Tips on using site architecture to encourage transactions
- Luke Telford
- 7 April 2010
Photo credit: kahanaboy @ morguefile.com
Before you start planning the architecture of your retail site, you need to ask yourself who you're selling to, and what they want from your business.
When a user visits a retail website, they expect to find a product that meets their need; they expect to be presented with sufficient information to establish whether the product isn't too expensive, and they need to be able to buy the product, and ensure its delivery.
Site depth
First of all, you need to make it as easy as possible for users to get to where they want to be. The concept of a 'flat' architecture
is important here. 'Flatness' in websites refers to the
number of different layers of pages. The flatter your site is, the less complex it is. The more pages a visitor has to click through, the deeper the site goes.
Not only does this mean a greater amount of information for them to process, but it also presents more effort. There should be no more than two clicks between a product and the checkout. Any more, and you risk the losing your customer.
Ideally, there would be no dimension to a website. It would be a single page that sold every visitor a product automatically, as soon as they landed on the homepage.
As that isn't an option for anyone except the iTunes store, it's important for those designing a retail site to be clever with how they arrange their products.
Indexing
If you offer more than a couple of products, your site needs to divide them effectively by topic or type. Having a large number of products leads to more confusion for visitors who are after a specific thing, or who aren't sure quite what they're looking for. If there are many products, dividing them into separate category pages is best. It's also wise to provide a search function to help index the vast amount of information you're providing.
An important point to consider when creating categories for your site-especially if you have lots of products-is how much information you position towards the top of your site architecture ie on the homepage, and on the first category pages. This is important because Google and other search engines only read a certain amount of information on the top pages in the architecture hierarchy. So, while it's a good idea to avoid overwhelming your visitor with information as soon as they land on your page, it's important to make sure that the information you do present them with is highly relevant to how you want your business to appear in search engines.
Cross referencing
Is there too much information? Is there not enough? Is it search friendly? It's easy to get lost between all of these considerations, and to forget about providing lots of relevant cross-referencing.
'Cross sell, upsell and product comparison links are very important if you sell a range of similar products,' says John DeBrincat, CEO of e-commerce solutions compay eCorner.
'Say a product's listed on the site but not available or not in the colour or size that the customer originally wanted – the site needs to enable some cross-selling to recommend alternatives.'
Not only does this provide incentive for customers to investigate different aspects of your site (and the products they feature) but having lots of relevant internal links also helps to boost your search ranking. #
