When Kermit the Frog sang about the difficulties of being "green," he wasn't in any position to change his color situation. Frogs are after all—green. And eventually Kermit found solace and satisfaction in both his color and himself.
But if Kermit were an online retailer today, changing colors and other attributes for products in his online store could easily send him into another existential color crisis.
Research has shown that most customers make up their minds about a product within the first 90 seconds of encountering it, and anywhere from 62-90% of the conclusions they draw are based on color alone. With color proving to be such a heavyweight with regards to consumer opinion, it's not an option for retailers to kick it like Kermit—color is going to have to shift.
He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not
Color has long been a retailer's best friend and archenemy, and it's easy to see why. Choose products in the season’s or moment's hottest colors, and voila—your store will set sales records. Choose products in colors that are considered frumpy or “so-last-year,” however, and you could be in a position to lose out on a lot of revenue.
This pressure causes retailers work hard to predict what colors customers will want in the future. But even when they hit the jackpot, the winning color or particular shade's popularity is never fixed.
Change, at least when it comes to the colors selling well one moment and not the next, is the only constant. If customers' feelings about color are so fluid and fickle, what's a retailer to do?
Manage Your Color
One way to stay on top of color is to put fewer eggs into the basket that seeks to predict the market's every color move. Instead, put more of them into a basket that allows you to adapt more readily to the ongoing shifts in color popularity across your online store and catalog.
That way, when you encounter the inevitable plot twist in your quest to give your customers what you thought they wanted, you can respond with appropriate action.
A visual catalog management solution allows you to quickly and easily relocate popular or trending products to more prominent locations on your storefront, while moving out-of-season products, or poorly selling items, out of immediate view.
With an unobtrusive graphic overlay that includes up-to-the-minute data about everything from product mentions on social media to which products in which colors are converting the best, you can sequence color swatches or categorize whole product lines according to color with the click of a button.
And if you choose software that enables color management across your entire store and catalog, you can quickly and easily swap colors as often as you like.
See what Smart Merchandiser can do to help you better manage color in your storefront—download The Digital Merchandiser’s Guide to Maximizing Margins with Visualized Data eBook to learn more!
