Here at Profitero, we frequently use the term “digital shelf” to describe what we do and why we do it. However, the phrase is much more than a buzzword. The digital shelf is an important concept to understand in the eCommerce world. Brands spend around $500 billion per year for physical retail shelf space when consumers are increasingly choosing to shop online on the digital shelf instead. Moreover, 78% of consumers turn to online shopping channels before even entering a brick-and-mortar store.
A firm grasp of the digital shelf and how to command it could be the difference between a brand that sinks or swims online.
Contents:
The digital shelf is how and where a brand’s product is displayed online. The digital shelf can be on a:
This is where digital consumers go to browse, discover and purchase products, similar to a physical retail shelf.
For most retailers, the primary digital shelf is the search results page. This is where most consumers look for items to purchase after inputting their direct inquiries into a search bar or filtering product choices based on their individual requirements. Other digital shelves are category pages, curated product lists and new product release email campaigns.
Just as with the physical shelf in a brick-and-mortar store, the digital shelf is where brands can control their items' online appearance and story. But brands must rely almost entirely on product content instead of strategic product placement, aisle endcap groupings or flashy packaging.
Some of the content elements that are required for the digital shelf include:
Combined, these elements are displayed on retailer websites to help consumers make informed purchasing decisions online.
Think of digital shelf content as the collection of online experiences that consumers use to purchase products. These might include resources to find, research, and compare products. Since the digital shelf is where products are displayed online, think of the content as what guides shoppers and helps them understand the product once they find it.
Some examples of digital shelf content are:
It can be difficult to know precisely how shoppers will move through their shopping experience, which is why quality content at every stage of the journey is important.
Digital shelf space is the space products occupy on the internet. It’s the online equivalent of a traditional brick & mortar shelves and aisles.
Products might be displayed on:
Maximizing the space products occupy in the digital marketplace can make all the difference in bottom-line sales.
Collecting digital shelf data is essential to running a successful eCommerce business. Since this is such a broad topic, digital shelf analytics include the entire online shopping experience—especially performance metrics about your product pages.
Tracking important analytics and metrics is vital in any business, particularly online businesses. The digital shelf space requires specialized knowledge, tools, and resources to track numbers properly.
Later in this article, we’ll cover digital shelf analytics, data, and resources for getting started.
The eCommerce world is an ocean of brands and products to sort through. While shoppers browse the metaphorical aisles of their Google search results and social media ads, they may stumble across your brand’s eCommerce site. It rests on a shelf all its own.
Understanding where products are on the internet—and how you maximize that space—can drastically increase your brand’s visibility.
The digital shelf is important for brands to grasp as it can directly impact sales, profitability and brand reputation. For example:
Additionally, more consumers are turning to the digital shelf to conduct research before making a purchase in-store.
Strengthening your online performance can have a direct impact on a shopper’s overall retail experience.
Understanding the digital shelf can make or break a brand’s ability to succeed online. Developing a robust digital shelf strategy can lead to optimized product content, improved search placement, increased product page traffic and higher conversion (i.e., sales).
At a company level, the digital shelf impacts an entire brand’s ecosystem, including:
Developing a cohesive strategy ensures that all moving pieces work successfully together.
1. Digital shelf planning: The first step in building a digital shelf strategy is setting organizational goals. Goals can either be hard (i.e., based on sales, profitability or market share growth) or soft (i.e., based on brand reputation, customer satisfaction or brand awareness).
For example, brands that prioritize sales as a goal may be highly focused on optimizing the digital shelf for one or two retailers most important to their business, and may aim to improve every lever available to them (search, content, availability, etc).
On the other hand, brands may be concerned about brand reputation. They may focus primarily on creating product content with broad-reaching impacts across their entire retailer network and heavily influencing the shopper experience in-store.
2. Digital shelf prioritization: Once you set goals to identify the focus of your digital shelf strategy, it is important to prioritize the retailers, brands, and products to which you'll dedicate resources. This helps narrow down an extensive portfolio to concentrate on high performers, such as bestsellers, fast growers, or new releases. In addition, you should prioritize which competitor products will be helpful to track and benchmark against.
