Convert Visitors 
3 min read 
Category Page 
In this article, we will explore how to use Segmentation & Insights and Category Merchandising to drive relevant experiences that match a first time visitor’s shopping preferences.
Since the release of our Segmentation & Insights offering, we’ve seen retailers expanding their customer knowledge to achieve various goals through Nosto products such as Product Recommendations or Content Personalization. While primarily used to learn more about shoppers preferences to create relevant shopping experiences, my favorite story to date has a slightly different spin…
Identify What Your shoppers Love Most
One US-Based retailer was keen to expand to Asian markets. One challenge was to build a regional version of the web store that would resonate with an Asian audience. By fetching this traffic organically, they’ve used geo-specific Segmentation & Insights to learn about which product lines were most desired by such shoppers. This would ultimately help them set a relevant merchandising strategy to support their eventual launch of operations in Asia.
This shift in using data prior to setting up experiences can also be leveraged to improve category pages. In this article, we will explore how to use Segmentation & Insights and Category Merchandising to drive relevant experiences that match a first time visitor’s shopping preferences.
Implement an Initial Strategy for Shopper Preferences
Once you’ve initially identified the key affinity segments you want to target, you can create sorting rules reflecting the most preferred brands or categories of those targeted shoppers. For example, if a multi-brand sports retailer wants to target shoppers who have an affinity for Nike products, promoting Nike products sounds relevant. However, promoting similar brands such as Jordan, Hurley or Nike ACG may also be relevant, as it has been discovered that a large majority of shoppers who interact with Nike also interact with those brands.
Based on those learnings, we can now create the relevant sorting rule to promote these brands. In this example, we would start by adding ‘Brand’ as an attribute and input Nike, Jordan, Hurley and other relevant brands:
Once that’s done, you can give each of these product affinities a different weight – for instance, give 60% weight to Nike products while Jordan and Hurley products get 20%.
Next, Target Your Affinity Segments
When the sorting rule is created, you can apply it to any relevant category for the relevant affinity segment.
In our previous example, the sorting rule will be exposed to the segment of ‘Nike Fans’ on the category ‘Shoes’.
Now, Optimize for the Strongest Performance
Unsure if implementing a shopper preference first is the best strategy for your business? You can use Nosto’s A/B Testing & Optimization to test multiple sequences against one another.
For example: would implementing a shopper preference first strategy yield better conversion than sorting your category pages with more generic Sort by release date or Sort by price rules? Test it and evaluate what resonates best for your customers.
How Skinnydip London’s automated merchandising strategy yielded an 8x ROI
As it did for most brands, the global pandemic brought on a number of challenges for Skinnydip London that have gradually impacted their ambitious growth goals: from losing multiple sales channels, to limited team resources and a manual merchandising process that made it even harder to keep up with demand.
Skinnydip saw an opportunity to turn their manual merchandising process into an automated strategy that yielded 8x ROI, saved them time and effort without expanding their resources, and paid for itself in just one month.
Curious to learn how? Check out Skinnydip’s success story for an inside look at their merchandising strategy.
