You may think that eCommerce product organisation is an easy task, right? All you have to do is add all the products using Magento or an eCommerce platform and make sure you fill in the information required in product pages. Now let's take a step back and think about the customers who land on your homepage or a specific product page and looking for a product. What will they do?
One thing they won't do is browse through all the products until they find what they are looking for. Would you? Or would you go back to Google and redo your search until you find a website with great product organisation schemes and is user-friendly when it comes to product filters and search?
eCommerce product organisation is very important for two reasons: firstly, it is key to enable the customer to find what he is looking for in as little clicks as possible; secondly, if your products are organised well, you will increase the chance of having a customer buying multiple products in one single session.
To help you out when coming up with the best way to organise your products, we grouped the 5 most common and effective ways proven to work!
Alphabetical organisation
If the products you sell have a recognisable name such as being identified by a brand’s name (think of fashion and lifestyle websites), the most logical choice of organisation is by alphabet order.
A customer looking for a product by a specific brand will easily find what he is looking for by browsing through your alphabetically organised listings of brands.
Once they click on the brand of choice, you should enable the customer to sort products by type and/or price, going from the most affordable one to the most expensive, or vice versa.
Segmenting your target audience
If your products differ in terms of being either for men, women, kids, pets, or even segmented by specific characteristics such as age or profession, this means your product organisation will reflect your target audience segmentation. You will have subgroups of the target audience directly defined on your website. This is a great way to organise products and get specific data and feedback for each audience segment without having to filter by gender or age.
Organising by product location
If a product is typically known to be found in a specific place, you should apply a location based product scheme. Just think of house decor websites and having products added to sections that match the kitchen space, living room, bedroom or bathrooms.
Thinking about product uses
If a product is designed to be used in a specific field, it could be a good idea to organise products by their application. Think of websites selling sports equipment. A good product organisation would reflect separating products by sport activities such as fitness, biking, soccer, hiking and so on.
Chronological organisation
Finally, a very common way of grouping products is by periods in which they were added to your website. This is very common in the fashion industry where time-sensitivity is very relevant. A product that was just launched by a designer should always be placed as the first in your product searches as it will be the most searched for during the launching period and right after.
If you are still not sure what would be the best way to organise your products, take a pen and paper and start drawing a product tree. Try to think of the first way your customer would search for products on your website. If you were a customer looking for a product you currently sell, how would you search for it? This question is your starting point!
