Let’s face it — digital merchandising is tough. In a time where customers expect nothing less than seamless, personalized experiences, digital merchandisers are constantly performing a high-wire act. They have to balance product visibility, drive sales, and build loyalty, all while navigating vast product catalogs, delivering a friction-free customer experience, and keeping up with ever-changing trends. And if that’s not enough, throw in the need for speed — because shoppers aren’t waiting around.
But what if all the time-consuming tasks, manual processes, and IT bottlenecks that weigh down digital merchandisers’ creativity could be taken care of with the right tools? With the Coveo Merchandising Hub, the power of AI meets the expertise of merchandising, empowering merchandisers to create the shopping experiences their customers crave and improve revenue per visit (RPV), without breaking a sweat.
Common Digital Merchandising Challenges
Digital merchandisers have likely encountered at least one (or all) of these challenges:
- Too many manual tasks: Launching site promotions, updating product rankings, and managing recommendations can eat up a lot of time. Less time for strategy, more time for tedious tasks.
- Relying on IT for everything: Need a site change? Better put in that ticket and wait. And wait.
- Juggling a huge catalog: Showcasing the latest products, especially those long-tail gems, feels like an uphill battle.
- One-size-fits-all segments: As customers demand more personalized experiences, creating meaningful segments feels like herding cats.
- Data? What data?: Without clear, real-time insights into performance, it’s tough to tell what’s working and what’s not.
- Maintaining consistency across regions: Managing localized campaigns feels like juggling, making sure the right products, languages, and currencies hit the mark without dropping the ball.
- Predicting the unpredictable: When consumer behavior changes rapidly and recommendations fail to keep up, there’s a risk of missing the opportunity to engage customers while they’re still in the mood to buy!
Sound familiar? Don’t worry; help is on the way with the Coveo Merchandising Hub.
Meet the Game Changer: Coveo Merchandising Hub
The Coveo Merchandising Hub is designed with digital merchandisers in mind, making their work easier and their results more impactful. In a nutshell, the Coveo Merchandising Hub boasts a highly intuitive interface that enables merchandising teams to drive value by operationalizing campaigns quickly and confidently.
It enables merchandisers to improve every aspect of product discovery, from search results and listing pages to personalized recommendations at scale. And best of all? There’s no relying on IT, no guesswork, just smart, data-backed decisions at your fingertips.
In short, it is the answer to the everyday challenges today’s digital merchandising teams face.
Trusting the AI (Without Giving Up Control)
The Coveo Merchandising Hub doesn’t simply add on some AI and call it a day. It offers complete transparency, showing exactly why certain products rank the way they do. With the Ranking Visibility feature for example, every factor influencing product placement — from customer behavior to business rules — can be clearly seen. This allows merchandisers to see when AI is doing its job, and when manual adjustments might be necessary.
Take search results, for example. Coveo’s AI uses machine learning to go beyond basic keyword matches, understanding the meaning behind queries to deliver relevant results. This eliminates the need for constant manual overrides, although the option remains available.
Personalized Product Recommendations: Powered by AI, Controlled by You
What’s a great shopping experience without spot-on recommendations? Coveo’s Recommendations Managermakes it simple to set up and manage personalized product suggestions, whether it’s frequently bought together items or top picks for each customer.
The platform also allows users to adjust the rules behind these recommendations to align with specific business goals. Want to promote high-margin items or highlight new arrivals? No problem. Coveo makes it easy to curate the experience for each customer, all while letting AI do the heavy lifting in the background.
Speak Your Customers’ Language
When trends like “TikTok leggings” skyrocket or catalog data creates gaps, ensuring customers find the right products fast is non-negotiable. That’s where Coveo’s Synonym Management shines. With tools like one-way synonyms, you can make “red” searches include “burgundy” results, while two-way synonyms treat both terms as equals for seamless discovery. If catalog gaps arise, such as shoppers searching for “Adidas” when you carry “Nike” or “Puma”, Coveo’s replace synonyms feature redirects them to relevant alternatives, reducing frustration.
Even with advanced AI improving associations over time, rapid trends or catalog errors demand real-time fixes. Merchandisers can instantly link emerging terms like “TikTok leggings” to related products like “high-waisted leggings,” keeping search results relevant and sales on track. With Coveo, staying ahead of trends is effortless, ensuring your search experience is always perfectly tuned to what customers need, even when they don’t know the exact term.
Complete Command of Your Listings
Whether it’s seasonal promotions, holiday campaigns, or even clearance events, each type of promotion calls for precise control over how products appear to your customers. With the Coveo Merchandising Hub, you can easily create and tailor search and listing pages to meet your goals in just a few clicks.
Imagine running a winter promotion: pin snow boots to the top of “winter essentials” searches, boost high-margin jackets for better visibility, or bury out-of-season items like sandals. Whether you’re launching new products, spotlighting high-margin items, or running a clearance sale, the Search and Listing Rule Editor empowers you to adjust rankings, apply filters, and scale rules across categories or queries. It’s a flexible, efficient way to align search results with your business strategy, no matter the type of promotion.
Global Merchandising with Local Flavors
Running an international ecommerce site? Coveo has you covered with Localized Merchandising, allowing you to tailor your strategy for different regions, languages, and currencies. Whether you’re promoting “sneakers” in the US or “trainers” in the UK, Coveo helps maintain a global strategy while ensuring that local audiences get the right products and promotions at the right time.
During peak sales seasons, like Black Friday or holiday shopping, the Rule Scheduling feature helps manage multiple promotions simultaneously. Set start and end times for rules, and ensure your campaigns run seamlessly — without the risk of overshooting deadlines or cutting promotions short.
Better Insights, Better Business Outcomes
Once promotions are live and product discovery is optimized, how can merchandisers tell what’s what’s working? That’s where Coveo’s advanced insights and analytics come in. With real-time, granular metrics that show exactly how search, listings, and recommendations are performing, users can quickly track revenue, conversion rates, click-through rates, and more. It’s like having a crystal ball for your merchandising strategy — except it’s powered by data.
One of the most insightful metrics Coveo tracks is Revenue per Visit (RPV), which combines both conversion rate and average order value into one number. This provides a holistic view of how merchandising strategies are performing and helps merchandisers pinpoint areas for improvement in real-time.
Ready to Make Merchandising Easier?
Coveo’s Merchandising Hub is designed to give merchandisers the best of both worlds: powerful AI to handle complexity and scalability, along with intuitive tools for fine-tuning and adjustments. Merchandisers bring the vision and Coveo supplies the tools to bring that vision to life.
With the Coveo Merchandising Hub, the future of digital merchandising is not only achievable — it’s exciting. By blending merchandisers’ creative expertise with AI-driven precision, Coveo empowers merchandising teams to deliver unique 1:1 and relevant experiences at scale — while using their talent to quickly try new ideas, iterate, and optimize for desired outcomes.
Dig Deeper
Start creating standout shopping experiences! Grab your copy of our Essential guide to Empowering Digital Merchandisers.