Random product placement versus intentional cross merchandising – one of them will make you much more money. A customer grabs pasta but walks right past the sauce because nobody placed them together and the shopper and the store lose out. The customer has to come back again later and the retailer just missed out on an extra sale that would’ve been automatic.
Placement built on shopping patterns that work, tested combinations and proven results turns wasted floor space into real money. Retailers who master this create genuine value for customers and see their average basket size climb.
Here’s how cross merchandising can grow your sales and improve the customer experience!
What Cross Merchandising Is All About
Cross merchandising is when stores place products that go well together right next to one another on the shelf. The whole point is to get customers to buy the two items and it makes plenty of sense when the pairing is a smart one. This has nothing to do with pushing expensive upgrades or throwing random products into your cart. It’s just about matching up items that complement one another. Cell phones are a common example of this. Walk into any retail store and you’ll find the phone cases and screen protectors displayed right next to the phones on the shelf. Flashlights paired with batteries is another classic pairing that works the same way. Retailers do this because it saves customers time and it jogs their memory about what they came in for (or reminds them of something they didn’t even know they needed).
The main reason this connects with shoppers depends on how we decide what to buy. When products sit next to one another on a shelf, your brain automatically starts linking them together. You see the flashlight, see the batteries right there beside it, and your mind makes the connection that you’re going to need the two items. When done right, it doesn’t feel manipulative at all. Most customers actually find it helpful.
Cross merchandising works a bit differently than some of the other sales tricks shoppers run into at the register. Upselling is all about trying to get customers to upgrade to a better or more expensive version of what they’ve already got in their cart. Cross merchandising just puts a complementary product in front of them that pairs well with what they’re already buying.
Product pairings like this work well because they don’t come across as a hard sell. It feels more like a helpful reminder of what else they might need. A customer walks in with one item on their list and they leave with two or three items because the placement reminded them of what else they needed. A shopper grabs a box of pasta and sees the marinara sauce sitting right there next to it. Or they pick up a travel mug and see coffee pods displayed on a shelf nearby. Product connections like these make shopping a whole lot easier on your brain. Customers can move through the store without having to backtrack across every aisle or mentally strain to remember what else they need to grab. The layout itself does most of that mental heavy lifting for them and keeps the whole experience smooth and efficient.
How to Place Products in Your Store
Cross merchandising works pretty differently if you have a physical store versus an online shop. Physical stores need to place products in areas where customers pause or slow down to look around – it’s why you’ll always see plenty of displays and impulse items near the entrance and around the checkout counters.
End caps get a whole lot of attention from retailers and rightfully so. Not everyone knows the term. But they’re just the shelves at the very end of an aisle where shoppers slow down and they check out what’s there. Retailers love to use these areas to put products together that work well with one another. Chips right next to sandwich supplies and the batteries placed by the flashlights – none of this happens by chance.
Eye-level placement can make or break how well a product sells. When items sit at eye level or within quick reach, customers grab them much more than the products stuck on the bottom or top shelves. Retailers know this and it’s why their best cross-merchandising setups always go in these prime areas.
Heat mapping is a useful way for store owners to see where customers walk around and where they spend time. The tracking systems watch foot traffic all throughout the day and the data shows which areas get the most attention and which places shoppers just walk past. Retailers can use this information to put their paired products in the places where customers are much more likely to actually see them.
Grocery stores figured this out a long time ago. Walk past any deli counter and see what’s around it – there’s usually chips, crackers or other snack items within a few feet. The pairing makes sense because customers who just bought deli meat are already thinking about what goes with it. When those items sit together, customers don’t have to wander down another aisle to find them.
Most pairings that work well fall into one of two categories. Seasonal items sell well if you put them next to the everyday basics that customers buy year-round. Sunscreen right next to beach towels during the summer is a great example. The other category pairs a problem with a fix – pain relievers near bandages and medical supplies or stain remover close to laundry detergent. These work well because customers already need to solve a related problem.
Physical stores have something going for them that online shopping just can’t match. The layout of a store lets retailers control where customers walk and what catches their eye along the way. Place a display in the right area and it can grab someone’s attention at just the right time – right when they’re ready to throw one more item in their cart.
The Benefits of Digital Cross Merchandising
The same strategies that do well in a physical store will also work just as well for an online business. Almost every big product page has one of these “frequently bought together” sections displayed somewhere on it. These sections are there because the software behind them can look at thousands and thousands of buying patterns to find which items customers are most likely to buy at the same time.
Online retailers have a big edge here, and physical stores just can’t compete. E-commerce sites can test out different product combinations on the fly and watch what actually ends up in the shopping carts versus what customers skip. Physical stores have to move everything around by hand and then wait for weeks before anyone knows if it made a difference.
Personalized recommendations are where it gets more interesting. A customer browses your website and clicks on a few different products, and the system is able to watch that activity silently. It’ll then start to show them related items that match up pretty closely with what they’ve already been looking at. It feels like it helps your customers instead of coming off as pushy or overly sales-driven.
Email campaigns work well for cross merchandising. Abandoned cart emails are a perfect place to show related items that pair with whatever was left in the cart. Post-order emails might work even better since you can show products that complement what they just bought and help them to get more use out of their order. The numbers here are interesting. Most big e-commerce sites out there see about 35% of their total sales come straight from the automated product recommendations.
