We’ve been talking a lot about making sure your website is setup appropriately and up to digital standards, but what if you’re ready for your website to start selling? Do you have a product placement strategy for your eCommerce website?

Let’s talk about marketing and your products. When coming up with a sales strategy, it’s important to identify your product’s values to your business. There’s a share growth matrix developed by The Boston Consulting Group that helps categorize products. The matrix breaks them down into four categories: cash cow, star, dog and question mark products.

Cash cow products are goods that provide a smaller return rate but generally have a large market share. They’re mature products that provide a steady income and are usually reliable sellers.

Star products are those that have a higher return rate with high potential that are still in development, so they could potentially generate a good ROI as long as they sell to scale.

Dog products yield a low return rate with smaller scale that can even cost more to keep than to drop from your rotation.

Question products are those that are in the beginning stages of development, where you don’t have enough information on whether they are either profitable or bad investments.

Why, you ask, do you need to know this information? It’s important to identify these products in your inventory because they give you an idea of what you need to promote and what you should phase out.

When launching your eCommerce store, you should consider your question mark products and star products as a key point of focus on your front page. This will help you move the products that you don’t have enough information about as well as help you promote those that yield high return of investment and generate interest from your clients.

Additionally, having your cash cow products as a secondary support (maybe a featured products section) will help give your customers an idea of the products you know they look for and that you have available.

 

Where do you go from there?

Customer’s Journey:

Identifying your customer’s journey is important. You should identify related products your customers might be interested in and upsell them by using these as a recommendation section either on the cart or on the cash cow products themselves.

Inventory:

Having your ERP connected to your website is vital. Product availability is a priority on the digital market. A customer will be turned off from your eStore if they order a product and then get a notice that the product isn’t available.

This also applies to promotions and sales. You should ensure that whenever your have an item marked down, there’s enough inventory to account for the demand if that product is highly requested.

These are just the first steps to identifying a sales strategy based on your own sales information that might help generate sales once you’re promoting your website to your intended customer. Please keep checking back as we dive into online promotion and the steps necessary to spread the word on your new eStore.

Any questions? Be sure to write in the comments below or contact one of our sales team for more information on how to turn your website into an eCommerce Sales point.