it was more descriptive of the substance of the site.

I have seen a couple of Bolia's in Northern Europe and always been intrigued by their statement shop design (vertical gardens, altar-like cash-desks...) Their website proved to be as interesting as their stores.

If Lindex reused one image for the first and second position of the carousel at the top of their homepage, Bolia went one step further. The two images on their carousel contained no furniture - both were striking, black and white photographs of people, one linking to a new collection, the other explaining delivery.

The website was built around coloured rectangles. The colours made the pages vibrant and showed white furniture to its advantage. In product galleries, the rectangle-design meant that certain articles could be four-times the size of others, and that  messages could be inserted, without looking out of place.

The most prominent categories were sofas, living room, home office, dining, storage and accessories. Nice, context images were used for categories and sub-categories, whereas product pictures were simpler. In product galleries, you were able to refine by price and design.

Product pages contained information about the designer, some inspiration on how the product might look at home and some additional products, said to be recommended by the designer.

A pop-up allowed you to find out delivery times. The cost of delivery however was visible only at checkout.

There was a lot of rich content - an inspiration page (with lookbooks, descriptions of the collections...), a page about their designers, a page with information and beautiful photos/videos of their stores, an Instagram feed, a match-making page (!)

All this made for a really aspirational site, but one that could perhaps do with a 
tiny bit more polish.

We arrived at Liebling (meaning favourite, or darling, in German, I think) at 5.35 on Saturday, so my experience of the physical store was limited to pressing my nose disappointedly against the window as they cashed up. All the same, I got a strong, positive impression of colourful, well-constructed products and half-modern half-vintage decor, everything with its own particular beauty. The website really captured this feeling and for the site of a boutique, it was well-designed and well-maintained.

The presentation of categories and subcategories at the top of the homepage was elegant, though it didn't follow the most logical order perhaps - they sold a lot of children's products for example but that category didn't have a terribly prominent position.  There were however useful links to news, a product listing sorted by brand, an edited selection of favourite pieces and Liebling's own production. Product galleries were organised and the quality of the imagery was fairly high.

Several products appeared in multiple galleries - more whimsical homeware under children as well as home for example - increasing their exposure.

On the product pages, some good further products were suggested under the item you were looking at - functionally and stylistically similar.

A delivery offer was highlighted (free within Sweden over 1000Kr spend) but I don't believe you could see the actual delivery price except on the ts and cs page.

Finally, there was a wordpress blog of cute and useful posts, which linked to particular products and powerfully conveyed the spirit of the store.

Hope you've had a less tiring start to the week than I have!

Berlin - Web Merchandising Case Studies and Examples

MCM Game On! Diamond Land! Bag, Mykita Dionne Frames, Berghain 10 Anniversary Book €30, Type Hype Set of 3 Notebooks €47 and Porcelain Plate, Bowl & Cup €149

I wasn't able to spend much time shopping in Germany (we spent most of Saturday just admiring the city and on Sunday everything was closed). But I did spot some beautiful shops and have since looked them up online, as a sort of virtual tourist. None of the websites were a let-down. Here are my thoughts: 

Type Hype - The homepage was very engaging with links to favourite products, new designs, a gift finder, a product generator (you select the typeface(s) and product type(s) and it spells a word of your choice in products - so much fun!), inspirational information about producers... All the images were large and glossy, and you could swipe between them. 
It was easy to navigate deeper and, once you found what you were looking for, the products were logically and attractively ordered, with appealing articles always appearing on the top. Encouraging messages about shipping, etc. were inserted between products. There were some small mistranslations (motives instead of motifs threw me for a second) but overall this did little to detract from a beautiful site.

Walther Koenig - The site design was nice and clean, with relevant categories on the top navigation bar - bookshop, special offers, publishing, antiquarian -  a side bar giving details of events, linking to articles under 10€, etc. and two banners  promoting specific, interesting products. 
Calls to action could have be clearer (I accidentally started downloading something - an upcoming catalogue). And unfortunately I found no way to browse. 'Bookshop' presented 9 books - with a range of price points and detailed images - but you couldn't click 'more'; there seemed to be no way to reach their extensive catalogue. It may have been a bug, or to do with the browser I was using, of course. On the upside, search was good. 

