What is shoppability? Get the 411 on making your brand shoppable

When brands are looking to get started with retail ecommerce, the very first thing we advise is:

‍Make everything shoppable to retail.

But what does ”everything” and “shoppable” really mean?

Let’s get into it. ‍

“Everything” means any of your onsite or offsite brand experiences that are clickable.

In retail ecommerce, shoppability refers to how easily customers can discover, find, and purchase CPG products.

Digital experiences: onsite & offsite:

Onsite experiences include:

• where-to-buy tools (Store Locator), 
• product detail pages (Shoppable PDPs), 
• recipes (Shoppable Recipes), 
• blogs, 
• and promotions or incentives.
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‍Offsite experiences include:

• social advertisements (like Pear Connect), 
• direct-to-cart campaigns (media linked Direct-to-Cart), 
• and seasonal or product-specific interstitials (Landing Pages).
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Depending on your brand’s marketing strategy, these offsite experiences can include:

• organic social posts, 
• paid social ads, 
• paid search ads, 
• display ads, 
• emails, 
• SMS, 
• videos, 
• influencer campaigns, and more. 

Offsite experiences also include your customer service responses on social or in emails.
Remember: if it’s clickable, it can be made shoppable.

“Shoppable” means creating a digital path to find and purchase your products at retail.

Enabling true shoppability involves two key factors:

1) Connecting to all of your retail partners, including local retailers.

2) Only displaying the stores where your product is in-stock and available to purchase, based on inventory data and geography (dynamic inventory).

There’s one constant in the CPG space: Customers want to choose where and how they shop. So, to meet your customers anywhere, you have to be shoppable everywhere. When a new customer searches where to buy your product, they might want to go to a favorite local retailer or use their rewards points at the nearest big-box chain. To meet your customers’ needs, you need to show everywhere your product is sold, down to the local banners. Of course, there are times that you can partner up with a popular retailer, but overall CPG brands see positive results when they meet consumers where they already like to shop.

Pear Commerce supports the most nationwide retailers, from Walmart, Target, and Amazon to local co-ops, enabling brands to take advantage of consumers’ established purchase habits. This strategy significantly increases conversion rates by ensuring that consumers can add-to-cart at the retailer they already trust. Casting a wide net for shoppability will earn you the most conversions.

Making your onsite or offsite experiences shoppable to a handful of retailers can be done by hard coding links directly to the retailers’ PDPs. But making everything shoppable across all of your retail partners in every zip (while maintaining accurate inventory data to avoid customer frustration) is a massive, likely impossible, undertaking for a brand.

For Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) brands, enhancing shoppability can lead to several key benefits:

1. Selling more at retail: A more shoppable experience encourages impulse purchases and can lead to higher overall sales. Simplifying the buying process can convert browsing into buying.
2. Improved customer experience: When shopping is easy and enjoyable, customers are more likely to return. This can build brand loyalty and encourage repeat purchases.
3. Effective digital “merchandising”: Enhancing shoppability can draw attention to products on your brand channels and increase visibility.
4. Targeted marketing: Brands can use data analytics to understand shoppers’ behaviors and preferences, allowing for tailored promotions and personalized shopping experiences.
5. Omnichannel integration: A seamless shopping experience across online and offline channels can attract customers who prefer different shopping methods, increasing reach and engagement.
6. Better inventory management: Improved shoppability can help brands understand which products are performing well and adjust inventory accordingly, reducing waste and improving profitability.
7. Enhanced brand perception: A well-designed shopping experience reflects positively on the brand, contributing to a stronger overall brand image and reputation.

By focusing on shoppability, CPG brands can create a more compelling shopping journey that not only meets consumer needs but also drives business growth. Shoppers research across digital and physical channels. They search online before buying in-store, they buy online before picking up curbside, they go to the store and search online for reviews and deals; all affecting the purchasing process.

Effectively doing so requires a retail ecommerce platform, like Pear Commerce, that automatically scans inventory daily to create digital paths to purchase across 3,000+ retailers from your shoppable experiences. This gives your brand the ability to confidently connect any UPC to every available retailer’s digital shelf, without ever worrying about sending your customers to out-of-stock locations or links.

Pear’s robust shoppability:

• For any retailer a brand wants, we can create a path to purchase (i.e. a button that directs to the retailer.com with data behind it) with the fewest clicks possible to the most retailers available.
• For the 3,000 retailers we perform daily inventory scanning, we can dynamically display that retailer based on whether the product is in or out-of-stock. Our competitors showing shoppability only have it with an average of 50 retailers.
• We can also customize retailers (e.g. pin certain retailers to the top of the list so they show first when they have inventory, or exclude retailers altogether).
• We offer the most types of Landing Pages and we’re the only retail ecommerce provider with Shoppable PDPs.
• Enjoy the best UX through the only one-click experiences on the market with dynamic shoppability—both onsite (Shoppable PDP) and offsite (Pear Connect).
• Pear’s omnichannel Store locator drives both in-store and ecommerce sales from your website or brand-building content. Unlike other where-to-buy systems that rely on outdated data, Pear’s solution is built on full retailer coverage and advanced analytics. 

For Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) brands, enhancing shoppability not only improves the shopping experience but also drives sales and customer loyalty. Once you’ve made everything shoppable, the true power of your retail ecommerce channel is unlocked. Optimize your brand strategy today to ensure customers can easily discover, find, and purchase your products wherever they prefer to shop!

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Next, check out how one brand partnered with Pear to use data and insights to optimize it:   

How one brand used data & actionable insights to run their retail ecommerce strategy