In the past few years, there has been an increase in online real-time economic activity, making digital shelf analytics more valuable for brands, retailers, and marketplaces. Statista estimates that eCommerce will make up over 20% of global retail sales by the end of 2022, a rate that has more than doubled over the last five years.
If you are a brand that is selling on marketplaces like Amazon, Walmart, Flipkart, and more to showcase your products, you know the chances of discoverability are higher. But today’s consumer demand and the rise of sellers make it challenging to thrive. The problem arises when your presence in different marketplaces, product ranges, and factors of interest to monitor expands to the point where it is almost impossible to keep tracking them manually.
Digital shelf activity is more crucial than ever before, so be smart and analytical. Intelligence goes beyond data.
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What is Digital Shelf?
The digital shelf is where a brand’s product is sold online. That can be on a retailer’s site, third-party marketplace, social commerce site, or any other e-commerce channel. This is where online shoppers browse, discover, and buy products.Â
In most cases, the primary digital shelf is not your website but the search results page. The way consumers shop for items has changed significantly from years ago. Besides categories, curated product lists and product descriptions are other examples of digital shelves.Â
The shelf-life of a brand can’t be determined by eye-catching product placement, aisle endcap groupings, or bold packaging. Images, videos, descriptions, instructions, pricing, ratings, and reviews are almost exclusively relied upon instead. Together, these elements assist consumers in making informed purchasing decisions on retailer websites.
What is Digital Shelf Analytics?
Digital shelf analytics allow brands/sellers to analyze consumer interactions with products on shelves. In other words, it involves monitoring and managing the availability and pricing of products on digital shelves. The purpose of digital shelf analytics is to help retailers identify products that are performing well and optimize their placement on the shelf. They can also use digital shelf analytics to identify products that could be performing better and make changes to their marketing strategy accordingly.
What benefits does Digital Shelf Analytics offer to brands?
- A flexible and responsive process results from having the right information at the right time. As a result, you’ll be able to bring your product to market faster, respond more quickly to competitors, and waste less time on low-value activities.
- Measuring trends, pinpointing weaknesses in shopper experience, increasing accountability within your organization, and identifying success sources becomes easier with accurate tracking.
- In summary, digital shelf analytics directly impact revenue growth. The result is better product discovery, more conversions, and more shelf wins.
What does the best digital shelf analytics audit enable?
Multi-platform selling is challenging for brands. Every marketplace, including Amazon, Walmart, and smaller sites, updates algorithms frequently. You can keep your products if you keep up. Getting your products found (searchable) is the first rule of the digital shelf. It can be an exhaustive, manual process for marketing and product teams to ensure products are in stock, visible, and presented correctly. What steps are they taking to make sure their products are easily discovered? How does the brand want its product described (images, videos, text)? In addition to the first page, are the secondary and tertiary pages using the best content? Are there enough customer reviews for the product? Is there a response to negative reviews? What is the status of stock availability? The list is long and daunting.
Fortunately, large and small brands no longer need to audit online performance manually. Through the use of digital shelf analytics, auditing can now be performed automatically and with custom reporting as per the requirements.Â
What data does digital shelf analytics provide?
Developing Digital shelf analytics solutions is critical for online success-focused brands due to the variety and depth of information available. These broad categories of data can be divided into:
- Product searchability: Determine how your products rank by keywords and across your competitors and optimize your position in search results.
- Product content: Measure product detail page accuracy and ensure compliance.
- Pricing & promotions: Make price adjustments based on historical data; ensure competitive pricing.
- Stock availability: Detailed stock availability reports allow for better eCommerce supply chain management.
- Ratings & Reviews: Analyze shopper sentiment to improve rankings and influence purchase behavior.
What’s Next?
On the digital shelf, every brand needs data to determine what actions to take. Technology enables brands and retailers to gather customer and competitor data. Amazon, Walmart, Flipkart, and Target are just a few examples of retailers who have leveraged data and analytics to gain an edge. Despite being less explored, it is gaining importance fast. Keeping up with the evolving online retail environment requires advanced digital shelf analytics.
Paxcom’s digital shelf analytics software, Kinator, visualizes any available data into an interactive visual format to help brands make intelligent, strategic decisions. Using the customizable dashboard, you can filter by Channel, Category, Brand, Focus SKU, Timeframe, City, and more.
Our eCommerce experts can help you fill in the gaps and develop actionable plans to grow your businesses by providing you with a dedicated eCommerce team or a lot of resources to handle the digital shelf across all retailers you do not have access to.
Schedule a demo to see how Paxcom can help you with digital shelf analytics. Contact us at info@paxcom.net.
