By Rieva Lesonsky
If you think your ecommerce business can’t possibly compete against the big companies with thousands of SKUs in stock, think again. Some new data suggests that in a world of information overload and too many choices, offering limited selection may actually help ecommerce sites sell more.
The concept is called curation, and essentially, it means editing down the options available to shoppers and presenting them in a simple-to-understand way so customers don’t get overwhelmed. Think of a curated ecommerce site like a chic boutique or specialty shop where helpful salespeople stand ready to help the customer hone in on the exact product that’s perfect for him or her.
Big ecommerce sites use some forms of curation, of course. For instance, sites like Amazon and Netflix use automated recommendation systems to suggest products based on a customer’s past purchase and browsing history. And sites like Zappos and LandsEnd.com enable customers to sort items by size, color, material and dozens of other ways. But eMarketer notes there’s also been a rise in sites that, instead of relying on algorithms to sort and categorize merchandise, actually offer hand-picked selections of products, and sell fewer products instead of more.
“There will always be a place for comprehensive, multicategory retail sites,” Krista Garcia, eMarketer analyst, said in the article, “but fine-tuned collections enhanced by personal touches also perform a necessary function in the ecommerce ecosystem.”
A study of ecommerce sites by the e-tailing group in the fourth quarter of 2011 found curated ecommerce was growing in popularity. Here’s what curation tactics were most often used by e-tailers:
- Organizing products into branded sections: 89 percent
- Offering channel/merchant exclusives: 83 percent
- Providing guides or how/to information: 74 percent
- Grouping products by themes: 64 percent
- Providing guides or how/to information on product pages: 48 percent
- Offering automatic reordering or a gift of the month: 20 percent
Usage of all of these tactics had increased since the fourth quarter of 2010.
Garcia points out that it doesn’t matter how many products your website offers—if customers can’t find what they’re looking for, they will leave empty-handed. Curation makes it easier for consumers to find what they’re looking for, increasing the chances that they will buy.
How do you—or could you—use curation to help your ecommerce site grow?
Image by Flickr user Elvert Barnes (Creative Commons)
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Tags: Marketing, small business, Technology, website design
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