Retail success is more than conversions. It’s also about increasing inventory turns and delivering a seamless customer experience.
Consumer expectations for fast and reliable service continue to rise. And so do ecommerce sales. Global retail ecommerce sales are projected to reach more than $8 trillion USD by 2027.
But right now, inefficient inventory costs about $1.1 trillion to businesses globally. Inaccurate inventory data skyrockets carrying costs, lost revenue from stockouts, and wasted employee time. It spikes the cost of customer retention and acquisition, and worse—customer trust.
So what does that mean for commerce search?
Customers want an easy way to find what they’re looking for, plain and simple. And your search functionality plays a big part in that. One study showed 69% of online shoppers go straight to the search bar when visiting ecommerce sites. Then, 80% leave due to a poor experience. Optimizing your commerce search with accurate inventory data can help you save, big time.
Top ways to optimize your commerce search
1. Prioritize in-stock items
Don’t waste valuable screen real estate on items that are out of stock. How frustrating is it to find the perfect item, only to later discover it’s out of stock? This is a terrible customer experience.
On average, 70% of online shoppers abandon their shopping carts due to issues around stock availability. Plus, almost 60% of online shoppers in the U.S. said out-of-stock issues negatively impacted their shopping behavior.
Behemoths like Amazon are offering near-seamless shopping experiences. You can’t overlook making the customer experience on your own website as seamless as possible. Fluent Order Management can enable you to filter search results to show only what’s available in stock.
2. Highlight local in-stock items
What’s the best way to make sure customers find what they need quickly? Highlight locally in-stock items. How? Allow customers to filter their search by postal code.
Customers can easily see if an item is close enough for same-day pickup with geo-filtering. If their nearest location doesn’t have it, they can check the next closest store. This offers a seamless, convenient solution for urgent purchases. And overall it’s an improved shopping experience that encourages repeat business.
Better yet, pair this functionality with offering pick up in-store. Consumer demand for flexible options like “buy online pick up in-store” (BOPIS) continues to grow. The “click-and-collect” retail market represented 19.7% of multichannel e-commerce sales in 2023 with an estimated $113.2 billion in sales, an 18% increase over 2022.
3. Promote overstocked items closer to the customer
Promote overstocked items that are stocked closer to the customer. This will help you sell through your stock faster and increase inventory turns. This also reduces inventory carrying costs, including storage and warehouse space. Inventory carrying costs can add up quickly, reaching up to 41% of a product’s value.
Fluent Order Management allows you to bring these items higher in search results if you’d like. Higher placement in search results helps them move quicker. It also saves you from having to do future price markdowns if the stock doesn’t move fast enough.
4. Focus on higher profit margin items
Placing higher profit margin items closer to the customer can boost your bottom line. Think ahead and use inventory and fulfillment data to identify these items and promote them in search results. This strategy not only increases basket size but also maximizes your profit margins.
5. Bring seasonal items to the forefront
Holiday spending continues to grow with ecommerce. According to Adobe Analytics, 2023 broke spending records at $9.8 billion on Black Friday and $12.4 billion on Cyber Monday. Your order management system should be locked and loaded, ready to handle 2024 shoppers. This includes making sure your inventory is accurate and your search results are optimized. Seasonal items approaching their target sell-through date should be prioritized in search results.
Fluent Order Management’s sophisticated rules can even apply to individual items. This helps ensure the right products are always at the top.
Benefits of optimizing your commerce search
Better business logic around search benefits your business by:
- Increasing sales and basket size of orders
- Reducing markdowns
- Reducing inventory carrying costs
- Saving you lost revenue from stockouts
- Enhancing the customer experience
- Building brand trust and encouraging repeat business
Fluent Order Management offers one of the fastest solutions for showing live, accurate inventory data in your search results. With Fluent Order Management, you don’t have to sacrifice site speed to display pick-up options and availability on the product listing page (PLP). The more detail the better. This ensures a seamless, fast customer experience that keeps shoppers coming back.
Improve your sales and boost customer satisfaction by optimizing your commerce search with inventory data. Stay competitive with these strategies and deliver an exceptional shopping experience.
