Cross-border e-commerce: resources for exporting to the United States of America

Chapter 6: Online merchandising - cross-border considerations

US e-commerce merchandising assortment

Merchandising is core to your cross-border strategy -- what you sell and how to sell your product line. Bringing your passion for your product to life, in an appealing way to your target customer, will always be a priority.  This chapter provides frameworks and considerations to determine the right product mix and other cross-border e-commerce considerations.

Site merchandising - optimizing "how" you sell

Once your marketing efforts have successfully driven traffic to your e-commerce site, "how" you want to sell your products are typically site merchandising details -- regardless of commerce channel. From product content (closely aligned with marketing for SEO purposes), to optimizing a product detail page layout and design for best conversion rate -- site merchandising planning and decisions are critical to drive key metrics such as conversion rate.

Chapter 6 checklist

• Based on your brand's strategic positioning against your direct US competitors, what product assortment is right for your US cross-border e-commerce approach?
• Is your assortment static, or does your merchandising strategy call for the assortment to change over time (e.g., start with best sellers only and expand to full assortments over time)?
• Do you have any products that are unsuitable for cross-border e-commerce, due to regulatory, consumer preferences or other issues in the US?
• Are your target US consumers aware of your brand or product?
• How will you "story-tell" for a US consumer – similar to or different from your Canadian customer?
• How suitable are your assortments for potential US e-commerce channels – e.g., your direct website, marketplaces or social commerce? How will you develop assortment strategies to match the strengths of each channel?
• Will you enable a "welcome mat" approach to greet US shoppers? What offer or "call to action" should you include in this welcome landing page?
• How and where will you display pricing to a US consumer? Will all products show US dollar pricing (e.g., category pages as well as product detail pages)?
• As you localize your selling approach to US consumers, what will be the most important information you can provide to help their buying decision?
• Will you need new or additional features or functionality on your website to enable a better customer experience for US consumers?
• Are you a brand owner, allowing you to participate in Amazon's Brand Registry?
• How skilled are you at understanding site merchandising best practices for product pages on Amazon? Should you seek agencies or third parties who bring specific expertise about optimizing your marketplace selling?