At college, we took a module on retail advertising. One of the primary things that we focused on in that module at college, was something that our lecturer referred to as ‘Shopology’. He used the word Shopology as a word to describe how a retail shop is layed out to maximise sales conversions. In other words, the sweets at the checkout at a supermarket, the special offer stands when you walk through the door. Even the location of the tills, shelves, and just about anything inside of the 4 walls. The idea of retail shopology, is to promote and encourage sales of products or services to customers that would otherwise of not happened.
The principals of Shopology can also be applied to the world of e-commerce. This can be almost anything for example:
- Loud and attractive special offers on the homepage, and throughout the web-site. Customers who are visiting your store to buy something in particular, may also be persuaded to buy something else that is on special offer, that they otherwise might not have known about.
- On individual product item pages, you can promote that product’s accessories that can be bought at the same time, that the customer may have forgotten about.
- If your shop is very competitive with prices, you could also advertise RRPs (Recommended Retail Prices) next to your price, to remind customers that you are cheaper than the high street.
- Customer Usability. Although usability is a different subject altogether, the way a customer walks around a retail store, should also be considered on a computer.
The above are just a few examples as to how shopology can be applied to your e-commerce web-site. ‘E-Commerce Shopology’ is something that we consider as designers and marketers.
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