How to Use Sliders for eCommerce

by [email protected] on May 7, 2018

Adding a carousel to your blog is a great way to improve its beauty and professionalism — but did you know that they can be used for eCommerce as well? While you’ll most often see sliders on the homepage, introducing a company or promoting an event, they certainly have their uses for online stores, too.

From using Soliloquy’s WooCommerce addon to promoting the latest sales, there’s plenty of ways to use a slider to increase sales. Here are some creative ways an e-commerce website can incorporate sliders!

Using Sliders to Boost Sales

Sliders are very popular in e-commerce websites; you can see them used on the likes of eBay, Etsy, and Amazon. With so many products, a simple list won’t do — there needs to be a way to highlight and target your bestsellers.

That’s where a slider comes in. Whether you’re looking to feature holiday items or highlight the best of what’s on sale, a carousel allows you to effectively pack all that information into a small space. If you don’t have any ideas, here’s a few examples of ways to use an e-commerce slider.

WooCommerce Addon

If you’re using Soliloquy sliders, the WooCommerce addon is just one of your many tools. You’ll need the Developer or Master license to use it. The addon offers full integration with WooCommerce, so displaying products is easier than ever.

Without Soliloquy’s WooCommerce plugin, you would have to enter the thumbnails, links, and descriptions of merchandise manually. The interactive slider can be customized easily and pulls right from your WooCommerce listings. It also contains filtering with category and price constraints, multiple sorting options, and featured or excluded products. You can swap between display types (thumbnail, product description, or both) at the click of a button.

However, you decide to incorporate eCommerce sliders, using the WooCommerce addon will greatly simplify the process.

Show Off Products

Got a bestseller to advertise? Or maybe you want to give some specific items a bit of extra love? A carousel is a great way to market products, whether on the homepage, in the sidebar, or within another listing.

When it comes to product sliders, their uses are only limited by your imagination. Maybe you’re writing a blog post about your newest releases and want to insert a carousel for easy access. Or you’re about to go out of stock of some items and want a big announcement on the homepage. There are plenty of places a product slider can come in handy.

Categories and Collections

If you sell many types of items, it’s a good idea to categorize them — and an even better idea to promote those categories. A carousel can elegantly get the job done. Try targeting specific collections at the proper time. If you’re a clothes retailer, and it’s the middle of a hot summer, a homepage carousel linking to the swimwear and t-shirt categories will get a lot of traffic!

At times, this can be more effective than targeting specific items. Using that same example, people who visit your online clothing shop in summer will certainly be looking for something cool to wear. If you only give publicity to singular products, they may not see anything that interests them. But if your carousel leads to a list of merchandise, the visitor is much more likely to find something they love.

Promote Sales

What better way to push a big sale than with a carousel? You can show off some of the best deals, or link to categories related to the sale. Use a strong call to action and a beautiful banner image, and you’ll be getting people excited before the slide changes.

Holidays are another great time to use a slider, especially during the fall and winter holiday season. If you find yourself running multiple large, themed sales at once, and never having enough homepage real estate to advertise them all, you could always use a carousel.

If you’re in the habit of constantly keeping a small deal or two going, you could use a slider in the sidebar or on the homepage to advertise them. Frequent visitors will get in the habit of checking out your new promotions. People love browsing items that are on sale!

New Arrivals

You got a new shipment, came up with a fresh idea for a collection, or published your latest book. That’s a big deal, and it deserves a good promotion. Use a prominent, boldly-designed carousel to advertise this event and make people eager to purchase your latest addition to the store.

Daily Deals

Daily or weekly deals is one technique to keep your e-commerce store fresh. A small sale can be just enough motivation to ensure a purchase, and it can help clear out items that aren’t selling as well. People will return often to see what you have to offer that day, gaining you extra visits and money.

You can also simply feature a few products without putting them on sale if you wish. While less effective, it can still draw extra attention to items you want to promote. A slider works well in advertising these featured products. It takes a bit of extra work, but the results are worth it.

Display Product Variations or Photos

It’s important to provide photos of your merchandise; people want to know what they’re buying. Often you’ll see a gallery used here, but a carousel is great for showing off pictures too! Use a carousel with thumbnails for the best effect. A beautiful, animated, and responsive way to show off product images.

If there are variations such as size, material, and so on, you could use a small carousel to display these differences. Sizing charts and other pictures that aren’t of the main item can go here as well. People will know what they’re getting, and it won’t steal the spotlight from your main set of images.

Cross-Selling

When you’re shopping online, have you ever noticed those carousels embedded in the checkout area? What about the “related products” sliders at the bottom of most items’ pages? These are perfect examples of cross-selling: trying to convince people to buy more things.

If you pick the right products, a cross-selling slider is very effective. For instance, if you sell books, recommending books of a similar genre at checkout could entice them to buy just one more item. Make a smart selection of related merchandise, and cross-selling can be a very lucrative technique.

Sliders: A Multipurpose Tool

Sliders are a great asset for any blog, but now you know how to effectively include them in an eCommerce website. Featured posts and homepage sliders aren’t the only things carousels are good for! They’re great at telling visitors about your newest products and sales and helping them find categories and items that will interest them.

If you’re ready to add an eCommerce slider to your WordPress website, consider using Soliloquy. The WooCommerce slider can vastly streamline your work, and you’ll have a whole host of other features to work with.

If this post helped you with planning your eCommerce site, sound off in the comments below. Then please follow us on Facebook and Twitter for more WordPress tutorials and resources.

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