Featured products

Admin Control Panel: eCommerce Guide

Featured products are a highly effective way to boost online sales. This is because consumers are known to respond particularly well to products that are specially highlighted to draw in their attention.

Therefore it is important that your eCommerce system enables you to create and manage a variety of imaginative and inviting product features.

A carefully selected and well-presented set of featured products not only helps you to promote special offers and seasonal items, but is also a great way to highlight new products or renew excitement about existing lines.

What’s more, they can attract your customers to items that they might not typically search for, opening them to a wider selection of your products. They also keep your home and feature pages alive and vibrant with refreshed content.

 

It’s also worth noting that your featured items needn’t necessarily be on offer. Just by giving an item greater prominence and labelling it up as ‘Featured Item’ or ‘Product of the Week’ will not only stimulate curiosity, but may be all that’s need for visitors to assume that they’re getting a good deal.

Special offers


Special offers are the most obvious approach to promoting individual items. However, they are pretty pointless if you cannot publicise them by featuring them on your home page or a dedicated special offer page. They also liven up your site and give visitors a reason to come back if they think your site is a good place to find a bargain.

New arrivals


Any item that is new to your range is a great excuse for a featured product. New arrivals are also your way of keeping your proposition fresh and showing that you stay on top of the latest market trend

Bestsellers


In a department store, you invariably encounter the cosmetics department as soon as you come through the door. This is because these are the items with the biggest mark-up.

Likewise online, you should always look to give your most profitable items as much exposure as possible. A selection of bestsellers is a great place to do this. And remember that the products that you show don’t actually have to be your best selling in terms of volume. They can simply be your biggest money-spinners or any other products that you specifically want to promote.

Seasonal promotions


By aligning featured products to seasonal trends, you can cash in on major calendar, news and sporting events, such Halloween, a royal wedding or the World Cup. You could also present your featured products in the form of gift ideas during important sales periods, such as Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day and Christmas.

Clearance items


Items labelled as ‘Clearance’ convey the sense that the customer is getting a bargain. However, a clearance doesn’t necessarily mean that items are discounted or that you’re making way for new stock. A clearance may be just a selection of items that you want to sell, or clear, more quickly.

What you can expect a Rapid Web Services system


With Rapid Web Services you can create just one or a comprehensive range of featured product collections, depending on the exact level of sophistication you need:

And with our bespoke eCommerce service, you can promote your products exactly the way you want, from eye-catching flash banners, designed to give your featured items the best possible exposure, to creating your own user-defined product features on the fly.

Use your creativity to make the most of your promotional features by using vivid and persuasive product imagery, keeping an eye on market trends and changing your featured products regularly to keep your site fresh and interesting.

But beware of going overboard and saturating your home page with feature banners showing a bewildering array of merchandise. Instead, only focus only on your most important offers and products.