Here is what our CEO and Founder, Warren Cowan has to say about dark aisles…
Dark aisles are a reality for many retailers.
Large online retailers often have tens of thousands of products across 40-50 pages, but most of these items live in “dark aisles”, completely invisible in search results. This can be because the category or product ranges of retailers are too extensive, and the product descriptions and data which is captured, and consumers can filter by is too limited. Product description data is often a “set and forget” process, whereby busy merchandising teams either use manufacturer product data or tag products with simple, generic product information or not at all. Merchandising teams often lack the time or mental bandwidth to describe products properly, or simply have too much product to make available online, and not enough time to consider how their customers may search for these across their online store. As a result, customers unwillingly must sift through countless pages and abandon their search, leaving most of the products unseen. This has a huge impact on ecommerce businesses, as only 20-30% of products are ever viewed by customers, while the rest never see the light of day.
To address the problem of “dark aisles”, retailers need to focus on improving “range exposure”, to ensure their products are visible to customers, and they need to become more “customer intent-led” with how they merchandise their products and SKUs online. Expanding the product catalogue is often seen as a strategy to boost top-line sales, but it can make the site difficult to navigate and it can overwhelm the customer. This is a perfect example of the paradox of choice, whereby the more choices you have, the harder it is to decide. Similarly, retailers tend to rely on discounting undiscovered and unsold products as a means of hitting sales forecasts, but this is very much a one-way street.
Retailers must shift to an intent-led approach, ensuring that products are visible and made relevant to the customer’s needs. Richer, more detailed product descriptions and information, search and filtering options are the foundation of this approach. Technology like machine learning and AI gives retailers the opportunity to enrich product descriptions at scale with more intent-based information, based on customer search behaviour, natural language, pattern recognition, and other attributes. Technology enables retailers to apply this information to every product in their range and automatically keep it up to date. Rather than “set and forget”, product descriptions and information can respond to how seasons, trends, search patterns or range changes, meaning products are always findable.
By shifting to an intent-led commerce model, online retailers can shed light on dark aisles, make their full product and category ranges easier for their customers to shop. By embracing an intent-led commerce approach, retailers can do a better job of surfacing the right products to customers at the right stage of their journey, and as a result be less reliant on pushing offers, and discounting to meet sales targets.
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