Smart Merchandiser

Business Challenge

As ecommerce grows in popularity, consumers increasingly expect a more sophisticated and personalized online shopping experience. Even the savviest merchandisers can be stymied by the complex challenges of designing an attractive, easily navigable layout that provides customers relevant and timely product information. To drive sales, there are many reasons to carefully control how products are displayed, including avoiding spotlighting merchandise that’s out of stock and to present popular items upfront. Yet too often, ecommerce software pulls product information from a database by category and displays it arbitrarily. A merchandiser, who wants to influence the ordering of products, usually has to manually add a sequence number to each product in the category database, keeping track of the order becomes cumbersome and time-consuming.

Layout challenges for the web store go hand-in-hand with the need for back-office analytics. To position a product effectively, retailers must consider each product’s actual sales as well as its conversion rate, online ratings and reviews, seasonal demand and marketplace sentiment. They need tools that allow them to really “listen” to customers, in order to react quickly to trends, spot the hot sellers and plan more effective campaigns.

The Solution

Smart Merchandiser enhances the capabilities of an ecommerce site by providing total control over online storefronts. The solution centralizes monitoring, editing, inventory and analytics into one powerful tool. Merchants can streamline their workflow, by utilizing easy graphical displays to make real time decisions supported by comprehensive business intelligence.

With Smart Merchandiser’s graphical interface, a retailer can visually lay out the physical display of merchandise on a web page, kiosk or mobile device. Products are presented as thumbnail images, which can be dragged and dropped with the mouse into any desired order. At the same time, integrated data sources feed into the merchandising process so the merchandiser can use that information to make smarter decisions on how to organize and present products online. The information is presented in multiple layers of data over each thumbnail image – including color information, sales, web analytics, conversion rate, ratings and reviews, social media buzz, and inventory data. When the right layout is achieved, the data is submitted to the database with the proper sequence order.

Value Proposition

Smart Merchandiser streamlines workflow and increases sales by providing critical business intelligence to assist in merchandising decisions for online stores. It allows the online retailer to present merchandise in the most strategic way, to optimize the shopper’s experience and facilitate the highest possible conversion rate. It also decreases the amount of time required to execute ecommerce product management activities from days to hours.

As one of the first single tools to provide a complete suite of business analytics, Smart Merchandiser eliminates the need to juggle different programs, multiple data sources and unintuitive spreadsheets to get a sense of how products are selling and to track inventory. Now merchandisers can see analytics, ratings, conversion rates, and in-stock numbers simply by clicking on any item in the store, and can make fast, informed decisions based on real-time analytics and available inventory.

Company Description

Zobrist Consulting Group, Inc. is a leading services provider dedicated to developing eBusiness applications on the IBM platform. We implement award-winning solutions that drive sales and business efficiency which garnered the IBM WebSphere Commerce Foundational Leadership Award. Zobrist was recognized with the 2011 IBM IMPACT Best of Show Award and the 2011 IBM Beacon Award for “Best Industry Solution for Retail”. Our focus on innovation and customer satisfaction combined with industry-leading IBM technology means that we deliver solutions that perform.

For more information, please contact:

Eric Opp
Mobile: 408-357-3179
Office: (877)ZOB-RIST or (877)-962-7478
Eopp@zobristinc.com

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