Are Your ECommerce Customers Getting Lost In The Categories?

No matter what it is you’re selling, there’s always more than one version. Once upon a time, consumers would have to settle with ‘a’ product. Now, however, consumers are spoiled for choice. They’re bombarded with so many different options. These options have to be categorized so some semblance of order is maintained.

This then leads to the options getting lost in the myriad of it all. This will be quite damaging to your sales and lead to frustration for your consumers. Every consumer is different so it’s imperative not just to have different options available but to clearly have them on display.

The question is, how do you make sure all your categories remain distinct and clearly location, so there’s no confusion?

Give categories some individuality

Of all the different businesses in the world, the fashion industry has the best category handling. Clothes are quite distinct in design, color, materials, fit, style and so many other descriptions. This makes them very easy to define and separate from one another. By taking a leaf out of the fashion industry’s book, you need to make your own categories stand out more vigorously.

Individuality will sprout personality, which will then, in turn, give a category a more distinct feel. For example, you’re a partisan meat business. You sell a variety of sausages and deliver them right to your customers’ doors. If you’re selling Italian sausage, give each category a distinct wording and description. Selling spicy sausages? What region/city are they inspired by?

Naples has its own spicy sausage, so does Tuscany, Rome, Milan and Solerno. Just by reading the names of these cities, customers know what they’re buying.

Lost and found

What happens when you’re looking for something, you’re unable to find it and you get lost in all the various products and categories? You click off. You simply leave the website. This is something that has to be tackled head-on. One of the most effective techniques used to gauge where consumers think they should find a product on your website is the tree testing method.

Unlike the card sorting method whereby consumers are asked to pair items with groups, tree testing is used to see when the consumer found what they were looking for. It’s a kind of measurement of how far down the rabbit hole. The further they went, the less successful your website design will be from preventing the customer from clicking away. 

Create a brilliant filter

Some customers will have the time to browse and take things easy. Others will be in a rush. That’s why creating an amazing filter which allows users to separate the types of products they’re looking for, from the herd is crucial to purchase conversion. Go the extra mile, instead of the usual filter options such as price, color, size and style, include material, style inspiration, features and even user rating. More and more consumers are using the filter option for user-reviewed products, as they are looking to buy products that others have recommended. 

Even if a business has wondrous products if a consumer cannot find the exact type they want, they will leave your website. Thus, create a brilliant filter, test how far away your products are from where users expect them to be and create unique categories in the first place.

This is a contributed post.