Digital Shelf Analytics
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Learn the basics of digital shelf optimization, why it’s critical for CPGs to master it and how digital shelf analytics can help you uncover market trends that drive online sales growth. The digital shelf is important because it determines how easily customers can find and choose your products online, directly impacting your sales success.
This post has been updated and was originally published March 2020.
Digital shelf content optimization refers to the continual process of perfecting your digital shelf. The result is a digital shelf that’s more prominent across e-retailers and so more efficient at grabbing shoppers’ attention. But let’s go back a step: Do you actually know what it means and how it’s done?
In this article we’ll cover:
Brands have started taking ecommerce seriously. With the forecasted online shopping growth rate by 2023 is 34.5%, t’s evident that mastering digital shelf optimization is key to capitalizing on this trend. To successfully execute digital shelf optimization, understanding the digital shelf, online marketing strategies, and creating a robust digital strategy to enhance your brand’s online presence is essential. Developing a strong content strategy to optimize product information and visuals, along with a comprehensive ecommerce strategy that leverages digital shelf analytics and technology, is crucial for maximizing visibility and driving sales.
The digital shelf refers to the online space where products are displayed and sold. Managing products online across various digital touchpoints is essential for ensuring consistent visibility, enhancing the customer experience, and supporting an effective omnichannel strategy. This includes product listings, descriptions, images, prices, and reviews across e-commerce platforms, ecommerce marketplaces (where products are listed and discovered by consumers), and other digital channels. It also covers all customer interactions with a brand online, from discovering products in search results to clicking ‘Add to Cart.’ Product listings are organized into product categories, which help improve the online shopping experience by making products easier to find. Accurate and comprehensive product data is crucial for enhancing digital shelf visibility and driving sales. Essentially, the digital shelf encompasses the online shopping experience created for buyers across various platforms, and each component plays a critical role in product visibility and sales.
The digital shelf is crucial for e-commerce success, impacting sales, profitability, and brand reputation. As more consumers turn to the digital shelf to research products before purchasing in-store, enhancing online performance can elevate the shopper's retail experience. The digital shelf also offers brands opportunities to optimize visibility and engagement, ultimately boosting sales. By optimizing the digital shelf, brands can meet consumer expectations and maintain competitiveness in the ever-evolving e-commerce landscape.
The digital shelf includes all interactions buyers have with a brand online. Key components of the digital shelf include:
It is also essential to ensure that product content, including images, descriptions, and keywords, complies with retailer specifications to enhance product visibility, compliance, and sales performance.
Each touchpoint requires ongoing optimization to ensure products and the brand are showcased correctly and effectively. Utilizing digital asset management helps organize, cross-reference, and ensure compliance of product images and content with retailer specifications. The digital shelf encompasses any online interaction a consumer has with a brand, and every component plays into product visibility and sales performance. By focusing on these key components, brands can create a cohesive and compelling online presence that drives engagement and sales.
Digital shelf optimization (DSO) refers to the strategic process of ensuring your products are optimized for both search engines and the shopper’s needs. DSO goes beyond a branded website or product page, covering mobile apps, third-party platforms, and wherever your products are displayed online. One of the main goals of DSO is to improve search rankings, which enhances product discoverability and drives more sales.
Your digital shelf is essentially your product’s online footprint. The most influential parts are often third-party platforms, where aggregated shopping baskets, loyalty programs, and fast delivery times give your products an edge. Managing your own digital shelf on platforms like Amazon is crucial for optimizing product listings, visibility, and advertising strategies. Therefore, DSO should extend beyond your website, reaching category pages, curated product lists, and bestseller sections.
Though DSO might seem daunting, it’s a vital task. Similar to how a physical store shelf works, buyers spend significant time browsing, researching, and purchasing on the digital shelf—whether online or in-store. The physical shelf plays a key role in inventory management and product placement, ensuring products are available and well-positioned to influence purchase decisions. Digital shelf optimization differs from managing physical store shelves, as online product discovery and sales rely more on search visibility, competitive positioning, and dynamic content rather than static in-store displays. Research shows that 84% of smartphone shoppers turn to their mobile phone to help them shop in-person, indicating that DSO influences offline sales too.
When optimizing for product visibility and sales, it’s important to maintain competitive prices and analyze price points to attract shoppers and stay ahead of competitors.
