Our research with shoppers shows us that Cloudshelves deliver when their purpose is clear. This is most obviously the case when exposing a specific range.
Cloudshelf’s appeal to shoppers is that it is visual and intuitive. These attributes need to be in-forced in choosing how to set it up in your store.
Examples to create an effective Cloudshelf
The following are examples where the retailer has a clear use case in mind, and used the Cloudshelf to in-force this.
Best practice set-up for a single Cloudshelf
A clear call-to-action
6-18 collections
Each collection with 10-200 products
Consistent use of variant attributes in Shopify to make filters easy to use (eg avoid Colour, colour, color)
Define sufficient tags or product type attributes to help shoppers make their choice
Encouraging discovery: Showing a precise range
You can build as many Cloudshelves as you want. There is little benefit in trying to get everything on a single Cloudshelf. Positioning your Cloudshelf next to a range to complement it can help.
A fashion store that has a range of jewellery
Only part of the jewellery range is exposed in the store, with much more available online.
- The Cloudshelf CTA is: discover our entire range of designer jewellery.
- The owner has split the jewellery collection into sub-collections based on ‘product type’ attribute.
Jewellery Cloudshelf was created using specially created collections
Creating a new collection based on a given set of
product types
A fashion store that has a range of homeware
Only a tiny part of the available homeware range is available in store
Screen location: next to homeware
CTA: Discover the rest of our homeware
Content: the retailer already had collections for candles, for decoration, for cookware…
A kids store that sells clothing and furniture
Given size of furniture, most of it is only available online
Screen location: near main desk
CTA: hope our entire kids furniture range
Content: the retailer already had collections.
Encouraging fit: clear search criteria through wide range
At times, the range is visible, but the shopper cannot tell whether their fit is in-stock or available. This is often the case with shoes, and products with many variants.
A women’s shoe shop with a large warehouse
Given the range, size variants are kept in the stock room
Screen location: between sofas used by customers
CTA: find your perfect fit this winter
Content: the retailers winter collections
Filters: tidied up size filters
Stock: extended Shopify to distinguish between stock in-store and in warehouse (in progress)
An electronics store to guide customer choice before getting products from stock areas
95%+ of product range is in back-room. Cloudshelf is used to narrow down customers target before going to collect a product. Mostly used by sales staff to help customers choose, though some use it to explore while staff serving someone else.
Screen location: on service desk
CTA: discover our entire range
Content: collections have been re-aggregated from website’s to make first screen selection easier. for instance all midi controllers merged into one collection, and use of product type in filters to then allow easier filtering.
Combining both use cases:
A fashion store with a wide range of jeans
It is hard to judge how the jeans look while folded on shelves, or even hanging. Cloudshelf fullscreen imagery allows shoppers to see how they fit before trying them on.
Screen location: next to jeans
CTA: find your perfect jeans
Content: jeans collection sub-segmented into 6 main fit collections