Online cross merchandising has a big edge over the traditional methods, and it all comes from the data. Retailers can track the clicks, purchases and customer behavior patterns automatically. All that information helps them to see which products their customers associate with one another. With that information in hand, they can show the right product combinations at just the right time during the shopping experience.
How to Measure Your Display Results
Once you have your cross merchandising display setups in place, you’ll have to check if they’re doing anything. The best way to figure this out is to track a few specific metrics that’ll show you what’s actually going on with your sales.
Basket size is the first metric you should track. Customers are going to walk out with more items per transaction than they would have picked up on their own when your cross merchandising strategy is working the way it should. Attachment rate is another metric to watch and it measures the percentage of customers who buy the main product and also grab the complementary item you’ve placed next to it.
Sales per square foot for each display area is another metric you should track. This number will tell you which product pairings bring in the most revenue as they take up the least amount of floor space. Not every combination is going to be a winner and that’s fine. It makes sense to experiment with different setups until you find what clicks for your customers and brings in the most money.
A/B testing is one of the best ways to see what actually works. Put two different product pairings in similar store locations and then compare how each one performs. You’ll see about 40% better results when you base placement on data instead of gut instinct. For revenue, that’s a big improvement.
Point-of-sale data can tell you plenty about what your customers want because it tracks which products they already pair together in their carts. The items that get purchased together are what matter when you make your merchandising decisions. Sometimes the purchase patterns will show you product combinations that wouldn’t have occurred to you. But your customers already show you what they want to buy together.
You want to find out which product pairings create incremental revenue – sales that never would have happened if you hadn’t put those items together. Some combinations look promising on paper just because the categories seem to be related. Test them in your store though and they might not drive any extra purchases at all. Keep tabs on these metrics as time goes on. Product pairings that work well in one season don’t work in another one. Regular analysis helps you adjust as needed and get your best performers in the right places where they’ll make the most difference.
Common Cross Merchandising Mistakes
Plenty of retailers try cross merchandising and wind up disappointed with the results. It’s because they’ve made a few common mistakes that hurt sales instead of helping them.
One of the biggest problems is when customers face tons of product options at the same time. A shopper comes over to your display, sees ten different items all bundled together and their brain just shuts down from the overload. They’ll usually just walk away without buying anything.
Another problem is pairing products that just don’t make sense together. A customer picks up a nice bottle of wine and right next to it there sits a random bunch of kitchen tools that have nothing in common with the wine. This doesn’t help them see how these items could work together – it just confuses them. Cross merchandising only works when the pairing makes sense to the customer in a second without any effort on their part.
Where you put your display matters just as much as what’s on it. A display can look perfect when you plan it out. But if it blocks the main walkway or forces shoppers to walk around it, customers get frustrated and skip over that section. Most shoppers won’t squeeze past something just to check out the products even if you run a great sale.
Your setups need regular maintenance if you want them to work for your business. Dusty products, damaged fixtures or a setup that just looks tired and stale – none of that does you any favors with the customers. Seasonal pairings are a great example of where it can backfire. Those winter product combinations that made sense in December are going to feel wrong when July rolls around.
Inventory balance is a big deal for retail setups. Pair two products together but then let one of them stay out of stock and you’ll frustrate customers who want to buy the items. They come in ready to grab the full pairing. But then they find out that half of what they want isn’t available. It’s disappointing and it will definitely hurt your sales numbers.
The biggest mistake is pairing products that have nothing in common with one another. If something feels forced or out of place, customers are going to see it in a second. Cross merchandising exists to make their shopping easier and more convenient – not to add uncertainty. Customers want pairings that make sense and solve a big problem for them – not random bundles that feel like an obvious attempt to get them to buy more items.
Convert Your Foot Traffic Into Extra Revenue
Cross-selling works best if you help customers find products that will actually make their day-to-day life easier or better. Frame it like that and it stops being about pushing extra items onto customers who don’t want them. What you’re doing is creating a shopping experience that puts the right products right in front of them right when they need them most.
To get started, you don’t have to redesign your entire store or redo your whole website in one weekend. Pick the most obvious product pairings first and try them out to see what your customers respond to. When you get comfortable with the basics and the customers start buying, you can branch out into more creative combinations (as long as they make sense together). Try walking through your physical space or browse your website like a customer would and look for places where related products could sit side by side. Most businesses already have these opportunities right in front of them – it just takes some awareness and follow-through.
Small changes to how you display and recommend related products can mean revenue growth over a few months. Businesses that see the best results are usually the ones who watch how their customers actually shop and then adjust what they’re doing based on feedback and what customers actually buy.
An ecoATM partnership layers right on top of what you’re already giving to your customers. We’ve worked with thousands of locations to turn foot traffic into extra revenue – customers trade in old phones and devices right at your store. Anyone who comes in to use the kiosk is already there with time to kill, so they’ll probably browse your products as they wait. You get more foot traffic, you help with e-waste and you add another revenue stream. Let’s talk about if an ecoATM kiosk makes sense for your space.