Matthew Rivard, Head of Strategy & Product Acceleration at Google, states:
“A prominent place on the digital shelf can help brands reach a vast, interested audience and can mean big opportunities for growth in both sales and overall brand awareness.”
DSO focuses on product performance and continuous improvement at the individual product level after launch. Much like product development, DSO requires ongoing attention to adapt to changes in retailer behavior, consumer preferences, and market dynamics. For example, this might involve updating product listings to include advanced content like immersive 360-degree videos –– a key trend for 2020. We call this process online merchandising.
This process is known as online merchandising.
Key performance indicators (KPIs) like conversion rate, Click-Through Rate (CTR), and revenue generated are vital for assessing product visibility and strategy effectiveness.
By leveraging advanced content options available across online retailers, brands can engage shoppers and enhance their digital experiences.
Brands often have less control over how products are perceived online compared to physical stores. In a physical store, brands can use strategic product placement, signage, and packaging. Digital shelf analytics, however, empower brands to regain control over their digital presence by optimizing product content across retailer platforms.
Product content plays a significant role in creating brand reputation, consistency, and shopper desire. This content includes:
Product options.
DSO also ensures compliance with industry regulations and platform specifications while maintaining consistency in brand messaging.
To identify compliance gaps and opportunities, data is key. This is where Amazon SEO and keyword research come into play.
Ultimately, DSO aims to boost traffic to your product pages by improving the quality of your product content. Enhanced content, including high-quality images and accurate product details, improves search rank and visibility on retailer platforms.
Do your products rank on retailer websites for your shopper search terms?
Most e-commerce shoppers begin their journey with a direct search for a product or category. This process mirrors traditional search engines like Google, but on e-retailers’ platforms. Optimizing your content to improve visibility in Google search results is essential, as it can significantly enhance your brand’s presence and ranking. To succeed in e-commerce, increasing your brand’s visibility in search engines is critical.
Since 45% of shoppers rarely scroll past the second page of search results, not appearing on bestseller lists makes it difficult to gain traction. Platform algorithms tend to favor trending products, suggesting bestsellers or items deemed platform-approved. Features like Amazon’s “Subscribe and Save” program foster customer loyalty, making repeat purchases easier and more economical, further cementing customer relationships
Moreover, content visibility, including product descriptions, images, and customer reviews, influences sales and reduces return rates by helping to meet shopper expectations.
User-generated content like customer reviews is especially impactful, with 67% of consumers of consumers considering reviews essential when making purchase decisions.
To leverage these opportunities, brands must know the content options available on each retailer platform. By utilizing these content features, brands can create an exceptional shopping experience and boost conversions.
For this reason, performing DSO requires ready-to-use digital shelf analytics that simplify and objectify the process. Having a streamlined, data-driven approach helps you to perform DSO effectively, as well as making it easier to cross-communicate with other teams.
Unlike physical shelves, managing the digital shelf can be complex. Consumer behavior is constantly changing, interactions are spread across multiple e-retailers with different requirements, and products are often scattered across digital platforms. A Product Information Management (PIM) system can help streamline data entry across various retailers but may not measure real-world outcomes or retailer adherence.
Performing DSO requires digital shelf analytics that simplify and objectify the process, making it easier to communicate across teams
To succeed in DSO, brands must rely on data-driven decisions focused on the user’s e-commerce experience. This often involves investing in digital shelf software that provides real-time feedback. Here’s why:
Engaging with customers through surveys or social media can provide valuable insights into shopper behavior, helping brands adjust strategies and improve customer satisfaction.
Automating data collection empowers brands to respond quickly to market shifts, boosting brand engagement, conversions, and profitability. Real-time responsiveness strengthens market position and enhances search rank on e-commerce platforms.
Our expert customer success team can help you to take care of key components of your digital shelf strategy, by working with you to build out roadmaps for ecommerce capability or NPD launches. Our experts help you identify the opportunities across the omnichannel to drive growth. Crucially, it is a partnership that ensures the digital shelf data in our service is matched to the commercial objectives you have.
Matching human help with digital shelf data ensures you keep autonomy over the numbers and helps to contextualise the reams of data collected. With this blend of automation and consultancy, CIQ's Digital Shelf Analytics platform has built an easy-to-use platform that shows all of the key metrics you need, including range and availability as well as pricing and promotion data all in a language easily understood by sales and marketing teams.
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