The hero of our favorite movies, books, and TV shows are always saving the day, winning the race, or vanquishing their foes.

It isn’t much different in retail.

Digital merchandisers might not wear a cape (at the office anyway), but to the brands they work for, these are superheroes of the superstore, growing AOV, driving conversions, and beating the competition.

Only a short time ago, digital merchandising took a straightforward approach to eCommerce. Products were introduced by the design team, manufactured into apparel, footwear, accessories, and home goods, and then brought to a studio where the items were photographed and made ready to sell on a retailer’s website.

Shoppers could scroll through various angles of a given product, but overall, the experience was low on visual excitement and high on the impersonal. Searches often yielded thousands of SKUs of various relevance without any guarantee a customer would actually find what they were looking for.

This transactional approach to shopping online was perfected by Amazon, and hundreds of brands and retailers have followed their lead over the years. In fact, a quick glance at many of the top eCommerce sites still shows a path leading as quickly as possible to the “buy now” button.

Here are a few things that get lost in this format of online sales:

• An inspiring shopping experience
• Personalized product recommendations
• Customer engagement

And here’s why it’s a challenge for digital merchandisers.

Shoppers aren’t landing on homepages anymore. Whether being directed from an article titled “best-running shoes under $100”, an Instagram influencer or a TikTok shop video, consumers are bypassing a retailer’s homepage and finding themselves on a product page for a specific SKU. No longer can brands highlight the shiny new thing they’re introducing, or the expensive campaign starring Kendall Jenner.

And if brands aren’t delivering exactly what the consumer wants, or worse, delivering what the consumer wants but in the wrong size, they might not only be forced to discount what’s left, lowering margins, but more vitally, losing the trust of their biggest asset, the shopper.

For tech-savvy and forward-thinking retailers though, solving these challenges can be just a few clicks away. AI and machine learning have made it possible to offer a much more personalized approach to eCommerce, a way to make each customer feel like they are a brand VIP.

This type of shopping is called Inspirational Commerce™. By moving away from single-item product pages and offering a curated selection of complementary products, the shopper is transported to a styling journey that lets them see how an item they’re viewing would look as a complete outfit or, when buying furniture and home decor, how the item would look in a room. Technology now allows a digital merchandiser to build a shopping experience that turns browsing into buying, drives bigger baskets, and boosts conversions across categories.

AI Bundling is Stylitics’ signature solution suite and at the core of a new partnership with leading AI content platform, Amplience. Their mission to rid the world of bad shopping experiences makes them a perfect companion, and together we’re changing the game for digital merchandisers by creating a better way for people to shop online.

By curating styled products on a product detail page (PDP), shoppers can see not only the item they’ve searched for but also other SKUs that will pair with it perfectly. Adding shoes or accessories to a blouse, or a lamp and a side table for a couch, seamlessly and creatively, encourages customer engagement and the kind of personalized shopping experience that leads to upsells, higher margins, and increased AOV.

Amplience’s best-in-class content platform allows retailers to create dynamic and visually engaging web pages, emails, campaigns, and landing pages. This new integration with Stylitics makes adding fully styled bundles as easy as a few clicks, designing new and inspiring ways to show shoppers the value of AI Bundling and offering a better, more engaging shopping experience.

Collectively, over 600 of the world’s biggest brands and retailers harness the AI power found in Amplience and Stylitics.

Reach out to see what the Stylitics & Amplience integration can do for you.