You can have the best products, the smoothest checkout, the most effective advertising and more traffic than any of your competitors. But if you don’t optimise your product pages to drive conversion, the baskets will stay empty.
What the digital shelf is
The digital shelf is how products are presented online on a platform, much like they would be on a physical store shelf. It’s the page showing a brand’s items with all their data: images, descriptions, features and prices. Users can filter by category, read reviews and ratings — all with the goal of completing the sale.
Just as in a physical store, the showcase is fundamental. A well-defined, organised and planned virtual showcase attracts more potential buyers, and the way items are presented affects customer experience, brand perception and ultimately sales.
Why it matters for your online sales
Anyone who shops online knows the value of a well-kept, easy-to-navigate site where the information is right there. Some advantages of getting it right:
- Better user experience: presenting products clearly and consistently makes buying more pleasant and raises the chance of conversion.
- Easy comparison: users compare products effortlessly and decide with confidence.
- Greater personalisation: with well-defined filters and attributes, buyers reach what they want faster.
The three factors that decide the purchase
- Availability: if the product isn’t available it can hardly be bought. Worse still, the user may end up buying their second choice, and you lose a customer who could have been loyal.
- Price: competition is fierce, and being off-market costs you.
- Content: it’s all the information the customer has to convince themselves. Title, description, images and video must be up to date. A reviews section adds to it.
How to control the digital shelf at every point of sale
Every point of sale is your showcase, so it deserves the same care as your own. Are you certain that all your distributors and platforms have appropriate, up-to-date material for your products — names, descriptions, images, videos, rich content, ratings?
The only way to know your product’s real positioning and guarantee that every seller meets your standards is by monitoring and optimising your digital shelf. That means being able to analyse:
Product pages, broken down by brand, market, retailer and SKU: name and descriptions, number of images and videos, rich content, available stock, ratings and reviews. And knowing what competitors are doing on those same metrics.
Keyword results: each brand’s share in the top results of a retailer’s internal search engine, so you can see your position and act on it.
Browsing results: how products are displayed across a site’s sections when browsing by category.
Banner positioning: the visibility of banners and promotional elements by market, sector or category.
In an environment this competitive, leave nothing unmonitored. Data Seekers analyses catalogue, content and prices across any brand, retailer or marketplace, B2B or B2C, with no limit on sites, markets or users.