The secret to making top products more visible to shoppers

When the fourth season of the hit TV show Stranger Things came out, one particular song and artist took over the world.

Kate Bush’s 80s hit Running Up That Hill featured in a now iconic episode of the Netflix show. After the episode was released, it became a viral hit on Tik Tok and across music streaming services, with Spotify alone seeing streams of the song increasing 9,000%.

And if you just so happened to stock vintage Kate Bush t-shirts at this time in your online shop, then you would have been in a very lucrative position. But would you have known how to piggyback on the trend and make a bit of extra cash yourself?

While some shoppers might have come to your shop specifically looking for those vintage t-shirts, others might not have known you had them at all, but might have been interested if they knew you stocked them.

Right at this moment you know you have the chance to increase your profits, but you don’t know how to do it. If only you could get your Kate Bush t-shirts in front of EVERYONE who visited your site.

With the boosting feature, you’re able to do exactly that.

Read on to see how you can bring specific products to the top of your search results to help you make more sales.

Maximise product visibility with the boost feature

Motive Commerce Search has a bunch of really clever ways it displays products in a shopper’s search. But sometimes, like in the Kate Bush scenario, you might want to override these.

To make certain products, brands or even categories more visible, you can use the boost feature.

Boosting tells the search engine to give more prominence to certain attributes, be they products (through their identifiers), brands, or categories. It does this by giving a value to your boosted product that tells the search engine it should appear at the top of the results. This allows you to highlight items in your shoppers’ search results.

Business rules even enable you to choose whether your boosted items are promoted in all searches or in specific ones, meaning that you can tweak which products are boosted when shoppers search for a given thing.

Why would I want to boost a product?

If you can show shoppers exactly what they’re looking for, then you can increase your conversion rates. You can identify what shoppers are looking for in the analytics section of the Motive Playboard, jump on trends or use product boosting when you’re running campaigns.

You might even want to sell more of a certain brand because you’re getting a commission from them each time you sell their product.

In the case of a campaign, you might be running an end of season sale on swim shorts. You’ve advertised across social media but also want to make sure organic visitors see that these products are on sale. This is where boosting product IDs or brands can be helpful.

For visitors who haven’t seen your swimshorts campaign, you can also add banners to your search to make your sales or campaigns even more visible.

What if I want to make a product less visible?

It’s possible that you want to make certain products less prominent. There might be a nice post-summer window where you can sell those swim shorts, but come October, not even the most avid bargain hunter is likely to take the plunge.

If you sell Adidas swim shorts, you don’t want them showing up when people search for Adidas. In this scenario, you can use the bury tool, which would bury the swim shorts further down the search.

When the summer season comes back round, you can simply undo the rule and you’re back to normal.

Already have Motive? Here’s how easy it is to boost and bury

Warning. This will be a short paragraph.

Login to your Playboard, click Promotions in the sidebar, then Business Rules, click Add Rule, and fill in your criteria. (You can find more info here)

OK, done. Coffee anyone?

Increase profit margins and move inventory

Whether you want to boost products to increase your profit margin or simply just move more inventory, Motive Commerce Search has you covered. Click here to read how other great features like filters can also help you increase sales.