Brands should work to optimize every aspect of their online presence to secure their position on the digital shelf. Measuring and following appropriate digital shelf metrics empowers you to understand your product detail page efficacy and improve your PDPs for long-term growth. This article examines the top ten digital shelf metrics to monitor to engage better, sell more, and win the digital shelf. Share-of-Search measures how often your brand appears in organic search results compared to your competitors. A high share-of-search indicates strong brand visibility and suggests that consumers are actively seeking your products, signaling an inclination to purchase. According to a 2023 study by Gartner, brands with a higher share-of-search tend to have stronger market penetration and higher sales. How to optimize share-of-search: Your share-of-search directly informs your success on the digital shelf. Knowing, monitoring, and optimizing this metric positions you to win market share. Example: One of our customers, a major beauty brand, identified top-searched keywords being used by competitors. Once they added the newly identified keywords to their marketing copy, they saw an annualized revenue increase of $144,000-$334,000. Your average order value (AOV) is the average price of your customers’ purchases. The higher your AOV, the greater your profits. High AOV means you spend fewer resources to sell more items to your customers. This metric shows how well you engage customers and optimize your pages for conversions. How to increase AOV: Engaging, informative product content is a primary driver of page traffic and conversions. Optimize your content and see your AOVs grow as a result. Example: Apple effectively boosts AOV by recommending accessories like AirPods or AppleCare during the checkout process. E-commerce cart abandonment rates average roughly 70 percent. Seven of ten shoppers seriously consider purchasing your products but change their minds before completing the transaction. That’s significant revenue you’re missing out on. Many factors contribute to low cart abandonment rates, including effective product content management and seamless checkout. By setting the stage with informative, quality content and reducing friction in the purchase phase, you can keep abandonment rates low and increase your sales –– and revenue. How to reduce cart abandonment: Example: Zappos successfully reduced cart abandonment by introducing a one-click checkout option, which simplified the purchasing process. Knowing how consumers feel about your brand and products is crucial for your marketing, sales, and product development strategies. Your business relies on positive customer sentiment. With ratings and review monitoring, you can know firsthand the customer experience and how to improve it. Positive reviews and ratings are the lifeblood of an e-commerce business. Good reviews compel purchase more than any other single factor, while poor reviews will cause a potential customer to abandon your brand and site for good. How to monitor and improve consumer sentiment: Monitoring and managing your product reviews allows you to receive honest feedback that shapes your products and brand. Example: Samsung uses sentiment analysis tools to monitor customer feedback and adjust product features or marketing strategies accordingly. Where are your site visitors coming from? Monitoring store sessions by traffic source highlights the strengths and weaknesses of your product content strategy. Your online product content is expansive, crossing channels and platforms. Retail is omnichannel, and your product content should reflect this shopping reality. Analyzing your traffic sources provides insight into content that works and content that needs reshaping. Content quality and consistency are paramount regardless of where your shoppers come from or how they find you. Customers expect the product content experience to be seamless and easy to consume wherever they interact with your brand, even if they come to your brand through multiple channels. How to optimize traffic sources: Example: Glossier uses Instagram and influencer marketing to drive significant traffic to their online store, resulting in high conversion rates. Prioritize content creation and disbursement that caters to the shopper and their preferred shopping channel. Conversion Rate is the percentage of visitors who complete a purchase on your site. A high conversion rate indicates that your PDPs are effectively persuading visitors to buy. With compelling PDPs, content, and marketing strategies, you’re appealing to your audience’s wants and needs, providing the products and experience they expect. How to improve conversion rates: Example: ASOS increased their conversion rate by 20% after implementing customer reviews and detailed size guides on their PDPs. Proper inventory management is crucial for customer satisfaction and effective resource allocation. Preventing out-of-stock issues helps you maintain authority and legitimacy in the eyes of your customers. Few circumstances are more frustrating for a shopper completing a purchase only to discover that their product isn’t in stock. If this happens, you must process a refund and then handle poor customer reviews. However, you don’t want excess inventory. This can result in higher storage fees or changing trends that affect product sales. Careful inventory management contributes directly to your digital shelf success. Tracking and managing your products’ inventory status allows you to sell more, preserve resources, and maintain a positive relationship with your customers. How to manage inventory: Example: Amazon uses advanced algorithms to manage inventory levels and reduce the risk of stockouts, ensuring that popular items are always available. Selling products in an omnichannel market requires brands to properly manage content readiness. Every retail partner maintains various content requirements and standards. You must have the right content in the right place to meet your many trading partner standards. Otherwise, you lose visibility, confuse customers, and miss out on sales. Your content readiness score identifies opportunities to modify or upgrade content before publishing to ensure it meets all retailer requirements. It also allows you to optimize product launches by auditing your category, retailer, and competitive brand landscape. How to improve content readiness: Example: Procter & Gamble regularly audits its product listings to ensure they meet the content requirements of every retailer (e.g. Walmart, Target). Monitoring your content compliance score enables you to ensure your PDPs have the data and information retailers want and shoppers need so you can secure your position on the digital shelf. Your digital share-of-shelf is the percentage of traffic your brand gets from a keyword inquiry – it indicates your category page rank, determining your position within the market. You can track your digital shelf analytics by examining your rank on the SERPs concerning specific category-based keywords. A top position on a category page puts your products in front of shoppers who know what product type they want. And they’re ready to purchase. However, understand that your share-of-shelf can vary drastically from retailer to retailer and market to market. Monitoring your share-of-shelf on each platform allows you to identify your competition and create more effective strategies for growth. How to improve share-of-shelf: Example: Coca-Cola strategically increases its share-of-shelf during peak seasons like summer and holidays by partnering with retailers on promotions. Your share of voice (SOV) is the measure of the market your brand owns compared to your competitors. It acts as a gauge for your brand visibility and to what extent your products and brand dominate the online conversation. Share of voice indicates the authority and popularity of your brand among your customers and shoppers. The more users are talking about your brand and products, the higher your share of voice. How to increase share of voice: Example: Nike effectively uses influencer partnerships to maintain a high share of voice in the competitive sportswear market. Monitoring your share of voice allows you to segment your audiences and analyze other performance metrics. It enables you to determine the success of marketing campaigns and gives you insights to improve performance for future efforts. The digital shelf evolves every minute. If you want to compete – and win – your team must diligently monitor key digital shelf metrics. Keeping abreast of your performance and how you compare to competitors empowers you to strategically advance your brand and products through global channels. Content Status allows you to monitor crucial performance metrics and optimize your digital presence. Connect with our team to learn how our resource can help you monitor – and win – your position on the digital shelf. Get the latest articles delivered directly to your inbox!
The Top 10 Digital Shelf Metrics You Need to Monitor
2. Average Order Value
3. Cart Abandonment Rate
4. Consumer Sentiment
5. Store Sessions by Traffic Source
6. Conversion Rate
7. Inventory Status
8. Content Readiness Score
Competing on the Digital Shelf
Love reading, keep reading
The Top 10 Digital Shelf Metrics You Need to Monitor
Contents
hide