Mykita - This site was laden with lovely, detailed content, which might partly be because it has to be quite business-customer facing. The homepage presented lookbooks, campaign makings-of, details of collaborations with other brands... There was a blog, which posted their pressbook, for instance. 
The top categories in the navigation bar were the different areas of the range - Sun, Optical, Collabs, Sport. Within these, you were presented a mix of purchasable and non-purchasable products. Alternatively, you could select eShop from the bottom of the nav bar, to view only products that were available to buy. I think this could confuse some customers. 
As far as I could see, products were mainly ordered alphabetically, which is maybe not super-commercial, though you could filter very well. The inclusion of product features, brand background and design awards was exemplary. And on every product page (and there are very, very many product pages), there was a video of the relevant glasses worn by a fresh-faced model. 

MCM - From the homepage, there were clear, prominent links to several areas of eShop, which is certainly not always the case. Otherwise, the relevant navigation bar categories were Men, Women, Travel and Gifts. The first subcategory of most of these was Explore and Discover, which presented selected products, editorial content, etc. - nice if you were just browsing. 
To select some further subcategories at random: in Women's Accessories the products were grouped by type, and, when viewed on a smartphone at least, the colours drew you further down the page most effectively; Women's Bags were grouped by design and then model, which was sometimes slightly detrimental to the overall look. Filtering and sorting options were extensive and clear.
At the top of the Gifts page, there were two large images linking to exactly the same place, which seemed a bit of a wasted opportunity. Then there were links to two 'whimsical'/classic collections. I couldn't find a way to shop these collections - all I could do was view lookbook imagery - though that might have been me being obtuse. 
Overall, a good page for a fashion accessory brand.

I hope you liked my little virtual tour (!) - enjoy the rest of your week.

14th Feb

Julianne Silk Cami and Short £45 and £39, Catherine Tough, Lambswool Gold Elephant Socks £22, Simone Perèle Joy Bra and Shorts £70 and £45 , Wacoal Embrace Lace Chemise £51, Mimi Holliday Flamingo Bra and Knickers £40 and £39, Eberjey Playsuit £72, Cos Cashmere Socks £17

I'm working up to a post about what I saw in Berlin, but, in the meantime, I thought I'd offer some thoughts on a lingerie site and the merchandising they went with before Valentine's Day. I looked at their mobile site, not their desktop, so that you're aware.
First category offered on the homepage was, naturally enough, Valentine's.
Then you had Lingerie, Dd+ and Erotic.
I feel they could perhaps have prioritised the links Sets (their set finder tool is good) and Gifts (they have a great asset that suggest gifts for different personality-types (luxury-lover, someone who appreciates home comforts...) and different occasions (from wedding to date-night - I've not been getting gifts on date-night - going to have to have a word!) 
If you navigated through to Lingerie, Babydolls, and Basques, Bustiers & Corsets were both above Bras - which seemed quite Valentine's-relevant. There were also links to News, Trends and SS15 Collections - if you were in need of some inspiration.
In the News section, I didn't feel there was a Valentine's focus - the top products were more 'everyday', than 'special'. In the Nightwear News, the products at the top were mainly jersey and very casual.
Good sorting/filtering  made up for the lack of initially relevant ordering. You could sort according to price, brand, rating, popularity and newness. And you had the option to filter by size, colour, material, cup (padded/nonpadded/underwired), if the article came in a set....
So all in all, it would have been a pleasant, if not impeccable, experiencing purchasing a gift for a loved one on this site. Hope you had a good Valentine's!

New Resolutions 2

Sweaty Betty - Om Yoga Vest £45, Virasana Yoga Bra £38, Dynamic Yoga Leggings £65; Marks and Spencer - Reflective Jacket £55, Gym Slim Sports Bra £28, Graphic Print Leggings £25; Ballet Beautiful Wrap Top £ 145, Live the Process Sports Bra £60 and Paneled Printed Leggings £105 all at Net-A-Porter

Just after Christmas, I discussed my resolutions for the next year at work. New beginnings seem to be top of everyone's mind right now. All the retailers are talking about detox diets and exercise regimes, kicking bad habits and picking up new skills, purging and enriching...

I've been revisiting all my pages and finding lots to improve upon. What felt right in the autumn just doesn't now (circumstances change of course, and the changes you make, bring about the need for more changes). New opportunities have opened up. And, while some pages have less potential at the moment, they can still be tidied up and put to bed for a while.
Lots to be getting on with!


