Five Shopify product sorting best practices you need to know

**5 Display Sequencing Best Practices to Drive E-Commerce Sales **

Properly organizing your e-commerce site is critical to getting consumers to discover products and ultimately make purchases. One of the most important parts of the puzzle is display sequencing — putting your products in the proper order.

Remember, the best display sequencing comes after careful consideration of a number of other factors such as determining how to group products, deciding what belongs in the top menu navigation, choosing logical filtering options, assortment planning, and how you use imagery across your site.

Many retailers miss the critical step of display sequencing for a number of reasons. Some don’t know the power of a well-optimized category page. Others don’t have the time or resources to commit to the ongoing updates necessary to properly sequence your displays. To help, we’ve developed these five best practices that will help you optimize your pages and drive more sales.

1. Optimize your most valuable real estate on collection pages. Did you know that products in the first 10 positions of a collection page get 10x the number of clicks as the products in positions 100+? Promote your best-selling or sale items in the top few rows of your collection page where conversion rates are highest. There is also space to promote products with a high sales efficiency — those that sell well when clicked on. They might not sell the most but they are the most efficient converters.

2. Don’t display out-of-stock items. If you want to frustrate your consumers, show them out-of-stock products. Enticing them with products that are not available makes for a poor shopping experience and sends customers to competitors. Make sure out-of-stock products are buried at the end of your collection pages until they’re back in stock.

3. Create a cohesive look. While you optimize top-selling positions, remember to view your collection page as a whole. Grouping products by color or product type makes for a more visually appealing page overall. For example, one row of products could be one color, then the next row can be another color. Such a cohesive look could get consumers coming back again and again.

4. Freshen up and optimize for promotions. It’s critical to keep your collection pages fresh. Of course, you want top sellers in valuable positions, but it’s important to change it up so consumers get a slightly different experience each time they come to your site. Don’t be afraid to experiment by putting previously buried products at the top of your collection page for a limited time. Also, if you’re running a flash sale or marketing campaign, make sure those promoted products are in top positions and easily discoverable. Don’t make people hunt for the products you are promoting.

5. Reduce manual display sequencing with an automated merchandising tool. Rather than dedicating time and effort to manual display sequencing, consider a programmatic option like Entaice. Such tools can automatically sort collection pages based on your criteria. Just input your criteria and they will handle the rest. For example, choose whether you want to prioritize top-sellers, efficient-selling products, group by colors or other aspects — then let the technology automatically reorganize your page. Not only will you ensure that customers never see out-of-stock products in key positions, you will also give your staff more time to handle other tasks.