Ecommerce Website Design: Category Pages

[vangogh]

Category pages are an often overlooked part of ecommerce sites. The typical category page shows a table of images and the visitor is expected to click one to view the specific product page.

That's certainly one way people will use category pages, but are there more things you could be doing to nudge visitors into your conversion funnel? Are there other things visitors might want to do on your category pages?

An article from Invesp.com offers 8 essential elements of successful category pages (http://www.invesp.com/blog/conversion-optimization/ecommerce-websites-design-8-essential-elements-of-successful-category-pages.html) and it's worth a read to help you create more effective category pages.

The 8 elements you should ask and consider:



1. What is the purpose of your category page?
2. What actions do visitors want to take on a category page?
3. Evaluate your category pages analytics data
4. The minimum in creating category pages
5. Determine the main features people ask for when shopping for your products
6. List the why visitors buy your products
7. Help the user select the appropriate subcategory:
8. Let testing tell you what works and what does not


More details in the article, but I think it's important to note that there's more to a category page than a quick trip into a product page and ignoring some of the other things could mean leaving money on the table.

The article also looks at a number of successful sites to see what they're doing on category pages.

Are your category pages simply a table of product images? What else have you tried on category pages that has led to more success?

[billbenson]

If you have a complicated product line a product finder makes a good category page addition. Say you sell computer parts with thousands of items. I series of check boxes; product class, model, manufacturer, model number (if known) etc. Or say you sell business uniforms; size, industry, color, etc.

You can then write a script that searches for these criteria. The hardest part of something like this is your database needs to be accurate and consistent. For a uniform you don't want to use "small" in one description and "sm" in another (although you can search for both). What you are really doing is writing a good search query for your site visitor, but I find visitors frequently don't know how to use the search function very well (although on my site it works quite well). You are really are just making it easier for your customer to find what they need.

For stuff I sell, people don't come by and browse. They want a specific product of the 13k or so we sell. Its not an impulse buy type of product. It makes life easier for corporate buyers etc. For other types of products it may be different. You may want to force people to do some window shopping.

[vangogh]

Internal search is a good idea also to find out what your customers are looking for that you may not have. It can give you ideas for new product lines and new content.

Most of the time when I see category pages I don't see a lot to make me want to dig deeper unless I have a specific product in mind. Usually I just the paginated display of product images.

A featured product might work well on the category pages along with special offers. People will use them on the home page, but never think to put them on the main category pages. Offering product comparison tools is another idea that could lead some to a purchase.

Naturally you should do things differently for new visitors and returning visitors and you can even change things around a little for people coming from certain sites or coming from a search engine using different keywords.

[orion_joel]

I am absolutely going to have to delve deeper here. I have tried a few different variations on my online store, only the category page is the place that i have had the lease inspiration in almost every case.

One online store was much easier because it focused on one specific brand of product and minimal categories so people would rarely have the problem of not knowing which category to look in. However this is much a different story when you come to stores that have maybe 10 major categories and then anything up to 10 sub categories per, going down 1 or 2 levels, could quickly run out to hundreds of categories.

Even though i realize they are essential for an online store i just dislike having categories because i can lead to confusion for the customer trying to figure where the product they want may be located especially in stores that are a dense range of products that could overlap categories.

[vangogh]

One thing to keep in mind with categories is their SEO benefit. If you have a product located at:

domain.com/category/sub-category/product.php

you're really telling search engines what that product is about and what the whole section is about. If your menu links back to the category and/or subcategory you help reinforce the keyword that is the category name with great anchor text.

Skipping the sub-category for example say you have

domain.com/widgets/red.php
domain.com/widgets/green.php
domain.com/widgets/blue.php

Your main keyword for the section is widget and secondary phrases are 'red widget,' 'green widget,' and 'blue widget'

Think about your menu. Your widget pages links to all your secondary phrases with the exact phrase in the anchor text. Your product pages are all linking back to your category page with widgets as the anchor text in the link. Basically all your internal linking in the section keeps reinforcing the 'widgets' keyword theme.

As far as the confusion for visitors as long as you organize things well you should eliminate most of the confusion. They may need to click more than they or you want at times, but even that can be mitigated to an extent depending on how things are organized.