I wanted to see if I could spot any other merchandising that was starting a-fresh this spring -

First, a book-seller: I compared their current homepage to their homepage in early December. Certain things remained the same, certain things had changed.
They led with the same four categories - Children's, Fiction, Crime, and Food and Drink - and the same images represented these categories. After this however, 4 'New & Bestselling' volumes replaced 8 'Christmas & Best-sellers'.
Both pages ended with 4 'Favourite' books and 8 Category links (to Gifts and some non-book departments), but since December, 3 Books of the Month have been inserted before the 'Favorites'.

At the moment, several of the featured books have a healthy-eating focus. There's also a noticeable presence of film-related books - because it's Awards Season, no doubt. This was not the case before Christmas.

Currently, a carousel sends you to a page dedicated to New Year's New Starts - with some recent releases at the top and then links to healthy eating, money and DIY, travel guides, language tutorials, even juicing and non-alcoholic beverage books!
The first product on the Food & Drink page is about 'The Art of Eating Well'; on the Home & Gardening page it's 'The Life-changing Magic of Tidying'!

Second, a supermarket: when I looked at their site at the start of December side-by-side with their site now, I saw similar categories but different images - spring flowers instead of wreaths and red bouquets, glasses of rose instead of flutes of champagne. Healthy-eating tips, ways to save money on food and nutritious recipes replaced links to Christmas products, decoration inspiration, gift guides and festive recipes.The carousel contained deals, deals on healthier ready-meals and even a month weight-loss regime.
Products you could consider 'healthy' - ingredients, snacks and meals - are pretty prominent throughout the site. Links to Muesli & Granola and Couscous have the same level of focus as Flour and Oils & Vinegar. Subcategories such as Specialist & Health Food appear much higher up drop-downs than I would have expected.

I also considered some sports brands - which presented new collections, particularly winter running ranges, along with ways to get fit and platforms for sharing exercise-experiences.

Department stores featured links to and content on fitness; while health and beauty stores had offers and rewards on health products.


In the collage above, you can see what I would pick, if I could splurge on some new kit to support my get-fit resolution!

New Resolutions

Christmas came, the boxing day sales started (as early as 14th December - as I observed it anyway!) and soon it will be 2015.

So here are some deals for New Year's Eve:

Hoss Intropia Lace Maxi Dress £258 (from £430) ; Closet Floral Dress £34 (from £48) ; French Connection Misty Mountain Shift Dress £44 (from £110) ; Oasis Lurex Drape Dress £28 (from £42) ; Jigsaw Metallic Court Shoe £69 (from £139) ; Mango Leather Pumps £29.99 (from £59.99) ; Nine West Ispy Wedges £49 (from £85) ; Sophia Webster Xavier Pumps £350 (from £495)

And, in the spirit of introspection and scrutiny of the year gone-by, here's a list of things I am resolved to do at work over the next few months:

1. Really sink my teeth into some reports, simplify them and make them more efficient. Among other things, these reports flag products that are missing from our pages - every lacuna is potential inconvenience to customers and/or lost sales. I will have to be disciplined and scrape together some time to do this now, to save time later.

2. Evaluate the habits I'm falling into when I prepare to, and go about, remerchandising a page:
- I do a lot of research before I start work on a page - into sales values, sales volumes, page views, new and discontinued products, marketing strategy, market trends, supply issues... But I need to make sure that I am not forgetting anything and that nothing is being considered out of order or unnecessarily.
- I think sometimes I waste time starting from square one, when I could refine what's already there. Sometimes I try to work with what I have, but ultimately change everything, in which case it would have been quicker to start from scratch.

3. Last, I want to pencil in some time to step back and see the big picture. Something of a perfectionist, mired in the little details, I can fail to spot big changes that could make big differences. I should step back more often.

Well, very happy New Year to you then x

Ways of Working 2

Acne Lambswool Jumper £230, Caron Piu Bellodgia Eau de Parfum £105, House of Hackney Palmeral Teapot £70, Deborah Lippmann Nail Polish Weird Science £16, Marni Felt Sandals £355

So recently I discussed how I've been adopting two strategies when merchandising. The first strategy is, of course, data-driven: number of sales, of clicks... Now the second strategy - style, or function, or colour, etc. - isn't chosen at random. But instinct definitely comes into it. I try to intuit the most common deciding factor when purchasing the products on a certain page and I work with that.