3. Digital shelf personnel: Personnel assignment involves determining what roles and how many employees are necessary to execute your strategy. Generally, this includes an overall owner of the digital shelf strategy that ensures goals are being met and reports progress to senior management. Other digital shelf roles can include product content copywriters, search specialists, strategy and insights analysts, and supply chain experts. If adding resources is not possible, brands can look into outsourcing tasks to eCommerce agencies that help with digital shelf optimization.
4. Digital shelf monitoring: After setting priorities and allocating resources, a plan needs to be set to measure and monitor progress against goals. This involves developing a core set of KPIs to determine digital shelf wins and loss rates. KPIs should directly correlate to specific areas of the strategy, be monitored on a regular monthly or quarterly cadence, and highlight areas of success or improvement. The top KPIs we recommend tracking include:
|
Focus area |
KPIs |
Recommended goal |
|
Content |
Amount of content per product |
No empty content fields, and content (e.g., number of images, videos, etc.) that is comparable to competitor products |
|
Content |
Number of compliant content fields |
All fields compliant |
|
Search placement |
Number of products appearing on page 1 of search results for a keyword |
Goals for search placement should be based on understanding your current share of search and continuously improving |
|
Search placement |
Average numerical ranking of products in a category |
Goals for search placement should be based on understanding your current average search ranking and continuously improving |
|
Pricing |
MAP compliance rate |
No MAP violations |
|
Availability |
Percentage of in-stock products versus listed products |
All listed products should be in-stock or removed from view until back in stock |
|
Reviews |
Number of products with a specified review count |
Appropriate amount of total reviews should be determined by benchmarking against competitor products |
|
Ratings |
Number of products with a positive, typically above 4 stars, rating |
All products with a positive (ideally 4+) star rating |
5. Digital shelf toolkit: Similar to other business processes, tools can help teams do their jobs faster and more efficiently. A few tool categories brands should consider using with their digital shelf strategy include:
6. Digital shelf optimization: After the proper processes and tools are in place, optimization of the digital shelf comes in to continuously improve. Brands must use their gathered insights to revise, update and hone in their strategy. One way to accomplish this is to benchmark product KPIs against competitor brands to ensure performance is up to par.
7. Digital shelf executive commitment: The last, but perhaps most critical, requirement is receiving executive commitment, support and funding for the digital shelf strategy. Budget will be needed for internal headcount, agency outsourcing, software tools and services, or optimization efforts, such as paid advertising campaigns and promotions.
You can gain support of the executive team by:
Providing third-party research firm case studies that demonstrate eCommerce's importance.
Analyzing metrics is an ongoing process in digital shelf management. The key to gaining valuable insights is focusing on product page performance metrics. These analytics help you see how you compare to your competitors. You’ll also discover how well your digital assets are serving your brand.
Each eCommerce site carries its own set of rules. There are specific ways to categorize your products, how your buyers navigate the site, how your search engine works, and more. Using digital shelf metrics can tell you what’s happening on your site. That’s something sales numbers simply don’t show.
Here are a few benefits of analyzing your digital shelf:
By tracking a few vital metrics and analyzing your digital shelf management, you can seize opportunities on which your competitors are missing out.
There are three core steps you can take to start analyzing your digital shelf now:
These days, everyone is online all the time. We’re seeing PPC ads all over the internet, receiving tailored ads on our social media feeds, and finding emails in our inbox every morning from our favorite brands. Our purchases are more digitally influenced than ever before.
Consumers might find products through a Google search, word of mouth, or social media. Here are a few ways to attract shoppers to your digital shelf and cultivate product pages that keep them captivated:
While perfecting the digital shelf is important, be aware that you will encounter some difficulties:
Now let's cut to the heart: how can your brand capitalize on all the digital shelf has to offer? While strategies vary among industries and retailers, brands can generally follow these steps to improve performance.
Do you want to cut through the noise and confusion of digital shelf analytics? There are many things to consider when tracking your metrics, especially when trying to automate the process. Contact Profitero to discover how to streamline an actionable strategy.
Measuring digital shelf KPIs and performance can feel like sailing in uncharted waters. Luckily, there’s no reason to do so without a map. Download our guide to measuring digital shelf KPIs and performance today and simplify the early stages of the process.
Schedule a demo to learn how Profitero can help your brand strengthen its digital shelf presence.