For example, on a page of serious hiking rucksacks customers are likely to be influenced by technical criteria - capacity, number of compartments, ergonomic design of the straps... While for a page of little daysacks, the look of the bag - colour, print, etc. - might be more important.

Trail and error is of course very useful when selecting a second strategy. And market research no doubt sheds a lot of light.


I looked at the website of one of my favourite department stores, to see if there was any evidence of this shopping-habits-influenced merchandising on their pages: 

I would have expected the skincare pages to be organised by function. They started with a row of anti-aging concentrates/creams, but after this my impression was that they were organised by sales. You saw several cleansers, exfoliants, etc. together at times, but it could have been chance.
There were eight categories to click into and, in the first two of these, there were four subcategories. On the category pages, the products seemed to be grouped by brand, with a couple of groupings for each brand. Perhaps a high percentage of customers interact with these categories - making the layout of the All page less important. And perhaps the customers also know what brand they are looking for before they arrive at the site, and so don't need to compare different makes of moisturiser... Alternatively, this grouping by brand could just be the result of the product upload process!
You could filter by price, colour (a bit irrelevant here but I suppose it has to be the same for everything - lipstick to skincare) and again  brand. There were two options by which you could sort (price and newness).

The nail varnishes, which I would have thought should be organised by colour, were grouped by brand and then - or they seemed to be anyway - colour. At the top of the page there were some commercial-looking reds and a peach, then some pinks and purples, these were followed by metallics and some rich blues/greens, then primary colours, then pastels and so on.

I wondered whether I would see the candles ordered by fragrance-type - fresh, floral, woody, etc. I found that they were grouped by brand and then there was some evidence of the floral scents all being together, with the fresh scents after and the oriental scents after that, though it could have been chance. There were also some lip balms and soaps in with the home fragrances, which was a bit confusing.


Without knowing more about their sales and systems, it's difficult to say whether this retailer merchandises according to shopping habits for particular products. But I have a feeling they might.

Unexpected way(s) of working

Rag & Bone Cashmere and Wool-Blend Cardigan £330, Hoss Intropia Zebra Brooch £41, Bunney Silver Initial Brooch £195, H&M Short Cardigan £9.99, Uniqlo +J Stretch Cashmere Cardigan £129, Marni Brooch £180, Cilea Brooch at V&A £85, Mango Cotton Cardigan £29.99

I’ve been working with a couple of different strategies when I've been merchandising recently. I had expected to use one, namely figures. I thought it would be a matter of identifying the best products – from the point of view of sales, or profit, or clicks, or any other criterion – and placing them in prominent positions.
However, most pages, I am finding, require a secondary strategy, or logic. It’s like structuring an argument, or an essay, or an article (I think it could be most like constructing an article). You might want to put all your winning ideas at the very beginning, but you have to order them, group them, link them, set each one to its best advantage.
It is necessary to adopt a subsidiary strategy: to use style to determine position, as well as sales, for example; or to consider colour, or function, or price. If I were working on a jewellery page, I might rank my products according to the number of clicks they received, then I might place the top three necklaces on the first row, the top three bracelets on the second, the top three earrings on the third, etc. 
I think the order the functions come in (necklace, then bracelet, then earrings) should be determined by individual product clicks (i.e. if the product to receive the most clicks were a necklace, it should lead and two other necklaces should follow it; if the product to receive the second most clicks were a bracelet, it would then come fourth), rather than overall function clicks (i.e. if bracelets receive the most clicks overall, they would lead). If you don’t heed the individual, you might end up with your best products some distance down the page, if for instance you have one or two very strong necklaces and lots of mediocre bracelets.

Now, I think I am feeling the need to use several strategies because it makes the page easier to understand and more convincing. You might have exactly what the customer wants, it might be at the top of the page, but if it is surrounded by dissimilar products, by products the customer doesn’t want at all, it is easily missed. Using several strategies allows you to break your page into sections, so that the customer can see the extent of your range, discard the parts that are not of interest, and focus on the parts that are. A multi-strategy approach improves the page aesthetic, something that must not be underestimated.

So, from now, on I’ll be seeing more in my products than just their figures!